If you read the intro to the baen free library (http://www.baen.com/library/intro.asp) you'll find that they discovered that freely available DRM-Free downloads of books CONSISTENTLY increase sales of actual physical copies.

So I'd say there's a good chance the same principles you talked about in your experience with Bandcamp hold true for eBooks too.

If only there were a way to search for information like that

Au Contraire - the susceptibility to cold was perfectly understood by the engineers.

Management is another story, but the engineers knew what the consequences of launching in conditions that cold would be. (see Roger Boisjoly)

The fact that the guy you replied to didn't realize the submission meant exactly what it said - microtransactions are, in and of themselves, neither good or bad. They simply are. It's how the developer uses them that determines if it's good or bad.

But people don't work that way. Once some "thing" that is not inherently "good" or "bad" has a "bad" association in someone's mind, that thing is "bad". Never mind that the next instance of "thing" that they meet may be used in a "good" manner - they've already internalized the "thing == bad" rule and will blindly apply that to every other instance of "thing" that they meet.

...So an Apple iPhone Engineer walks into a bar...

I have four words: "Games and Legacy Apps"

That explains pretty much every windows install I'm personally aware of (including my own)

Either people want to play their games or they have to use/support legacy apps for a business that it doesn't want to take the time, expense and risk of replacing.

I'd be interested to see what you've got. I got it "running", but only for certain lengths of time - it inevitably crashes every 15-30 minutes.

Not for DOS-era games, but the ones that came just after that (Dungeon Keeper 2, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Need For Speed 4, etc)

I've spent a lot of hours trying to get those games running reliably in a Win7 environment with no success (compatibility mode, virtual machines, etc).

Not to detract from your overall point, but Minecraft enters Beta in 5 days:

http://notch.tumblr.com/post/2175441966/minecraft-beta-december-20-2010

Carry on

You also missed that private schools get to select students to avoid all the problem students that suck down lots and lots of resources in the public school system, so Private Schools can more efficiently use their resources.