"Most of us writers aren't petty jerks who enjoy tearing other people down undeservedly."

Speak for yourself. :)

More seriously, consider your use of "undeservedly".

Writers are a lot more critical of writing than the average reading public. Any good writer has some experience with critiquing other work and getting her own work critiqued. Any good writer will have an eye for what she considers errors in the way sentences are strung, scenes are described, point of view, etc., etc. I've been in critique groups. A lot of writers slam things just because they would write them differently.

I said "any good writer" because these days it's easy to publish books without going through and editor, and this means people who think their writing is perfect and can't benefit from comments are out there, and they will likely slam other books with less of a rational basis.

Either way, writers aren't to be trusted when it comes to how enjoyable the book is to the less discerning non-writers.

The blockbuster games are fun. That's why people play them, and they make a gazillion dollars on the first day of sales. To claim that somehow indies know better flies in the face of reality. Sure occasionally some indies make a decent amount of money, but it still pales in comparison to what the AAA games make.

It's okay to claim that these big budget games are holding the art of games back, or that they don't always succeed in getting the formula perfect, but claiming they're not fun? Maybe they're not fun to a subset of people. But most indie games are not fun for a larger subset of people.

Donations can help to continue the development of a free project, which is why a lot of free projects ask for them. There's nothing bad in that, and occasionally if I use a free piece of software a lot I will pay its developer some money, because this kind of thing does encourage a developer to continue.

That's how I understand "economically sustainable". Dan Spalding wants to create more free books, but working on them at his own expense is not practical. Enough donations could help sustain this idea indefinitely.

I think you shouldn't put a price on the book, but do mention the possibility of donation in the book (in the preface and possibly elsewhere). Write something like "if you enjoy this book or find it useful, please consider donating a small sum at my web page http://.../ to help me create more free books."

If it's space ships for tourists vs. no space ships at all, I'm definitely all for the tourists.

Using your full name will enable people to easily guess (though they may be wrong) your gender and ethnicity. That's great trolling material.

White and blue, with some orange. A lot more interesting than the drab ZX81.

That's exactly the ownership that Microsoft is writing about. Do you want Facebook to be able to publish your photos even after you've deleted them (and possibly deleted your account)? The article also mentions Amazon's Kindle lending. Buyers of e-books want to be able to lend and resell their books, they want ownership.

Sure, all these things require DRM, but just because it can be used in annoying manners doesn't mean it's not useful for people in general.

These two plugins are must haves, IMO. Bar Tab needs a little massage to get to work in FF4 (there are details in the reviews) but that's detailed in the reviews on the plugin page (or use FF3). With them FF3 used under 300MB with tons of tabs, while Opera uses over 1GB for the same number of tabs. (I'm currently using Opera, switched because FF4 wasn't compatible with the plugins I wanted, but that's on a 8GB system. And I hate the memory footprint.)

Science is a matter of faith even to many scientists. Science may be able to back up a theory to an extent, but scientists use belief to take it beyond what science can prove, and look on others who don't believe in the theory as lesser people. An always topical example is how "global warming skeptics" are treated as heretics, but there are other (perhaps better) examples of scientists sticking to theories even when they start to lose favour.

People are programmed to believe. Science may be vastly different from religion, but trust or faith in both probably use the same psychological mechanism in most people.

Getting a separate phone line for work is one way to overcome this. I've known people with a work cell and home cell. Don't need it myself, but it depends on the job.

I've known people who work very long hours just so that they get away from their families. It's sad.

Some IT workers are already trolls, and it's best for their co-workers that they telecommute.

With a regular job you're often also expected to be on call 24-7, as well as expected to stay in the office at times for very long hours.

I agree regarding the family down sides, and I experience them, but I'd much rather have my wife take advantage of me being there than have her permanently dissatisfied because I'm never there to help with the kids.

As others have said, it depends on the company you're working for and people you work with, and it also depends on you. I communicate a lot with my boss over Skype, and I think our work relationship is very good. I also think that for every distraction you have at home you can be equally distracted at work. At home you might have a wife and kids, at work you might take extended coffee breaks with your co-workers.

From Ars Technica's discussion on the subject from last year it looks like Apple is actually considering open source in its license. The GPL is a special case, and IMO the solution should be similar to YouTube and copyrighted videos. That is, there should be a channel for the FSF or others to complain about GPL apps and for Apple to remove them as a result.