Using the same basic orbital calculation that let us send a dozen or so space vessels to the moon rather than off into the sun or something. We've become pretty good at telling where the moon will be at any given time. Maybe there are even "Full moon" days written in your calendar. They are when the moon and sun are in roughly opposite directions from us.

I think you missed the Irony Boat.

How exactly do you set a software flag to determine whether it's pirated or not?

After all the comments here "Why is someone being paid to do this", "This is lame" and so on, I think this research is brilliant. Next time I say something stupid to my girlfriend, or make a dumb choice I now have an excuse and a way to butter her up in one go!

Sure. But why? I understand how they got those results, but why make that comparison? It's a peculiarly short-sighted concern, if in the world's game output, you are concerned if local ratios don't apply...

Yeah... Why are the Native Americans and Hispanic singled out? I mean, if you're going to complain about ethnic groups who aren't represented much in games, then what about Persians, Portuguese, Maori, Aboriginal... This smells of a very US-centric perspective taken in the study...

Sure, there are lots of games that aren't cutting edge graphics and are still great games. I'm not trying to trot out that old point. The interesting thing I found with TF2 was that it *was* graphically impressive. It took the progress that had been made in graphics and aimed it in a different direction to the realism that every other game had sought. And that visual tone carried through into the gameplay. It sought to provide a light-hearted (comic even) environment in which to play that same old CTF mechanic.

Team Fortress 2 has been a great demonstration of how an amazing graphics engine can be used in a less-realistic way, but the high-quality graphics still do a good job supporting the gameplay. Maybe more of this will come soon? And perhaps the artists in game development studios will get more of a chance to be... well... artistic as a result.

The only time I'd play a multiplayer RTS is with friends, I've never been big on the computer assigned stranger thing, and most of the time that would be with my flatmate. No seedy LAN party, just a bored tuesday night with time to kill at home. Other times, if there were a group of us, we'd head out to an internet cafe with a gaming setup and play together in the same room so we can talk. I really don't think the advent of broadband changed everyone's gaming habits. and just how fast your broadband is, depends greatly on what country you live in.

Does it have to be said that it is quite reasonable to search for sex for a number of reasons apart from pornography? How about sexual health? For a young teen or something, searching for "sex" online because you're curious could lead you to some great articles that would tell you some pretty useful information. Like wearing a condom can help prevent you getting some nasty diseases. I'm pretty sure the idea of SafeSearch is to keep those search results whilst filtering the porn sites. Blocking all searches of the term completely seems like lazy design.