Hmm. Seems like the title of his article should be "Please only use pie charts in certain situations which I will now proceed to describe in some detail."
Hicks was upset at people who ruthlessly try to monetize everything under the sun, who see everything in terms of dollar signs. He was attacking people who work in marketing for those kinds of goals. He understood marketing ideas. That was a huge part of his material: sharing his vision of how things could be.
Heh.. the mood swings of HN users are just adorable. I got +13 for making the exact same remark re: jQuery recently. Either people are hypersensitive to "dick" or "C", either way.. very curious..
I'm sure I should be very afraid, but I had to skip the details after he bored me to death with that unfunny rambling metaphor for who the fuck knows what in the beginning.