I was convinced that I was about to read about Devilles career as a pornstar when I clicked on that last link.

Note that this research was funded by the content providers (like skype) ISPs were asking to pay extra for the bandwidth their services use. I'm not pointing any fingers, but it's something to think about.

You're still missing the point.
Your second analogy actually describes the foldit situation perfectly, just that its the other way around. It would be more fitting to describe the foldit gamers as the astrophysicists who analyses data and makes a discovery. To go through the analogy step by step, the magnitude measurements would in this case be the foldit program itself and the data about the protein in question that was known in beforehand. The gamers use of a program is not analogous to them using a measuring tool to gather data, as the data they produced was completely new and originated only from their own minds. They did not just plug something into an equation and noted down the results, they had a set of data and measurements, looked long and hard at them, and then came up with a completely new equation to describe the relationship between the ones they already had.

I'm not saying they deserve a noble prize, personally I wouldn't say that their discovery is significant enough in it's own right to go that far, but they do deserve the recognition of their work as more than just an application of principles that were known in beforehand, as the inclusion of their names in the publicised scientific paper suggests.

By the way, just to be sure, you do know that the "foldit gamers" are not the same people driving the folding@home distributed computing project right? You do know what the foldit game is and what you do in it? It would be unfortunate if we would continue this discussion just to find out that we're talking about two different topics entirely.

The Foldit gamers weren't "merely" donors. They made an actual discovery.
They looked at the shape of a protein, thought, discussed and experimented in how they could fold it properly, and in the end they found a novel solution to a problem that hadn't been solved before.
That is not "donation", that is a scientific discovery.

It's almost suspiciously stupid. I wonder if the tea party or any other critical mass of stupid has some indian employees typing out that guff on sites like that.

You don't need entrepeneurs to get this kind of thing to happen, here in Norway we've had that for around 3 years around the sentrum of the city, stretching out quite far from it at the most. It's actually the universities that made this happen, and thus by extension the state (students don't pay the university money to go there, pretty much everything comes from the state).
Also, in the hungarian town Pécs where I'm currently living, there's free wifi internet in the whole town, and according to speedtest.net it clocks in at 0.2mb/s. That probably the speed its going to end with in london as well.

Jesus christ guys, RTFA. The summary is a biased piece of crap.
All that the researchers did was to show that very few of the people who supported the brief that denied that violent video games was a risk factor for agression had done any research on the topic, and that the little research that had been done by the people on that side was not good enough to be published in any major scientific journal. If you wanted to distinguish between two large groups of "experts", and wanted to asess what side actually knew what they were talking about, how would you have done it differently?

There has been alot of research on the effects of media violence before video games were as big as they are today, and the general conclusion was that media violence was in fact a risk factor for increased agression. The reason you don't hear that much about it is because that debate is pretty much settled, but you can find plenty of the studies you are looking for by simply typing in "media violence" on google scholar.

You seem to not have read TFA.
The main point in the article, is how almost none of the few published papers by the people signing to "video games don't cause violence" brief were published in respectable psychological journals. So unless you can do proper science that disproves that video games are a risk factor for agression, which incidentally is very hard to find (why is that I wonder), your solution won't get you anywhere.

I'm a first year student studying psychology, and I happened to write a paper on the subject of the effect of violent video games, and I have some opinions on this subject.
First of all, I'd like to say RTFA. The summary above is one of the worst summaries I have seen, presenting the matter in an extremely biased fashion. First of all, what the researchers in question (Bushman, Anderson, Sacks) did is not so outrageous as the article suggests. To rephrase it in a less biased way, they looked at the people who signed both the pro and con amicus briefs, and looked at how many had actually published something within the topics of the effects of video game violence or media violence. They then looked at how many of these published studies were published in respectable journals ("respectability" was calculated using a method called "impact factor", which measures the relative amount of references to articles in a certain journal). Here they found that the signers of the brief supporting the link between violent video games and violent behaviour, had 48 times more studies published in respectable journals then the opposing side, fourty eight TIMES more studies. They did this to asess the credentials and credibility of the people signing each brief, not to somehow directly prove that violent violent games cause agression, such as the OP suggests, and I would say their assesement is legitimate. What they did here was to show that almost none of the people (17%) calling themselves "experts" who signed to the fact that violent video games did not cause agressive behaviour had published a single study on the subject area, and that the studies that they had published were only accepted by obscure journals with very little credibility to them (ie. they are of very low quality). They did not prove that violent video games cause agression, but they did prove that almost all the people who said that it didn't had almost no credentials whatsoever, and that the opposing side had plenty. Make of that what you will.

