It seems like this would have all been mute if zappos did the standard industry thing of including a "I agree to the terms and conditions" checkbox on account creation page:
you're stll kind of new, so let me give you some friendly advice, since i've been here slightly longer: hacker news hates jokes and jokes are a great way to get downvoted.
What HN tends to discount are useless and derivative comments of the sort which may turn into "insider" memes.
Humorous comments may get upvoted, particularly when they extend the content cleverly and are well written. However, you are correct in so far as the threshold tends to be higher than is common.
In my experience, it is best to view downvotes as editorial suggestions rather than personalizing them as "hate." A downvote may mean a lot of things, but in general it is often best to consider them as an indication of how well one's point has been communicated. I recommend using them as feedback regarding the quality of one's writing.
Likewise on the subject of communication, one might read your post as a bit uncivil in regard to the way it addresses the author of the parent comment. Curtailing incivility is a current point of emphasis within the HN community.
My question is, how could your point have been better communicated in a way which promotes meaningful dialog, and how could the "edit" feature be used to implement an improved version?
And also remove the clause stating that they can change any part of the agreement at anytime, the op link said this basically makes a lot of these whimsy internet agreements void.
Removing that would make me (as a consumer) happier. Instead they'll probably reword it to say "We can change any part of this agreement that we want, at any time, not even bother to tell you, and you (the consumer) still agrees to it. Except for the mandatory arbitration by an arbitrator we choose and we pay... we can't change that part."
Your use of present tense ("applies") suggests to me that perhaps you missed the fact that I wasn't describing what Zappos does today, but rather what I fear many companies will START to do as a result of this decision.
https://secure-www.zappos.com/register?checkout=true