The main use I have for this is virtual servers being able to use an LVM volume but not occupying all of the space. It saves time in deploying machines and copying them so you are only copying the space they are using (eg. 5GB / 60GB vs the full 60GB). There are some disadvantages which is mainly the fact that thin pools by their nature allow you to "overallocate" disk space which is that you could use more space than is available on the disk itself and corrupt your data........
These errors believe it or not are simply because of not being the root user or running with sudo! However if you didn't know to try as root you'd think there was a problem with your burner or disc Essentially it looks like without root you cannot send the required scsi commands to continue writing. Ithink cdrecord should have built-in tests or safeguards to see if it has the permissions to run the required commands.
I guess for more advanced users the idea is simila........