Because the people who bought the bundle on Linux are overpaying to send a message?

At this point, why does it matter? Clearly they've convinced some VC folks that this is a good investment. That's my whole point. They basically funded this entire thing (to the tune of several million I'm sure) and then feel compelled to ask regular people for a measly $1 million because...?

I get the idea of "advertising" but still find it funny that asking people for money is the same thing as advertising in this day and age. Couldn't they have announced details of this thing to the major tech sites, I dunno, months ago?

Um, did you watch their video? Clearly they have already secured tons of VC money. Which is my entire point, why do projects like this, that clearly have rich investors behind them, feel compelled to go to the masses for money?

It's way late for that. Obviously some investor has determined that the idea will attract enough users to make this thing a good investment. It's not like they're trying to attract VC, they've already got it (unless the video is all smoke and mirrors, of course).

And they're doing the same thing that so many other Kickstarter projects do, they're painting the fundraising as the only way this amazing, 99.9% complete project will ever see the light of day.

My point is, unless the pitch video is all BS, these guys already have secured millions from investors given that they have prototypes, dozens of employees, slick office space, etc.

This is sort of a recurring theme in a lot of Kickstarter projects -- why did this particular project need to go to Kickstarter?

If you look at their pitch video, clearly no expense was spared getting the Ouya to its current point. Fancy office space, dozens of designers/developers, Macs for everyone, etc. Somebody has pumped serious cash into this venture. So why do they have to beg common people for a mere million bucks to get this thing off the ground? Were they just going to give up if they didn't get the money? Somehow I doubt that.

I've never seen anyone raise that particular question about this project. They obviously have some deep-pocketed investors, so why do they have to beg for money from a bunch of regular Joes who will certainly feel the financial impact if this thing never comes to fruition?

Actually, very few APIs have been backported. You have the compatibility library which is centered around providing support for added APIs in core classes (View, Fragment, etc.) but other than that, you get nothing else. You don't get things like changes to WebView that have happened over several versions, action bar support (someone has developed their own 3rd party support library for that though, curious that Google couldn't be bothered to do the same thing), etc. If you actually look at the API diff reports between any versions of your choosing (let's say 2.3 and 4.0) there are TONS of little changes to a HUGE number of classes that will NEVER be backported. It's not a big deal until you're developing an Android app and see some method in the Javadoc that's "greyed out" and you think to yourself, "gee, it would sure be nice if that method existed in $LOWEST_COMMON_DENOMINATOR_VERSION_I'M_FORCED_TO_TARGET".

This is a point where I think Apple deserves a TON of credit. A very large percentage of iOS users are on the latest version very quickly and developers know that they've got the latest and greatest APIs at their disposal. App developers aren't forced to target several versions back like they are on Android.

There are basically two phones with ICS support (the Nexus and Nexus S) and combined they make up maybe 1 or 2% of all active Android phones (actually, I'm being generous here, the Android platform version graph shows 0.6%). So for all intents and purposes Android "still" doesn't have proper IPSec support. Or, put another way, more than 98% of Android phones don't have IPSec support. And it will take a good year or two before a simple majority of Android phones are running 4.0 or later.

Uh yeah, I agree. You abstract away as much hardware as possible. The point is, if Android has a standardized HAL, i.e. standard interfaces for various pieces of hardware like the CPU, GPU, camera, sound, etc. why does Sony feel like they need to replace the HAL *itself* rather than just plug their drivers into the existing HAL?

In the first Ice Cream Sandwich source code that was released, the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) – the software layer giving applications direct access to the hardware components – was to some extent adapted for a Texas Instruments hardware platform. However, for all 2011 Xperia phones, we used a Qualcomm hardware platform. This means we have to replace the default HAL coming with first source code released for Ice Cream Sandwich, with our own HAL.

The HAL changes have impact on several features on a phone, including the camera, different sensors (such as proximity, light, accelerometer and compass), audio, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, as well as multimedia and graphics components. Thus, we do not only have to modify and configure the HAL according to the Qualcomm hardware platform, but also all the other hardware components used in a phone.

Wow, I sure hope they're just mixing up terminology here. The entire point of a HAL is that you just plug in your drivers. If you have to modify the HAL because you're using different hardware than the reference device, you're doing it wrong.

Everyone's going to have their own idea of what something is "worth" but when it comes right down to it, you can't eat artwork and you can't cure diseases with poetry. So I'm not sure why you think artists and the like are the most valuable members of society. I would argue it's the people who put food on your plate, treat you when you're sick, build bridges, etc. that are far more valuable in the sense of giving you a comfortable standard of living.

Most reasonable people understand that "get a degree" implicitly means "get a practical degree". No, majoring in art history will not get you much of a job. Sorry if it wasn't clear that all university degrees are not equal in the eyes of the job market.

Hate to say it, but yeah, they're desperate for games. The Linux guys buying the bundle are trying to make a statement with their purchase prices, whereas the Windows and Mac guys are really just paying what they think the games are worth, which is honestly just a couple bucks.

Well, that's a good explanation and all, but there's the little problem that this isn't some basic, utilitarian school that cost a lot of money simply because of raw material costs. From the same article you quoted:

At RFK, the features include fine art murals and a marble memorial depicting the complex's namesake, a manicured public park, a state-of-the-art swimming pool and preservation of pieces of the original hotel.

Oh, and in reference to another LA school that cost "only" $377 million:

Over 20 years, the project grew to encompass a dance studio with cushioned maple floors, a modern kitchen with a restaurant-quality pizza oven, a 10-acre park and teacher planning rooms between classrooms.

That all seems a little excessive for a public school that -- let's face it -- is going to be housing lots of illegal immigrants. And who in the hell spends 20 years going from design to reality for a public school? That's what you get with union labor and politicians that have their hands out every step of the way.

No, I'm referring to the expanded section for board games (they actually started selling popular Euro board games, very cool of them) and the GREATLY expanded kids area. Plus they seem to have added a bunch of other random shit I've never seen them selling before, like $90 Lego sets. This is all based on my local store, but still. They definitely have branched out from books substantially, and when a business starts moving away from their core that much, things aren't looking good.