pppingme

I think your making this WAY harder than it needs to be. Its a very simple concept to control file access by user. Your "script on the fly" concept can apply to a DB query (you called results) the same as it would to a static file thats already been generated.

If thats the case (and yes, I know Jeremy hates the idea of offline data and he tries to equate that with stale data), then why does gc email me a PQ at 2 in the morning when they know that I don't get up until 7 that morning?? The PQ is already 5 hours old at the moment that I wake up to look at it. Now, when I get up at 7, and if my email is missing, then I have to revisit the PQ page, I see that my PQ is showing as being run already, generate a new PQ, and what ever ate the first PQ is most likely going to eat this PQ as well. So I've now hit the database twice and have NO results to show for it. PLUS, I've taken out of my 5 for the day. If I've already run a couple for the day, then I don't have any way to recover from a missing PQ. The whole idea of keeping the PQ results around for a set time (24 hours is good in my opinion), does NOT generate any more stale of data than emailing the PQ's, which probably won't be picked up for several hours anyway. Its ONLY a backup in the even that email fails.

Because the timestamp on the PQ page. Actually, for purposes of a link, the timestamp itself would probably make a good one. My point is that the email delivery is sometimes NOT reliable, and the download is an option. I'm not suggesting get rid of email delivery (I prefer the emails). Now I'm not one of the people that have lost a lot of PQ results recently, I can only count less than a handful of PQ's that I've not seen show up, but search the threads for Charter, Yahoo, AOL, and many others. This is a painful issue for some people.

This would be a trivial issue. If a programmer couldn't lock this down, then he probably has no business programming for a multi-user site. Look at the link in your current PQ emails (which show the current results), now get someone else to look at that same link under a different login (the link only works under YOUR login), see what I'm saying?? Very easy and they are already doing it. If this were an issue, it would be happening now.

Wouldn't switching to PHP and MySQL be downgrading the site? You think it's hard to manage and maintain now. That would be an absolute nightmare. Microsoft may be the most hated name on the planet, but they've got quite the edge on development over any other platform. Yes, Linux has come a long way... But when they get close to actually competing with Microsoft, MS with just buy em' up There are very very few major sites that are based on Microsoft platforms. The current trend is toward LAMP (P referring to perl, not php). Microsoft does NOT have an edge on development, they have pretty tools that can "make anyone a programmer". Can those same programmers develop large scale sites?? NOPE. Even small scale sites that I've seen that are based on Microsoft technologies seem to choke every time they add a couple new users. Now that being said, Microsoft technologies can be scaled, but it takes a LOT more effort and money to do so, and they are just much more fragile (as seen here).

Not if the PQ's were generated (as they are now), then held for 24 hours... It may not be "fresh" when you downloaded it, but it wouldn't cause any DB loads at all. Although I think (as it is now) that PQ's should generally be emailed, its nice to have a means of grabbing in the event of an email issue (should I mention charter, yahoo, and many others that have been mentioned recently??).

Sorry, please help me out here, 'cos I must be being thick!... You go into a shop and buy book -- it's a collection of short stories. Now, the individual writers hold the copyright to the stories but have each granted a non-exclusive licence to the publisher to include their stories in the collection. By analogy, you appear to be arguing that, because the publisher of the collection does not actually hold the copyright to any of the stories, they are not allowed to restrict duplication of their book, and that you can freely make copies of the stories (or even the whole book!) and give them to your friends. Despite the fact that none of the individual writers have granted you a licence to do so! If that really is what you're saying then, whilst IANAL, it sounds like nonsense to me! No, your taking it out of context... I'm saying that it IS the owner (of either the cache or of the log), and NOT gc that has the rights to control the data (and its inferred, with or without an agreement in place, just by the act of posting that cache or log I give gc permission to distribute the data, but I have never given gc ownership or exclusive use of the data). My whole entire argument is that it IS the owners data. GC wants to infer that it is their data, and that they have exclusive control, when its not. I as the owner of logs or caches (I currently don't have any caches, but would say the same if I did) own the logs or caches that I post here.

With all due respect, we disagree with your legal analysis. With all due respect, I've been on both sides of this argument and in the courtroom with this issue (not gc.com, but rather ownership and distribution of non-owned data). I'm just stating what courts have consistently stated. And case law (something we depended on strongly) also consistently agrees. For the record, I do only use the data personally.

