I do think they could have highlighted the changes better, but fiasco is a bit strong.
The fact that e-mails sent via webmail are now downloaded I actually find quite useful as for the first time I can now have all my sent e-mails (whether webmail or from Thunderbird) in the one place so I can easily find them and back them up.
They did mention it when advising of the change :
"General POP Issues
Here are some common issues with our POP email service that are not specific to any email program like Outlook Express, Windows Mail or Thunderbird.
All sent messages download
When you enable POP, all messages are downloaded to your email program, Outlook Express for example, except for Spam, Bin, and Chats. If you don't want messages that you send from the web downloaded to your Outlook Express inbox, we suggest creating a filter within Outlook Express, Windows Mail or Thunderbird to delete these messages."
I chose to add a filter to move them to my sent items rather than delete them, this works well.
As far as aliases go, you can change these and your default send address by going to "Settings" "Account" on the webmail interface.
regards
Brian