[Az-Geocaching] Notification of Cache Removal

Wed, 4 Aug 2004 23:34:05 -0600

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:

<snippet>
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 <keywords here>page
scrapers like GeoToad<keywords here> a hard time.   </snippet>

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...<drumroll>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" <Lpublic@cox.net>
To: <listserv@azgeocaching.com>
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
> -- 
>
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