I wasn't discussing whether or not the post was funny. I don't care if it was funny.
I was reacting to what I think is an occasional problem with HN. In a nutshell, some people here take "serious" so far that it turns into "puritanically self-righteously lacking in any sense or awareness of humor or irony." That can lead to really bizzare misfires of communication.
Case in point is the reaction to a recent comment by Jrockway's on the anti-IRS nutcase: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1135693 (again, please don't feel the need to say whether you find his comment funny or in poor taste or whatever).
I think the comment you link to is actually kinda an odd illustration of your point[1]: the first reply (Poe's rule) clearly recognizes it as humor and suggests that others will take it overly-seriously.
The second reply is somewhere in the middle -- at least it didn't start out with "OMG you are a terrible person how could you say that!!!11" I don't know who jrockway is: maybe he's making a joke, and maybe not. It's more likely that he's making a joke, but you never can tell on teh intarwebs... even in a place like HN.
Regardless, I wouldn't consider pw0ncakes' comment puritanical or self-righteous in the least: in fact he/she slightly revels in the possibility of fat-cat execs getting their comeuppance.
[1] Though I don't disagree with your point; I have indeed seen the issue of which you speak, though I can't think of any specific examples.
To play devil's advocate a little bit it's funny how all the negativity is now focused on Adobe when not many months ago it was all focused on Apple's App Store policy.
This article doesn't directly deal with the iPhone or app store. It's talking about Flash on desktop/laptop Macs, and as far as I can tell, the vast majority of the problems with that are Adobe's fault.
I hate that Apple has made its phone OS a walled garden. I won't buy one, and I won't develop for it, but this article doesn't really have anything to do with it.
Apple's fixed the criticisms from a few months ago (long submission updates, poor/inconsistent private API policy, etc). Not to say that you wouldn't have to look far to find new criticisms (their recent removal of "adult" apps, to name one).
Adobe, on the other hand, hasn't fixed any of their problems. And they've had much longer to fix their problems than Apple has. Hell, it took less time for Apple to create a problem that had to be fixed then for Adobe to fix their problems.
Well the Apple App Store problems were merely procedural issues whereas the Adobe issues are technically difficult problems that haven't been solved well by anyone and aren't helped by platform/codec war politics.
From what I know of the issue, the technical problems with Flash are not difficult to solve. The fundamental problem seems to be that Adobe is not willing to put in the effort to make Flash work well on multiple platforms.
