A cursory glance at the project webpage would have shown you that their team has worked on at least a dozen game, and has a combined experience of 35 years in video game development. They also have made a demo which, in my opinion, looks pretty cool. I'm not sure that flinging names like college kids is deserved in this case. I am also curious as to what extra guarantees you would expect to give your backing to a similar project. After all, if the project succeeds, there will be no further kickstarter fundraiser for the next ones (hopefully).

The idea of a Bill of Rights for gamers seems to me ridiculous (and also very US-centric). How about a Bill of Rights to clean laundry? I mean, there would be new Bills of Rights being written every five minutes if this was a reasonable solution. What you may need is stronger consumer protection laws. I think I read the other day that people in England are entitled to a refund on game purchases, which turned out to be useful in the wake of the recent Sim City fiasco.

Moreover, they're late to the party. There's been stories running at Arstechnica for months on how people associated with Prenda have been making asses of themselves in court, and downplaying their ties to the firm (By the way, if you have ten minutes to spare and enjoy reading these lawyer stories, you could do worst than to read this one.). Funny how nobody appears to ever have been in Prenda's payroll, doing charity work for them or something. So yes, I'm not sure how much help these bloggers really need from the EFF as Prenda will probably have ran itself into the ground on its own pretty soon anyways.

The computer suggested by the GP may be big and loud, but it does at least one thing well, which is to play games. I can get a PS3 with two or three games for 100$ less than the price of this thing with a hard drive. Furthermore, the summary states that it struggles to run a game which is so old it is being now being given away for free. Basically, it does nothing well.

Slightly off topic, but I respectfully disagree that iOS has a more intuitive interface than Android. I don't have an iPhone at hand right now, but I'll pick two examples that I remember from the last time I used one.
- Closing programs. On Android 2.3, you a button in the tool bar at the bottom of the screen, and choose "Application Manager". From there, you can just hit "Stop" on the apps you want to close. On iOS? You have to double click the button on the face of the phone to show the running apps. Then, you hold your finger over one of the icons that show up at the bottom of the screen until you see the icons shaking, and then hit the red dot on the corner of the icons. I had to look up this procedure on Google to figure it out for iOS.
- The menu interface. The settings menu in iOS is the main culprit here. It keeps track of where I was last time I clicked on the Settings menu button. Of course, this is a matter of personal preference to some extent, but I just think it would be faster if could just go blindly along a remembered path of menus when I want to do something, rather than to see where I am, and backtrack to do something else. No such thing in Android, I always start from the same spot when I want to change settings.

I see that you are being sincere here, so I won't make another sarcastic reply. I just think that stronger arguments than that will be needed to convince people to switch over. The command line is a non starter for most people who have no special interest in information technologies. As for the cost of the OS, it is rather immaterial right now, because few people buy it at retail, so they never see the bill. Finally, I think the gaming crowd is not the best one to cater to for an alternate OS, because
1. there are not that many games on Linux;
2. the small community makes it difficult to get support when it doesn't work, for instance sound issues are pretty frequent, at least in my experience;
3. I have seen some performance issues, but that was a few years ago and the situation may have improved;
4. Gaming rigs can be expensive, so again, OS price is less of a factor.

I would expand on these points, but I have to go now. Please accept my apologies, for I will not be able to answer any reply you make to this post in less than several hours, perhaps even until tomorrow.

Also, once you get good on Linux the power of having a Unix command line available really becomes a boon. It took me a good year to 18 months of primary use on Linux, but at this point I truly feel more comfortable and efficient in Linux than in Windows.

Yeah, that's a very strong argument for switching, I'm surprised that it is not used more often.

I would add to this comment that the entry on wikipedia, which is mentioned in TFA, seems so opaque to me that it might have been randomly generated and I wouldn't know any better. :(

Wow, a Valve fan. Kinda like an Apple fan. I really don't know how to answer to this, because there is nothing to answer to. I'll try to rephrase my last post, even though I know it is a waste of time.

symbolset: Since Steam will stop working on Windows, Valve is doing this to protect us...
caithsith01: I can still run programs written 15 years ago on Windows. Why would Steam stop working?
symbolset: MS is well known to take over the market previously occupied by ISVs....
chryana: What the hell does this have to do with caithsith01's point?
symbolset: Gabe protects his customers. You're so heartless.
chryana: I'll try to rephrase what I just said in a way that you can understand, but I don't think it's possible.

If will not bother replying to any further post you make, because I think you missed the opportunity for a rational discussion to take place.

Your answer completely sidesteps the GP's point. He's not arguing that the Microsoft app store, when it comes out, will not be in direct competition with Steam. He's pointing out that one of the strengths of Windows is the time and effort spent to ensure backwards compatibility with older applications, which is considered an important reason why it rose to such high prominence on the desktop. Which completely invalidates your original post, since it is based on a false premise. I'll give you a slashdot story as reference to back that up.

I bet even with a world as big as the Milky Way galaxy, there will be people who complain that the game is overpriced.

I was with you until the very last sentence. The rest of your comment is both interesting and insightful, but to me, the relation between the price of a game and the size of its world is a non sequitur if the content is procedurally generated, since in that case I can just generate more content myself. I really can't imagine myself paying extra for a game because they're adding a bunch of computer generated stuff to it, unless it is added in a manner that makes sense (Like say, for instance, adding an arena in an RPG where you can fight random mobs or something like that.).

I liked the Xen personally... You want more of the same old tactical shooting which is offered everywhere? Then pick up one of these tactical shooters instead, they're a dime a dozen.

You're speaking of Team Fortress 2? Yeah, sales were probably quite low four years after it was released, so they made it free to play. Breathes new life into an old title, with people buying hats and what-not. What's your point?

Well, I paid 14.50 at the Steam store in total for three of those games (Bastion, Limbo and Sword & Sorcery) before the bundle came out. Don't like the port? Don't buy it. The developers don't owe you anything. Besides, check the pie chart, even though the Linux buyers pay close to three quarters more, there's at least 6 or 7 Windows buyers for every one of them.

When I read in the summary that Unity was now a "beautiful swan", I clicked on the link, hoping to get a review of why this is the case. Instead, I get a long summary of the biggest new features in the latest version. Not very convincing.