Just uninstall Flash, it's a plug-in...
It might sound suicidal for a Flash designer and developer to invite people to uninstall the plug-in with which I have earned a living for the past 10 years.
The bottom line is that Flash is a plug-in and that it can easily be removed from your computer. Adobe provides an uninstaller to do so. End of story. Problem solved. Your Windows machine will therefore be safe. Those annoying Flash ads will be no more. You can be proud to support open standards...
But calling designers and developers idiots for using Flash over images, HTML, CSS and JavaScript is, at best, narrow minded. Flash would not be where it is today if it wasn't for, and this is a non exhaustive list, the huge discrepancies in rendering by the major browsers, the limitations of the languages, the ever raising expectations in user experiences, the need for maximum ROI by clients, advertisers and marketers. I am not going to touch on the fact that Flash goes way beyond the browser, which will soon include the Apple App Store.
You can turn off images and JavaScript, overwrite CSS and uninstall Flash to completely remove distractions "from the written material the user is trying to read". But internet users do more than read. They watch videos, play games, want to interact with the content and others.
Online games developer rely on Flash's performance and ubiquity. Video content delivery networks have elected Flash because it offers 98% market penetration. RIA and UGC platforms use Flash because they can shift most of the processing on the user's computer while protecting their code IP. To avoid the OS and Browser rendering issues content providers turn to Flash for its consistent rendering.
Sites you may be reading, often rely on ads to generate revenues. Sure you could use a static jpg or an animated gif to deliver content. But Flash allows marketers to maximize that investment by delivering 10x the amount of content possible with a gif within same the file size limitation. You would be amazed at the amount of content that can be squeezed into a 35kb banner ad. That's without mention of the video, animation and interactivity capabilities.
There are always going to be bad designers and bad developers but this is not unique to the Flash Platform.
Saying that Adobe is in for the money is a pleonasm. Adobe is a publicly traded corporation and the bottom line are dividends. Now rise above the flame wars and over simplistic propaganda and you will see that Flash, images, HTML and CSS are just tools to deliver formatted content online. Finally, HTML5 is a Flash killer like the Zune was an iPod killer and the Palm Pre an iPhone killer.