Comment 90 for bug 198453

Patrick,
Please remember that almost everyone who works on ubuntu is a volunteer and while it may be frustrating for you that applications you could rely on in Gutsy no longer work in Hardy, posts that complain about progress in the manner you did or complain about decisions that have been, for better or for worse, already made does not help make any progress towards fixing the bug.
There are many benefits to pulseaudio that allow Ubuntu to compete with other operating systems that already integrate more advanced software mixing than dmix can provide, indeed pulseaudio is also in use in many other distributions. If you follow progress it is easy to see that progress has been made within intrepid meaning that backports will be possible to fix the problems in due course, again I must remind you that it is volunteers doing this task.
In the short term there are guides available such as http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/PerfectSetup#Skype that you could use to attempt to get this working. Otherwise I can suggest non-proprietry alternatives such as Ekiga - though these may not suit your needs at present.