This assesement paints a picture of the situation that is pretty much in agreement to what I discovered when I wrote a paper on the subject: that there are only three (Ferguson, Kilburn, Freedman) serious researchers who deny the link between violent video games and agression, and that the rest are industry funded dickheads whose only purpose is to confuse the public into thinking that there is a real debate on the topic. All of the most recent experimental, cross-sectional and longitudal studies with a decent number of citations and credibility all supported the fact that violent video games are a risk factor for increased agression (by agression I mean agressive behaviour, cognition and affect). The largest and most credible meta-study I could find (done by Anderson et al in 2010), showed without any doubt that almost all psychological research done on the subject points to the fact that this risk factor is real.
Denying the link between exposure to video game violence and increased risk of agressive behaviour, cognition and affect goes against all relevant psychological theory, former research on media violence, and even current research on the topic. The research that the OP dismisses clearly show that the people that are still denying it are the same industry funded idiots who have always denied any proper science being done on the subject of media violence, people who have no real scientific credibility. Note that we are talking about a risk factor here, not a causal link. The research doesn't show that all kids who play violent video games become violent individuals; it does however show that in combination with other factors it can play a role in making them so.

I think you misunderstand what 500 clicks a minute means. Sure, there is a a major physical aspect to it, in how fast it is actually possible for you to precisely perform actions within the game (mouse precision is more important than how fast you can click, as a click in the wrong place is at the least wasted, at the most catastrophical), but being able to click really fast really precisely, does not give you the ability to perform a corresponding number of actions within the game. To translate your mechanical speed into actions within the game, to translate those 300 clicks and button mashes into 300 actions per minute (APM), you need to have a robust mental checklist with clearly defined priorities and reactions.

To give an example, lets say that I am playing Starcraft, and is in the middle of a battle. There are many decisions to be made within the battle itself (Should I retreat? Focus a particular unit? Avoid any particular unit? Assume a particular formation of units? Use any particular abilities?), and all these actions require some degree of attention and mechanical work to perform, but meanwhile I also have to produce attacking units, make workers, make supply depots, and construct buildings according to what overall strategy I have decided to adopt. What mainly decides how fast I play in this situation, is not how fast I click, but how fast I go from performing one task to the next, how fast I know what to do. Micromanaging units for example, is not just clicking units and sending them in random directions, its having an idea of what units needs to go where and do what, and going through with that idea as fast as you can. The speed at which you macro, or manage you economy, is also to some degree decided alot by how fast you go make strategical decisions, and how much of your attention you are willing to take away from your army. The quickness and precision of your actions is only the cap of the speed of your play as long as you have a crystal clear mental checklist that tells you exactly what to do next.

What I am saying here is that while peforming 500 clicks per minute is a purely physical thing, performing 500 actions per minute is as much cerebral as it is physical (somewhat of an unrealistic number by the way, with the way APM is measured in Sc2 the best reach around 350 in especially intense moments), somewhat negating your point. Furthermore, this discussion does not even begin to adress the quality of your actions, of wether the priorities in that checklist are good or not (in other words, wether or wether not you make overall good strategical decisions, as well as devoting the right amount of attention to the right things at the right time), or the additional skills that are required beyond the ones mentioned here (having good eye movement, general awareness of everything going on on-screen, being able to count large clusters of units with some degree of accuracy in half a second and so on), to become a good Starcraft (1 or 2) progamer. There are staggering physical and mental requirements that I think very few people are aware of, and which is why I also think so many have a difficulty in accepting it as a sport.

Sc2...lacks options? Mass and fling combined with paper rock scissors?
I'm sorry, but from those statements alone I would dare to say that you don't know much about Sc2 at all, and are just talking about your initial Bronze league experiences. From the point where people start scouting, counterattacking, dropping and doing timing attacks, that stops being true. And the last time i checked, most players in the higher silver leagues are at that level. From the get go, there are plenty of aggressive builds, cheeses (both economical and agressive ones) you can use to test you oponents defenses. Then there are drops, nyduses, banshees, blueflame hellions, Dts, warp prisms, burrowed infestors and all sorts of shenanigans you can go for that test your opponent in many different ways, are not countered by any conceivable stretch of a rock paper scissors mentality, and whose effectiveness depends on how you control what information your opponent gets. I mean theres a game of TLO (a famous western progamer) vs a protoss where he beats the protoss with just marines and medivacs, with the protoss going colossus, a "counter" (although that word is only meaningfull at the very low levels of play) to marines. He beats the protoss by being agressive, dropping, having great map awareness, having a more mobile army, by making great timing attacks, and by micromanaging his units, where does that fit into your "mass and fling rock paper scissors" mentality?

Most people who are new to the game play it in a ball vs ball fashion simply because they are afraid to move their units out of their base, and are not aware of what options are open to them. The tragedy here is that so many people think Starcraft2 is a ball vs ball game, because they think thats the way it is supposed to be played, and thus never explore beyond that. Starcraft2 is a game where the depth lies in how you use your units, and not the units themselves, and that is incredibly hard for many to see.

