Well PR1.2 is 9 months old, hardly a few months old. Maybe it was something on your N900 causing the problem. I did a post recently on "Flashing the eMMC & Rootfs on my Nokia N900" and it worked perfectly. Did you follow the instructions on this page - Updating the firmware. I can vouch for these instructions.
No where in your link / post #68 do you mention following the above instructions.

Did you following Post #20 on that same topic?

Name another phone manufacturer or OS running Adobe Flash 10.2? NITDroid on N900 can I believe, and isn't there a DEV version of Flash capable of running on a N900.

Nokia maybe brain dead for partnering with Microsoft, but for me that is not a reason to hate Nokia. Nokia churn out good devices and they have been for years, and why should that suddenly stop now? They have already released some good Smartphones, not all perfect, but then what phone manufacture has released a perfect Smartphone that updates it software on a regular basis.