Zoraptor

There are also a couple of good documentaries which were the main reason I knew much about it apart from the trial basics. @aristes, primarily. Walsh's article is poor because it is wholly assertional- it works back from a known 'certainty' (Megrahi = guilty) presenting only evidence that supports that assertion and without considering alternatives, or flaws, or being even slightly critical in its analysis. It simply states the prosecution case, as presented at trial, as fact. People are still pursuing the case- many of the UK victims' families want a public inquiry- Jim Swires is probably the most famous. That's also why the release decision was not universally panned by the families in the UK as opposed to those in the US- many of the UK families believe that the wrong man had been convicted. Most of the evidence (and counter evidence) presented for the trial and leave to appeal hearing is Matter of Record- it can probably be requested (some of it at least) from the Scottish courts, allowing anyone to make their own mind up. For the record, I actually have no opinion on Megrahi's- or Libyan- guilt as such, it is plausible that they were either directly or indirectly responsible. But with the tarnishing of the only two direct pieces of evidence there isn't and wasn't enough evidence to convict him, and his appeal would almost certainly succeed. And when it comes to conspiracy theories I have a simple rule: 95% of the time a conspiracy theory can be explained by incompetence or bad luck, rather than malice. Bush didn't do 9/11, the US fully expected to find WMDs in Iraq, Waco was a sadly logical end to an apocalyptic cult, Diana died because her driver was drunk.

Probably ship to figures. Sell through is around 860k (540k 360, 320k PS3), if only a mid budget game that should be profitable.

Aristes- Megrahi's appeal was due just prior to his release and suspended due to his ill health and eventually canceled just prior to his release, hence my initial comment that if you were looking for a conspiracy theory avoiding an embarrassing appeal which would inevitably be lost and make your country's judiciary look silly is far more likely than the Scottish National Party helping out their good buds (not) of the Labour Party. That Stratfor article is, to be blunt, feeble apologia rife with argument by assertion and I'd advise the poor electrons who worked tirelessly bringing it here to sue for recompense. FTR Mebo also sold circuitboards to dozens, hundreds of other entities including the German Police, as they had perfectly legitimate uses. As for that matter, did Toshiba with their radios. Irrelevant anyway, as the only evidence directly implicating mebo is from someone who now admits being a suborned perjurer (not mentioned by Stratfor) and they never bothered to actually test it for bomb residue (!!??), so evidence dismissed. The PFLP-GC had another bombmaker- not a Jordanian intel stooge- who obtained at least one of Khreesat's devices, devices which were almost diagnostic in their similarity to the one used at Lockerbie- note also that while the detonators he used were duds, the bombs weren't- a German bomb disposal expert actually died defusing one. And "He denies it, so it must be true" is one of the weakest and most feeble pieces of 'evidence' which can ever be presented, 'proving' as it does that indisputably innocent people (eg the various 'IRA' pub bombers, Guildford 7 etc) were toughened, trained terrorists/ spys when it's now known and accepted that they were effectively framed. Worse, it also relies on the old "this guy is an awesome spy, except for when he was planning on blowing up an aircraft yet used his own passport for the critical travel in his plan despite having at least one fake available", a mistake which would beggar credulity coming from a raw recruit let alone a supposedly seasoned veteran. And, as previous, Megrahi's identification as buying the clothing was indisputably tainted. In summary, repeating the accusations made at trial while failing to mention- let alone even try to refute- any of the problems which have come to light since? Unconvincing, to say the least. There was no doubt he was going to get his conviction quashed.

The air warfare coordinator was, it's in the wiki entry, specifically "..the other [award] for his actions relating to the surface engagement with Iranian gunboats" which occurred concurrent with shooting down the airliner. Note: AIR coordinator, not surface coordinator. The whole thing was due to the horrendously gung-ho attitude of Rogers, where he deliberately ignored rules of engagement, Naval standing orders and directly issued orders so as to to "get some action". Accidents happen in war and I don't actually think he deliberately shot down an airliner knowing what it was, but the negligence/ incompetence involved (eg continually misidentifying speed and altitude, when in an AEGIS cruiser?) was so gross that it should have been punished, not rewarded. Note also, while the IranAir victims did get $61 million the Lockerbie victims got $2.7 billion, or roughly 45 times the amount. For the circuitboard and second For the tainted identification at the bottom of the first page. IIRC one of those articles mentions an investigator saying they wouldn't even have got an indictment, let alone a conviction, without either of those bits of evidence.

Same deal if you pre-order on GamersGate, too. One local store (er, which I'm in no way affiliated with apart from buying from them on occasion) is offering a guide book. So there are some pre order bonuses around.

Guys, he wasn't tried by a jury, but by a panel of judges. His conviction was iffy at the time (the UN observer called it manifestly unsound) and it has only got less sound as one key witness has admitted to being bribed into giving false evidence- with respect to the circuitboard- while the key identity witness was both paid and had already seen and read articles with pictures linking Megrahi to the bombing, a fact that the prosecutors kept from the defence and the judges. If you want a conspiracy theory for the release consider that his appeal was imminent, was not going to be a limited appeal (ie he could bring in everything including things like the covert CIA drug operation which saw the bomb bag not being searched) and he dropped it prior to being released. There was no way the conviction was going to stand, and that would mean all those lovely compensatory millions would revert back to Gaddafi. Since we're getting all aerated and morally outraged itt , perhaps we could spare some small thoughts for the US Government- in the form of Capt. Will Rogers III- who shot down an Iranian airliner broadcasting a civilian IFF and on a standard civilian flightplan (killing 290), from inside Iranian territorial borders, while partaking in an unauthorised incursion from which he had already been ordered to withdraw but which order he was ignoring, blatantly and repeatedly lied about it, for which they were awarded medals and to this day hasn't even been apologised for, let alone anyone prosecuted.

