Thoughtless flashers... Photographically thoughtless, as well. The flash on a digital camera is never going to illuminate anything 30+ feet away, and certainly not a lit stage, so it is literally doing little more than annoy people

Agreed. At a "photo-friendly" gig I once tried using the flash as an experiment, and I wasn't that far from the stage (a few rows back). The picture came out a lot worse than the one I took from the same point without flash.