Mozilla and Epic Games team up to bring Unreal Engine 3 to the Web

Sounds cool, until you realize that this is merely the next salvo in the "cloud computing" war to turn everyone's PC into a "net appliance", rather than a real PC, which is dependent on an always-on, high bandwidth internet connection.

The corporate world would love NOTHING more than turning everyone's PC back into a graphical terminal (AKA "thin client"). This way they can ensure that you pay fees for every single activity, from storing your data in the "cloud" to running a web-based app or game. Hell, M$ even directly stated the reason for emphasizing cloud computing was to ensure a constant revenue stream; it has never had anything to do with benefit (except in a secondary, emergent manner) for consumers.