Practically though, anarchist groups do (almost all) believe in some form of government, much as almost all capitalists do believe in some form(s) of regulation despite a tight definition of capitalism predicating free markets. Somalia is at least as much an indictment on Capitalism as on Anarchism, as is DRCongo and various other places. Both places are, after all, eminently capitalist too. The CNT, which LoF was referring to is Anarcho-Syndicalist. Basically their belief is in local rather than national administration (as they don't really believe in nations) so far as possible and 'workers' running their own businesses as syndicates/ co-ops, organised people's militias as armed forces etc ie nothing like your definition of 'anarchy'. They sent politicians to Madrid and participated in national elections, participated fully in the struggle against Francoist fascism and found time to fight against the communists too. They actually have a lot in common with many small government states' rights US libertarians. Probably their only fault, if you can call it that, is that they didn't smash the communists when they had the chance- as technically they were on the same side and Uncle Joe was the only foreign leader (apart from Mexico, who couldn't do much) to actually get off his chuff and send the legitimately elected government supplies.

I didn't pick Spore because it was released significantly before F3/ FC2/ RA3, which were all released within weeks of each other and thus should be generally comparable- Spore would have around 6 months more downloads counted. F3's 360 and PS3 sales are available. Assuming the whole 4.7 million sold that gives an absolute minimum PC figure, excluding purchase downloads, of 1 million. Since the PS3 and 360 figures are 'to date' rather than to Nov 2008 we can safely assume that the PC sales are (considerably) higher than 1 million. Overall sales across all platforms are important in any case, as one of the charges leveled at PC piracy is that it cannibalises console sales. I was quoting the cash only figure because that was the thing which was primarily absorbing their losses and thus showed the most precipitate decline. I'll concede the point though as it isn't really worth arguing- as I said previously EA ain't going to go bankrupt anytime soon, but at the same time multiple hundred million dollar losses (as again in the last quarter) do take their toll eventually. I thought the LGS closing article actually referenced it, though I haven't read that in years. I'm not privy to the details, of course, the gist of it was that it was an 'accumulator' type deal which required all the titles on it to return a profit in order for any to. Because British Open Golf did not sell to target (don't think the third reached release) it meant that the profit from SS2 went almost exclusively to EA. Can't say I'm surprised, I remember seeing SS2 in some torrent sites' top 10 download stats even quite recently. There's certainly still demand for it for purchase, as both SS titles are top of GOG's wishlist by a fair margin. I know anecdotally that the EA Classics version of SS2 sold very well and was (supposedly) discontinued early only because of compatibility troubles (needing a switch to install on 2k based OS, multicore/HT crashing).

Which game? RA3 (and Far Cry2, though obviously that wasn't EA, picked over 2008 download king Spore because those three were released almost simultaneously) both had similar piracy amounts to F3, despite F3 selling considerably better. Hence their piracy rate was considerably worse than for the non-protected F3. Figures were from the TweakGuide to piracy, and actually showed exactly the opposite from what the author intended. Obviously it's the company which makes a profit rather than a loss. Revenue is irrelevant if you cannot turn it into profit. EA also isn't sitting on $2 billion. I actually read their quarterly report with the multi hundred million dollar loss, for my sins, and their cash reserves are well into the hundreds of millions (still good, of course, but way down from $3 billion a few years ago). They aren't going to go bankrupt, especially since some of that cash has gone on things like buying Bioware albeit at a(n IMO) grossly inflated price, but they're hardly sitting pretty and most significantly most of this loss happened before the US economy really started tanking. I usually quote Desslock's PC Data 2000 figures and Ken Levine from Usenet post 1 and post 2 and sometimes to articles showing that the threshold for profitability was around 100k copies at that time. SS2 did not make LGS much money because of their deal with EA- in contrast, Irrational's next game was 2 years later and self published (in NA) at least implying they did pretty well from their only previous game.

It does, when SecuROM's much vaunted system resulted in more downloads than something like Fallout 3 which effectively didn't even have a disk check, and it garnered a lot of negative press. Probably the biggest problem though was the enormous support load it was generating. Using EA's own figures around 20,000 people had 'bricked' Spore within a couple of months of its release (with around 20% of buyers having 1 or fewer activations left), and the support load was still increasing. EA's lost money hand over fist for the last few years. They're not in imminent trouble though their cash reserves have dropped around 70%, and their share price had dropped around 70% as well. Revenue itself is irrelevant. Last (?) quarter 2008 they lost a huge amount (~800m USD, iirc) though that did include some one off costs. LGS is a poor example. LGS did not go out of business because of piracy, nor even because of poor sales. It went out of business primarily because of its own bad business decisions, mostly going back to the decision to self publish Terra Nova. All of LGS's late, main line PC titles (Thief 1/2, SS2) were solidly profitable, though due to a poor deal with EA they never saw much of SS2's money, and Thief 2's came too late to be of much help.

I would just point out that while "Planescape" is dead "Torment" isn't. WotC still maintains a trademark registration against it (Reg# 2778296, if anyone's really interested and knows TESS) so there's no inherent block to a Torment 2. Most interesting thing about Planescape as an IP is that apparently in 2003 they were planning on making a TV series (!) in the setting as there's an expired registration against Planescape for use in TV.