I watched the full 39 minutes of unedited footage as a response to your comment, to see if it was warranted.
Seeing the full picture and comparing it with what the edited video offered, im almost under the impression that your assesement of "how hard troops try to miss civillians" is pure fantasy.

First and foremost the full picture after seeing the whole video, emerges as the following:
Firefight takes place between ground troops and insurgents
Gun ship swoops in to survey the area
Gun ship finds groups of people that carry objects that could be interpreted as weapons (and this is by NO means clear)
Gun ship shoots the shit out of said people, in a style that is best described as "spray and pray"
Van that was seen a couple of moments earlier comes around and tries to pick up bodies, the gun ship shoots the shit out of it as well
Troops comes around, finds some ammo and wounded children
Gun ship keeps looking around, sees some people gathering in a local building that appears to be abandoned
Gun ship fires a grand total of 3 missiles at said building and blows it up

In no parts of this video, was there a single moment that indicated that the soldiers were trying to miss anything, let alone civillians. In fact, I cant even recall a single mention of the word (although that may be just an overlook on my part). Additionally, when they fire their first missile at the building mentioned earlier (happens around 34 minutes into the video i believe), theres a seemingly unrelated person strolling by in front of it, who is obviously killed in the following blast, and is NOT EVEN MENTIONED. The guy in gunship is so trigger horny that he does not mention that theres an unidentified and seemingly unrelated target walking in the middle of his sights, like that person was not even a factor to consider mentioning.

I'm more shocked now then I was before. This has even made me consider the possibility that (some or many - undecided on that part) American soldiers honestly don't give a shit about civilians, and are more concerned with shooting at every possible target like it would level up their CoD character.

Just so you know here's the general outline of WoWs history with cheating, botting, and such:

Hacks, cheating and such: Basically a guaranteed ban if you use them more then two or three times. The detection system for any forms of cheat is extremely strong and the times you can actually use cheats for anything usefull are extremely rare (and even more rarely worth the inevitable ban). This part was quite strong from the very beginning and really hasn't changed that much.

Duping: There have been mythical tales floating around from time to time about mysterious duping methods, however I've never found anything that has actually worked, or to be confirmed to have been working at a certain point. For all I know, there's never been a single purposefull sucessful dupe anywhere in WoW, ever.

Botting: Botting was to some degree prevalent early in WoWs history. However, botting has always been dangerous due to extremely agressive stance the playerbase has towards it. Although botting is somewhat hard to detect by an automated mechanism of some sort, it is extremely easy to spot a player using bots from a player perspective, and when you spot some character botting the shit out of your quest mobs, all you have to do is report him to a gm, grab your opposing faction character and have some fun with his scripts while you wait for his imminent ban. Also, due to how the loot aquisition system in WoW works (Bind on pickup etc..), its extremely difficult to use botting for something that would net you significant amount of cash, unlike in D2.
Also, blizzard sucessfully sued the maker of a popular bot program, and have been quite good at weeding out botters even without players reporting them. Before i quit a while ago, i hadn't seen a botter in several months.

Due to the online nature of the game, the inability to trade any decent high level items (with certain exceptions), the price of each account (and thus the effectivity of bans), and the complexity of the encounters that drop the good stuff, any form of cheating in WoW has always been a non issue. There have been "exploits" (the exploitation of bugs or flawed game mechanics) that have from time to time inspired controversy in the community, but those almost always used for selfish purposes that do not affect the playerbase of your server in any way. Relative to the economy destroying disasters in D2, WoW has been a game almost free of any form of cheating, with the occasional exploits more often being fun then harmfull.

Now, D2 was full of problems related to cheating because it was made at the dawn of online gaming, the dawn of MMOs. D2s online part was an early attempt at a fully integrated online component, and was perhaps a little too successfull for its own good. Alot of the problems to come were not foreseen in that period, and alot of the problems that arised could not be dealt with in any meaningfull manner without making massive and time consuming changes to a game that was probabbly not planned to last as long as it has anyways. The problems you complain about, the ones you call out as evidence of Blizzard not "caring" about their customers, were all failed attempts at solving an unsolveable problem, but at least there were attempts, however misguided they may have been. Also, for a company that cares so little about its customers, it's funny how they are still updating D2, a positively ancient game with no concievable further profits, even today (the last patch came out a few months ago). Hell, they are even mantaining the old battle net infrastructure to keep supporting D2, which at this point would cost more money then D2 could possibly still bring in.
If anything, the history of blizzard with D2 shows a company that not only cares, but also rutinely hands out free hugs and kisses to its playerbase. Being unable to deal with a technical difficulty is a measure of incompetence, and not evidence of them not caring about their players. Luckily, as seen above, they seemed to learn from their mistakes and eliminate that technical difficulty from any future game of theirs. Funny how that works, innit.