Sadly, I agree. I checked out the links you posted to see what all the hullabaloo was... I got about 45 seconds in and couldn't bear to listen to the 'covers' of it. Its... just painful o_O

And this is why Alan Cox is a legend. I've dealt with him a few times and EVERY time I have he has been a pure joy to talk to.

He has a great way of telling things how they are and even takes the time to help relative newbies into improving their skills and contributions.

So, three cheers to Alan and I hope we see him back in the future.

With a note that it doesn't always work:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=869903

Why the hell is there a chat client in a mail program to start with? I saw this new 'feature' and died a little inside. It is a classic sign on developers losing their direction.

My bug list with Thunderbird (Current as of 17.0).

1) A single new email received over a compressed IMAP connection (using Dovecot, imap-zlib plugin) shows stupidly high new message counts - ie You have 37845 new messages.

2) Randomly Thunderbird refuses to exit. This happens on linux as well as Windows. The GUI will disappear but thunderbird.exe / thunderbird-bin is still running. Only plugins are Lightning + Google Calendar connector.

Fix these two up and I'd be a much happier person...

Now this is gold. Especially if they reference the lovely 'phone hacking' scandal in the UK as ammo of how shitty this corporation is....

I agree with you 100% on this. Have a look at some of the recent interactions with the Fedora (aka RedHat) team and them shoving Gnome 3 down peoples throats:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=865922
continues here:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=875433

Translation of it: Screw the End User, you'll do it OUR WAY.

This is correct. $390AUD per hour will get you a Cessna 172RG with an instructor. Thats before the 7 theory exams and the rest of the study...

You sir have no fucking idea. I would love to see what other industries require $100k+ investment in training to pay a $30k yearly wage - including benefits.

Ummm yeah - $165k. Hell, training I was looking at in a 8 seat Learjet was $3000 per flight hour. That means a captains salary would earn him about 55 hours training for a year. And thats ignoring things like tax....

so, 1500 hours prior experience eh? I'll get right on that.....

Pilot training up to the level required for even the most basic job (instructor) is going to cost $50,000 or more. You can't pay that back on a $20,000 a year salary. Pilots do it because they love flying.

Disclaimer: I am a private pilot doing my commercial flight test in ~14 hours time.

This situation is completely correct. I've lived on sweet fuck all incoming for 5 years (think less than $25000AUD). My training here in Australia has totalled to around $110,000AUD - not including interest on loans etc. After my test, I'll have ~250 hours total flight time. If I manage to get a job straight after my test, in reality, I can probably earn $35-40k AUD. How do most pilots in my situation survive? They get a second job. Not only does this add to fatigue, it certainly doesn't make things safer.

Why do I do it? Because its friggin awesome. If you want to fly to make a buck, then you live in another world.

In a nutshell, the aviation industry is fucked. Everyone wants to cut their costs as far as possible without violating the law. This means cheap labour in maintenance, cheaper pilots, crappy pay and benefits.

I really miss the wages I was paid in network administration, they were double what I'll get here....

Nope, its true. I used to work for a US owned company in Australia - because of US law, we had to do everything in accordance with Sarbanes–Oxley. It was a royal pain in the ass - 100% pure bureaucracy - and just about doubled the work required to do most of our tasks.

Thankfully, I'm not working there anymore - but that little glimpse into American life really, really made me glad I wasn't working in IT in the US...

... It really seems to be a Robin Hood type thing....

The 'rich' taking the 'richer' to the cleaners to provide broadband to the masses for free...

Lately I can't seem to fault this guy....

I'm not sure if there is ANY country up for the job - hence the UN is supposed to represent everyones interests. With the downward spiral being the norm for the US these days, its more scary to me to have them in charge of anything. A few successful lobbies (read $$$$$$) and the internet that we know of is over. No country should have veto powers on the Internet. This includes the US.

Don't fool yourself. I get about 800 unique visits a day to my web site - the data transfer out is about ~550Mb per day of mostly static content. I have a small block of Google Ads on my site - thinking it'd help me pay the bills.

Let me share some results:
In the last 7 days: 1,126 ads displayed, 0 clicks = $0.00
So far this month: 4,172 ads displayed, 2 clicks = $0.33
Last month: 3,903 ads displayed, 7 clicks = $2.98

Since the 1st of June this year, advertising has clocked up $11.02.

Advertising wouldn't even pay for the electricity to run the server. Yes, I could get obnoxious advertisements and make things nasty for the user, but I don't want to. Keep your privacy - as it certainly doesn't benefit the people running the sites...

Ok, so they're getting in on what the rest of the world does with a single phase.

Most of the world is 240v single phase, 415v 3 phase. I don't quite understand how they give up energy savings by using a higher input voltage?

Lower voltage = more amps = more heat
Higher voltate = less amps = less heat.