Choice.

As others are pointing out, there are intangibles. It's not all about money. That being said, I'm not going to volunteer my time working for a massive for-profit company, so that it doesn't have to hire my peers and pay them what they're worth. I will volunteer time and energy, yes, but to sites like DSLReports, and to my web host's online forum, where staff participate and answer questions when the volunteers can't. Lithium Tech's business model is exploitative. I find the following line from the article particularly revealing: "It [customer service] is, after all, a field that companies typically regard as a costly nuisance..." Dang those customers, anyhow!

In most cases, you're right that the motive is to effectively display content, and there are times when I allow it through. Obviously, the examples you present will require scripting to run.

However, I find it arrogant and unprofessional to present the visitor with a blank screen and no explanation of why scripting is so "critical" to the site's entire Web presence. The developer has picked a funny way to ask for the visitor's trust.

You've got to know your target audience. If it's the general population, it would be a courtesy (and the law, in some cases) to have a screenreader-accessible site. Read up on accessibility - there's a reason that the creators of Flash are trying (albeit with limited success, so far) to provide alternative text and captioning to what is essentially a multimedia programming language.

I have nothing against Flash or any scripting - I use it at work, where the users (students) can't turn it off. It has a place. I've used modeless dialog boxes, which are generally used for annoying ads on the Internet, but are really very nice for small standing reference boxes, when you're going through an IMI-format lesson.

I have the Flash plugin. I also have the NoScript plugin, which allows me to leave it (and all scripting) turned off most of the time. If that makes me a puritanical poseur, then fine. Hopefully, I'll be a puritanical poseur without a rootkit.

People carping from the sides of the Internet do bring about change. They're often the "computer person" that their friends and relatives turn to, to scrub jacked-up computers. I believe that the vocal minority is probably responsible for FireFox's growth to 20% market share, in the face of Microsoft's view that Internet Explorer is all we'll ever need.

One reason to avoid tables except for tabular data is to improve accessibility. Screenreaders don't read tables in a way that makes sense to the user, unless the tables are really presenting tabular data. Some sites (especially government) require highly accessible Web pages.

The accessibility issue is a good reason to go easy on the Flash, as well. Since Flash MX, there's been some accessibility shoe-horned into the application, but it's still not very good at it. Using Flash for your menu buttons, with no alternate access, is a huge no-no.

Whenever I come across a site that requires me to allow scripting to see the page (be it JavaScript, Flash, or whatever), I usually just move on. There isn't much that I want to see that badly, and I can't help but wonder what their motive is...