PETA? People for the Ethical Treatment of Aphids? I dont think they would like it at all!

We now return to "Killer Basil Women on the Moon" with no further commercial interruptions.

Why not send corn, and get the ethanol subsidy? Or better yet, send nothing and get a check for basil price supports. NASA could presumably use the money and there is a lot of moon to not grow stuff on.

Thats the Public General Release version. The CPUG ("Confidential Pyramid User Guide") available to paid members of the Pyramid Consortium presumably contain the chapters "Initiation of Afterlife Sequence", "Suggested Ancillary Tomb Items", "Pyramid Power Generation and Interfacing" and of course "Extraterrestrial Post-Install Customer Service".

The User Guide, the construction blueprints, or the Service and Maintenance guide?

Now the world has gone to bed
Darkness won't engulf my head
I can see by infra-red
How I hate the night

- Marvin

In this case its probably somewhat a victim of its simplicity. Its trivial to bang out a flashlight app so its probably a good choice for malware/crapware, and it doesnt set the bar high for getting plenty of +5 ratings

But in general, yeah its sad. I'd like to see Google come up with some form of reputation credentials. I like the openness of Google Play as opposed to Apples Walled Garden, but this is a huge downside. I think Play should list the permissions in the play store summary, rather than have to download the app before finding out it wants my SSN and a DNA sample. Even a perfunctory automated test before putting it in the store would be a big improvement. Google could certainly come up with something better than I could think up. But right now the signal to noise ratio in the Play store is getting pretty low lately.

EXCELLENT! You made my day.

Exactly. The must be a good 50 flashlight apps but I cant find a single one that doesnt run ads or need dubious privileges. I even started with highest price ones first and they still want too much info. (If you know of one please let me know). But very common to want my phone book, ability to place calls, access the GPS location, modify SD card contents, and so on.

Sometimes its explainable - I install GPS Status paid version, and when it asked for full network access I emailed the dev, and he answered quickly saying he got lazy and loads all the help screens from the web. So OK, yeah maybe.

The average user I hear from all complain about poor performance, unstable operation, and high data charges, and dont understand that its because they installed 100 free crapware apps.

Bit of a woosh, I was just going for a +1 funny :-) I really know almost nothing about the 'gap' other than some History Channel dribble about how that was when he lived with the aliens. Is there really some reputable work explaining it? If you have a cite Id be interested.

From your sig & handle, you from Alaska? Very cool, have always wanted to spend some time there.

Actually I was thinking more along the lines of Hitchhikers, and Oolon Colluphid Jr's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters: Where Jesus Went Wrong, Some More of Jesus's Greatest Mistakes, and Who Is This Jesus Person, Anyway? "I refuse to prove that I exist", says Jesus, "for proof denies faith and without faith I am nothing." "But", says Man, "a complete historical record would be a dead giveaway wouldnt it? So an INCOMPLETE record proves you exist, and therefore you dont, QED."

There are too many gaps in the historical record for him to be made up. If he was fiction there would be better records.

"50 Shades of Red White and Blue"? Or was it that Loyalist best-seller "Deep Throne"?

WTF is "locked in"? Or what is a "locked in printer" in general for that matter? I have one, I use it nearly every day, and if there is anything "locked in" Im completely missing it. I do use 123D Design for modeling, but also Sketchup and Solidworks and Ive tried others and they happily interoperate. I get PLA from China, aftermarket parts from eBay, and Makerbot even supports that. Their website even promotes open source 3d modeling software.

The API is the STL file format, which is pretty open. Just about any CAD program can generate one. Thats fed into either the Makerbot slicer or the open source Skeinforge slicer to generate the X3G files that get sent to the 'Bot. What do you want to do that needs more openness than that?