Wow. All I can say is...Brian, you continue to amaze me. I barely understand much of what you talk about half the time, (that is a compliment!) but I love to try. I am SO glad I got to meet you at the Prescott Event!! Having said that, I will say no more as I don't know a thimble-full's worth of stuff about this topic, therefore I feel I have no credible opinion one way or the other. It's a game and it's a free country (at least for now). HAVE FUN. IF IT CEASES TO BE FUN, DO SOMETHING ELSE THAT IS FUN. (and in general, Stop whining?!) There, I said that! :-) Trisha "Lightning" On Wed, 4 Aug 2004 23:34:05 -0600, "Brian Casteel" wrote: > > 7/3/2000 Geocaching.com registered. 4/1/2002 GeoToad begins > development. > Which parallel universe contains the missing 2 years of development? > This > can be verified by clicking on the >>See Older News Items at the > bottom of > the front page. It isn't until 4/26/2003 that a public release was > completed. > > Now, reading a little more recent, we have a snippet from this little > gem: > > > International searches broken > 16aug2003 12:31 > Jonat Brander gave me another bug report today: Searching for > geocaches in > other countries does not work. It seems geocaching.com is in the > process of > making regional searches work inside countries outside of North > America. Of > course, they've implemented this in a way to give page > scrapers like GeoToad a hard time. > > So they admit to the nature of the software, part of what gc.com has a > problem with. Granted, just in reading about updates, it sounds like > killer > software, but the issues need to be addressed. What was the problem > universities and ISPs had early-on when p2p programs like Napster and > Limewire came out? Bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth. Costs skyrocketed > because it was being consumed at an astronomical rate. In this case, > it's > potentially thousands of users pointing their IP address at the > geocaching.com domain exclusively, not some loosely affiliated > bandwidth/resource sharing p2p service. What I see Groundspeak doing > is > asking that the developers cease-and-desist, nothing more...yet. We > don't > know what (if anything) is going on behind the scenes, nor is it our > business unless tptb choose to make it so. You can't say that you know > anything about what is going on within the realm of negotiation unless > you're somehow directly involved in development/distribution of GeoToad > software, or unless you work for Groundspeak, which I don't see being > the > case, especially since you live nowhere near the corporate > headquarters and > the only 'employees' who aren't are volunteer approvers. > > Ok, you aren't getting any profit from posting your caches on gc.com. > Neither am I, yet I continue to do so, because it's the one way to help > further an activity that has provided me many hours of entertainment > for > very little expense (not including supplementals, like gas, GPS, oil > pans, > etc...) and taken me to places I never would have known about > otherwise. > Dave Ulmer created Geocaching through a newsgroup for nothing. The > first > ever finder of a Geocache did so for...nothing, except > entertainment. > > As I said before, if you're going to take an extremist approach and > pull all > your caches in protest, go for it. Navicache is right over > there --->http://www.navicache.com/, but GeoToad would do you > absolutely no > good then, so the argument becomes moot. > > Now, Geocaching.com is only going to take from us, just what we give > them. > Coordinates, various input values which return difficulty, map > information, > clues, etc. If we feel so inclined, money for TBs, premium membership, > t-shirts, stickers, whatever. All of this money goes to keep > Geocaching.com > running, expand services and keep a bunch of people behind the scenes > fed > with ramen noodles. Where do you really think all this would be if it > weren't for someone who put their neck on the line and developed a > successful business model for the benefit of everyone who chooses to > participate? > > I don't always agree with decisions made with regard to Geocaching, > but my > options are limited and IMO, inadequate. For the money, you can't ask > for a > better service. It surprises me to this day that Jeremy/Bryan and crew > continue to tolerate the thankless bitching by the masses because it > isn't > their perfect version of life. Neither is my operating system (XP > Pro), but > you don't see me tossing molitov cocktails at Redmond, WA just to give > them > a piece of my mind. > > Brian > > Team A.I. > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Kevin Schuman" > To: > Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2004 9:08 PM > Subject: Re: [Az-Geocaching] Notification of Cache Removal > > > > Geotoad has been a project with 4 years of work behind it. It's > hardly a > new thing, if > > geocaching.com had wanted to discuss the issue they had ample time > to do > so. I'm > > not saying they should be allowed to take all of gc.com's bandwidth > that > they want, > > i'm saying negotiation for the preservation of a good product would > be a > good idea. > > Perhaps gc.com could come to an agreement and made geotoad available > to > paying > > users. Instead they simply said "NO". > > > > As for "Protecting a business", frankly i'm not getting any profit > from > posting my > > caches on geocaching.com, if we want to take the purely capitalist > model > i'm working > > for GC.com for nothing. Since it's my effort to plant and list a > cache I > would hope that > > at least my opinion means something, but apparently it doesn't > anymore, > GC.com is > > going to take our data and do with it as they please. > > > > I haven't made a definate choice to take this action, i'm just > putting out > a warning > > ahead of time so you can hit those caches while they are still there. > > > > -- > > Lasivian > > Website - http://members.cox.net/lasivian/ > > E-mail - http://members.cox.net/lasivian/email.html > > ICQ# 3619356 > > -- > > > > ____________________________________________________________ > > Az-Geocaching mailing list listserv@azgeocaching.com > > To edit your setting, subscribe or unsubscribe visit: > > http://listserv.azgeocaching.com/mailman/listinfo/az-geocaching > > > > Arizona's Geocaching Resource > > http://www.azgeocaching.com > > > > > ____________________________________________________________ > Az-Geocaching mailing list listserv@azgeocaching.com > To edit your setting, subscribe or unsubscribe visit: > http://listserv.azgeocaching.com/mailman/listinfo/az-geocaching > > Arizona's Geocaching Resource > http://www.azgeocaching.com