OK, let's take this one step at a time... (stop me when I make a mistake!) - The data (logs, cache descriptions etc) is copyright the original authors, not Groundspeak - A condition of using GC.com is that the users grants GC.com a licence to distribute this data Owner grants GC license to distribute the data, NOT the right to claim exclusive use... Its exactly what they are trying say.

Well, it clears up the legal question of PQ sharing, ... Nope, actually doesn't. Courts have consistently stated that you can't limit distribution of something thats not your original work to start with, or that you have not otherwise obtained the rights to. So, this means if you download something that is an original work of GC's, they can impose limitations on distribution (say the monthly froggie calendars). However, Cache descriptions, are the original works of the owners (and GC is not asserting rights when the cache is "listed") and logs are the the original works of the finders (again, GC not asserting rights when posted). So as unfortunate as GC may see this, there is still a question of if GC even has the right to limit the data to start with. Unless they get the cache owners to hand over ownership, the answer is nope...

If you follow that procedure, how will you know when a cache is archived? I do something similar.. I run the "base" queries about once a week, then run the "updated in last 7 days" daily... That way nothing is more than a week old, but I have current data for a larger circle than I would get if I just downloaded the closest 500 daily. Closest 500 only gives me about a 30 mile circle (used to be smaller), where updated in last 7 days gives me well over a 100 mile circle. This gives me quite a bit of extra data, since I like to "day trip" at the last minute all the time. Archived?? more than 7 days since last .gpx, easy filter in gsak. Doing this I run 4 queries a day (including the daily one) most days (3 on a couple), and this gives me coverage for my entire state, the entire state next to me (I live right on a state line), plus I have a "free spot" to run at least one extra query per day if I want.

I'm not seeing this problem, so I checked with a few others, and no one that I checked with is seeing this problem either. This leads me to think its not a I'm seeing two possibilities here, but both are on your side. 1-Your email client is modifying or trying to guess what it really should be. What program do you use for email?? 2-Your email provider is modifying the message for some reason. Who do you use for email?

How was he helpful?? There was a very strong attitude of go away, and no attitude of help. Its not the first time I've seen this particular moderator say stuff of this nature, both publicly and privately. Groundspeak has known of problems for quite some time now, this is not measured in days or even weeks, but in months and even hitting years. Are they working their butt off to make it a better site??? I have serious questions about that, to the point I'm going to say I doubt it unless Jeremy steps in and says that he is. You say by not working on the site that they are not benefiting themselves? Nothing could be further from the truth. They have been collecting premium memberships in the tune of $2 to $5 million per year in revenues. How do they benefit by not working on the web site? I'll let you do the math. Don't be surprised if Jeremy disappears in the next year or two. With revenues that this website is generating, why are they just now trying to figure out how to scale the site? This should have happened a long time ago. People should be critical of the website (which is starting to happen) AND the people behind the website should be responding (which except for some generic post with no dates, timeframes, or actual commitments, they have NOT responded).

Yes I was - thanks. I had done a search but hadn't come across it...... In the past I've posted detailed step by step directions on how to repeat this bug, with no response from site programmers. For quick reference, the work around is to setup the PQ with another center point (zip code usually) and limit to any states you want, save the PQ, preview it, if all looks good go back and change the PQ from zip code to home coords, then save and preview again. This will let you use home coords as your center point. Saving the PQ with your home coords and a state selected will always initially return zero results but doing this workaround fixes it.

Site performance has been an issue for quite a while now. There are threads dating back for at least a year now complaining about some aspect of performance or "server too busy" errors and other performance issues. Now I fully expect (as has happened in other threads complaining of performance) to get the normal crowd that says "its just temporary", or "this week we will blame it on Christmas", or "its just the weekend and thats normal". The reality is that there have been performance issues for a considerable amount of time and there has been NO permanent improvement (things get better for a week or two, then get even worse). Actually, in the announcements section, Jeremy has stated that he is working with an outside consulting firm to improve site performance. They are well aware of the issues and are taking steps to correct it. It would be great if they could push some magic button and then it would be suddenly be fixed. Most people here understand that it is something that will take time to properly correct. With the features and site integration that is involved with this site and the Waymarking site and the forums, you don't want to throw a quick fix at it that actually breaks many other parts of the site. Your post makes my point! As far as I can tell, there seems to be a universal agreement in the forums that basically goes "who cares about Waymarking if its going to mess up the gc site". I have seen very little positive reaction to the Waymarking site. They need to quit focusing on the Waymarking site until they can make the gc site stable. As far as "quick fix" that you mention, they ARE doing just that right now. For the site to be working fine one day, then completely unusable the next, the HAVE to be making some kind of "quick fix" type of change thats breaking the site. These are NOT traffic issues only. I was trying to look at some current cache pages at four in the morning the other day and just got server busy type errors for about an hour before I finally gave up... AT FOUR IN THE MORNING! As far as the forums?? They run on their own server so the functionality of the site would not affect the functionality of the forums (with the exception that the link to the forums is on the main site for those that don't have it bookmarked, so if no main site, no forums, but thats an easy fix for the user, make a bookmark).

