Olivier: I noticed problems with the Adobe site myself. But it’s not that it’s not responding. It’s just not responding to some page requests. Try reloading the current page and it might just work.
As for stand-alone updaters, they are pretty much a requirement for people on dial-up. And surely it doesn’t cost companies such as Adobe very much to continue to offer the updates in both forms. But we know how it is with these big companies…