Well, this is cheaper for the carriers to implement than building the infrastructure to support their over selling.

Perhaps it's not as prevalent but it does exist in KDE as well. Mind that I was dedicated KDE user after 3.4 hooked me. I stuck with it until 4.4.something, or about a year ago on Debian. I installed a second video card and KDE4 lost its mind and barfed widgets, apps, and desktop backgrounds everywhere. I dumped it in short order, tried GNOME which coped better with the setup only by a matter of degree. I then gave XFCE4 a spin and it handles my Zaphod heads independent desktops like a champ. Session restoration does what I expect by putting apps back on the screen/desktop I prefer them and doesn't bork backgrounds or panels either.

The download/installation footprint of KDE these days makes it a non-starter to see if things have improved with respect to handling independent desktops. If it's working for someone else, that's great. I'm not going back.

Do you have a link to make this claimed "Plug in USB speakers and have audio come out" actually work? I'm not trolling as I'd really like to know. I nearly tore my hair out trying to find one bit of documentation on doing just that as all I found was post after post on removing PA and then writing a ~/.asoundrc to make the USB speakers work which is what I did. But if you have a link to any sort of documentation (and don't point me to the PA site as it is as useless as tits on a boar hog for end user docs) please do post it.

Thus far I have to agree with those arguing against PA as I've simply been unable to achieve any of PAs claimed benefits/features.

Some months back I decided to install PA on my Debian laptop so I could plug my USB Logitech speakers in and have them work. It didn't. (I was frustrated as KDE has a nice GUI to set sound device ordering but I don't use KDE any longer, opting for XFCE) I spent all manner of time reading FAQs and using my Googlefu, all to no avail. Seems that what does not exist in the PA universe is a sane bit of documentation for the end user on how to configure and use the POS. I wound up with a simple hack to ~/.asoundrc that lets me use the speakers. It is inelegant and it works.

I'd really like to use its claimed features but it only seems useful as the volume slider on a Ubuntu desktop. Any use case beyond that violates GNOME HID or some such nonsense.
 

Are you arguing that there was never any concern about a near-future ice age back in the '70s? If you are, then you may wish to re-examine your facts as it was there, in full scare-force as the warming scare has been ongoing for the past decade. While I was in elementary school (3rd or 4th grade in the early '70s) we were shown a series of films that portended the coming ice age and that where I live right now would be under a glacier in 40 years or so time, i.e. right now (there is only a dusting of snow although the temp is -12C ATM)! The propaganda was out there even then and there is no denying that fact.

Why not LGPL2? You still get the ability of having any code under any license linking to the codec but contributions to the codec must be released under the LGPL2. Seems like a very smart (and best) way to do it to me.

Perhaps, but not wise, IMHO. Some years ago there was a case in California where a hiker got into hot water for transmitting on the local sheriff's frequency to report a legitimate emergency. The FCC did nothing to defend the radio amateur for using any means at his disposal during an emergency. Since then my advice is that radio amateurs do not have carte blanche access to the frequencies of other radio services even during a legitimate emergency.

In short, transmitting outside the amateur radio bands opens one up to any legal actions from all entities up to and including the FCC.