When you select "From my home coords", are you also selecting a specific state to limit the query to? If so, this is a known bug that has been brought up here many times and Jeremy and staff has NEVER responded to.

Site performance has been an issue for quite a while now. There are threads dating back for at least a year now complaining about some aspect of performance or "server too busy" errors and other performance issues. Now I fully expect (as has happened in other threads complaining of performance) to get the normal crowd that says "its just temporary", or "this week we will blame it on Christmas", or "its just the weekend and thats normal". The reality is that there have been performance issues for a considerable amount of time and there has been NO permanent improvement (things get better for a week or two, then get even worse).

You sure the cache has a hint?? Not all caches have hints. Do you have an example of a cache that has a hint but you don't think the hint is showing up in the PQ's?

There has been a lot of talk on the gsak board about running gsak under wine... I have no idea if there is a "mac" port of wine though, but being semi bsd based I would think something is out there... I also "manage" a handful of waypoints that are not GC related, and I keep them all in gsak. Earlier I mentioned my gps has 10 chars but I only use 8, its one of the uses of the two extra characters that I use (well I should say lack of certain characters means its a cache to me).

Easiest way is to setup a PQ (you don't have to run it), then preview it, and shortcut/bookmark that if you want. Rumor has it that this is a future plan and that it is currently on the Waymarking site (I don't use it so I can't confirm).

I for one SUPPORT keeping the "GC" for a variety of reasons. Rather than argue those reasons, may I suggest that you use a "waypoint management" program, such as GSAK. With gsak, you can instruct it to change the GC to just a G, or even drop it all together. Even sweeter is what GSAK calls "smart names". Basicly the default smart name will try to be an abbreviation of the cache name. Even sweeter if you don't like the smart name, you can over-ride it. My GPS holds 10, but for other reasons I limit it to 8 characters and the smart-name is a VERY VERY nice name to have. Your never going to remember what GCXXXX is, but you will probably remember "OVERWATE", short for Over Water, or for your case "OVERWA"... Still way friendlier than GCXXXX.

What options do you have selected? Remember that the options are "AND", so for example if you choose "caches I have found" AND "caches I haven't found" you will get nothing!!

At some point you have to give in and call a professional... To look at your example, how many hours have you spent on this issue? Now look at it like this, whats your hourly pay? If you were to call in a pro, even at 10 times your pay, and that person is able to fix the problem in a couple hours, isn't that worth it? Isn't that a better allocation of resources? How many other problems have you had to defer working on because of this problem? Sometimes you just have to admit defeat and call in help. I have, I'm well versed, I'm also certified in some aspect on everything you just mentioned. I consult and design infrastructure on large scale sites. As stated before, this site is generating somewhere in the range of 3-5 million a year in revenues, they clearly don't know how to scale the site, this has been known for quite some time, and they are finally calling in someone else to help. This should have been done a year ago.

Generally if there is more than one OR in a phrase, its looked at as more of a separator and not a hard condition. This could be argued that way quite easily. Also, to break it down further: sell, rent, lease, sublicense, lend all imply giving away for profit or other gain, clearly not the case for "comparing finds" assign implies ownership (which neither GC is asserting, nor the PQ user, can you assign ownership of something you don't own to start with??) time-share again, profit or transfer again, ownership So your not breaking any provision of the statement anyway, even if you look at the OR's favorably. GC has still also never asserted that it's their "original work", but even if they claimed original work on the .gpx as a whole (ignoring the data inside), thats easily fixed when the data is imported into gsak, and gsak then does an export for someone else. GC does not own, nor were they the first to use .gpx format. Although certain extensions to the format of a gpx file they may lay claim to, then they need to go after programs that generate those extensions, not the data within the extension. I still have not heard ANYONE dispute the "original works" statement, except to claim the format of the data, which at best is grey.

oops, wrong thread... reposting somewhere else... have a good day...