Cliche? No, it's a reminder Microsoft sells it's users down the river.
Maybe you don't, but some people actually speak up for their rights.
It's Tuesday night, it's late in SF. Still at the office. I felt MS Office Online should have been free from the start. So having a bit of fun, no need to be serious and write 5 paragraph comments analyzing the news, how you feel about the news, and how it impacts the industry. Sometimes being cliché is exactly what is in order.
Jokes on HN are strongly discouraged. As much as people like them, their presence creates a feedback loop that drives the noise-to-signal ratio through the roof. Jokes can be made, understood and voted up very quickly. In a democratic situation like HN, this leads to a large volume of replies and up votes that quickly drowns out all relevant conversation. The more threads that feature jokes, the harder it becomes to discourage them in the future. It seems the fate of all vote-based forums to eventually devolve into a sea of memes (HN -> Reddit -> Digg). HN's anti-humor downvote brigade gets a lot of pushback, but they are so harsh because they are doing their best to hold back that tide.
No, I like jokes, don't get me wrong. I'm just kind of sick of the NSA being dragged into subjects that don't warrant it.