The main factor fuelling all these threads is the recurring theme of Josh being a deceptive, unhelpful, nasty individual. The whole story would have been totally different with a public figure who knew how to interact with people and isn't cynical in his use of language, manipulation of dates and shows a willingness to be frank with information regarding delays and the size of the company's order book.
The lesson learnt for me is only give money to people who are honest.
Very well said.
The sad part is that Josh displays all those negative traits as a gleaming, proud badge-of-honor, and people keep throwing money at them and defending them like some ignorant, weak-minded Stockholm-Syndrome sufferers.
Josh displays all the classic symptoms psychopathy. Don't take my word for it...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy Absolutely unforgivable and despicable behavior; a damning indictment of the entire company that they allow and support their public figurehead to act in such an unprofessional and off-putting manner.
Quite possibly one of the most conniving people I have ever had the displeasure of doing business with.
Caveat emptor.
In that case, can we just start an "I hate Josh" thread so that the forum isn't littered with thread after thread of BFL rage? All anyone is doing is beating a dead horse, makes the community look like a bunch of whiners. Avalon folks have a lot more to be pissed at. Believe you-me, I'm not defending them as I would much rather have gotten my hardware when it would still earn back what I paid, but at what point is enough... enough?
I say this with all sincerity. I work with a group and when trying to bring another friend into the fold his main dispute with BTC is that, with the largest portion of the community you can find in one place being the mining/hardware group, it looked like the entire community is full of petulant babies who can't accept losses and move on to other more meaningful things. If people spent half the time trying to do something good for BTC that they spent kicking the same dead horse we might actually see more mainstream Bitcoin adoption, but instead everyone has to play the game of "What will the anti-BFL post be this week?".
Or better yet, if you hate BFL that much, let the public record stand. Stop giving them publicity. Talk about other hardware vendors and how they screwed up. It seems like people feel validated to have an Inaba post show up just so they can say "SEE?! SEE?! THERE IS THE DEVIL HIMSELF!".