[GeoStL] Re: Caches, ham radio and experimental aviation
- From: Bear <brawnybear@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "geocaching@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <geocaching@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 17:48:30 -0600
-
Jim, as much as I hate to admit it, LPCs are here to stay. Groundspeak doesn't
care as long as the game is growing. I have had maybe 5 logs on my Favorite
Tree cache in the last 6 months. I went out there last week and remembered your
caches in Weldon Spring as some great challenging caches. My Cowboy Up Mr.
Alien has 1 find in 2010. No one does the hikes anymore much less using a GPS
for projection.
My BBC STS caches get hit all the time. People like easy caches and if
Groundspeak is making $$$ from it, you can bet they will support whatever the
users want!!! Power Trails is a perfect example of changing the rules.
Mike Griffin
World Wide Technology, INC.
O - 314-995-8935
C - 314-308-0916
Sent from my AT&T iPhone.
Please excuse any typos.
On Nov 30, 2010, at 5:04 PM, "Jim Bensman" <junkmailno@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> -
> Mike, I do not think your ham radio comparison is valid. A better
> comparison would be changing baseball to count each swing as a home run. As
> I have said, the problem is it is out of balance-quantity has overwhelmed
> quality and there is no way to filter out the lame caches. If those who
> enjoy caching the way it was meant to be don't speak up and object to how
> far it is out of balance, things won't change. I see the situation as
> frustrating, but not hopeless. It is reasonable to expect someday
> Groundspeak will start making cache placers get permission to place caches
> on private property such as Walmart parking lots. This would help a lot as
> I bet it would eliminate the vast majority of parking lot caches. Hopefully
> Groundspeak will crack down on some of this stuff like moving caches instead
> of signing them. There is precedence for Groundspeak cracking down. In the
> early days there were locationless caches that allowed you to log a find if
> you could find something like a caboose on an active train. Things started
> getting really lame. The Yellow Jeep Locationless Cache was the final straw
> (you could log a find for finding a yellow jeep). Locationless caches were
> banned and waymarking was started. Perhaps someday we will end up with
> speed caching being spun off. I also think getting some way to filter out
> the caches that don't take you to an interesting location or is challenging
> to find is within the realm of possibilities.
>
>
> Jim Bensman
> "Nature Bats Last"
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: geocaching-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:geocaching-
>> bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mike Lusicic
>> Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2010 4:08 PM
>> To: geocaching@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: [GeoStL] Caches, ham radio and experimental aviation
>>
>> -
>> What Jim says about the old days reminds me of a parallel in ham radio.
>>
>> A lot of the old timers thought that ham radio went to pot when they
>> allowed voice communications. The old "brass pounders" saw beautiful
>> melodies in the rhythm of morse code, which by the way is NOT morse
>> code, it is the International Telegraphy Code. They say the neophytes
>> who had trouble "getting" the code were ruining the radio waves with
>> their talking.
>>
>> Then when CB came along, a lot of guys there got disgusted with the
>> "idiots" on CB who were jumping on that bandwagon and were looking
>> somewhere to have a decent conversation, and we had a flood of CB
>> converts hitting ham radio, and the old rag chewers on the ham bands
>> complained about the airwaves going to pot, and lamenting the days when
>> being a ham was special and anybody you talked to could be counted on
>> for a good interesting conversation.
>>
>> And then there were also the "contesters" whose interest was
>> participating in contests to see who could make the most contacts. Who
>> could contact the most different countries, and so on. These guys
>> exchanged basic information as fast as they could and moved on to try
>> to
>> "work" someone else. On a contest weekend, you could have trouble
>> finding an open frequency to try and have a good conversation on. Like
>> trying to find a good quality location for a cache when everybody and
>> their uncle has already staked out their tenth mile "no cache" zone
>> around a cache placed a month after getting into caching or other such
>> complaints heard concerning caching.
>>
>> Even in experimental aviation. When the government finally realized
>> they
>> should allow people to build their own aircraft (again), the people who
>> did pretty much designed their own, or borrowed other people's ideas
>> and
>> built from scratch. Today those old guys see kit planes being built and
>> some of those people are cheating and hiring people to build the
>> aircraft for them completely trashing the original concept of
>> experimental aviation.
>>
>> I think if we look long and hard enough, we will find similarities in
>> many areas and interests. You start out with a core of people who were
>> unique and had a certain personality and attitude to get things moving.
>> Then the masses hit, and everything is brought down to a least common
>> denominator that is constantly shifting down to the chagrin of the
>> golden oldies who began the activity. It is like the law of entropy in
>> physics. Everything will devolve to its simplest form.
>>
>> So bucking the trend in caching is going to be like trying to fight the
>> law of physics. You can hope for it all you want, and you may seem to
>> change things, but in the end, you are only delaying the inevitable.
>> All
>> you can do is make yourself comfortable and enjoy the ride, and then
>> get
>> off when you lose interest. Or go start your own activity, or form your
>> own club and define your own rules. You are not going to change those
>> that have already conceded to the masses.
>>
>> So yeah, maybe we don't need to hear the same complaint over and over
>> again because it isn't going to change anything, and it aggravates a
>> lot
>> of people. But hey. It isn't like we should expect that not happening
>> any more than expecting that caching will not reduce itself over time
>> like so many other things. When you open up an activity and try to
>> recruit more people into the activity, the things you do to make it
>> easier for them, lowers the "effort" bar, and you get people who did
>> not
>> put much effort into it after they are in. The same happened in ham
>> radio. The same happened for experimental aircraft. The same happened
>> for .... you fill in the blank.
>>
>> This is not an complaint or a condemnation of anyone or anything. It is
>> merely an observation that I find interesting. If anyone else would
>> like
>> to have an intelligent discussion about this, then by all means, join
>> in. For those who cannot see an intelligent discussion being of any
>> benefit to them, then by all means, feel free to ignore the thread.
>>
>>
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>
>
>
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