Hail King Salmon!

Android mod world (modded roms, cyanogen forks, custom kernels, etc) has tons of examples like this. People who distributes compiled kernels and refuses to share their patches because that way they would "loose" their "exclusive l33t" kernel, since some other modder/coder may "steal" their job (which is basically some minor editing or patch merging on top of a real kernel...samsung kernel for example...plus 10 lines of code to make something happen).

typo: "Eastern Congo IS NOT the only..."

"Conflict Minerals", it's a whole misleading concept. The Conflict is human, those minerals can be found at Eastern Congo, and are available in many other places.

Eastern Congo is the only available source, nor the most important or #1 producer of any of the so called "Conflict Minerals".

It's sad when political agenda mixes up in EVERYTHING. This is clearly -IMHO- of another NGO acting in the publicity area against companies who do not follow or play along their agenda.

my 2 cents

The other half was trying to Imagine a Beowulf cluster of that...

... back then nobody bragged about the ID number...

Inventing things against the clock has an extra "bonus" in my ranking.

I once achieved this on web traffic for a large corporation back in the days where internet @ work was "new" and pr0n was the main "misuse" in working hours.

I proposed to do it as ethical as it could be done, so we agreed about obfuscating domains, the idea was to educate users that were "new" to internet, so the administrator would only get notice about a "violation of terms". (using regex for the usual++ pr0n and other stuff related terms).

There was no actual "snoop", no logging, just a hint on who to talk to "use internet wisely and stop fooling around in working hours".

If i had a request like the one in this "Ask Slashdot" i would just tell the guy it can't be done, or at least, i wouldn't do it since it's not ethical at all.

if you cross the Atlantic, your Joules will turn into ergs

Same maps that were altered/changed/wasted by google's IP range "contributors"?

The marketplace haven't really changed, it's the same marketplace but now there's a new player offering things for free for some years, wiping out some competitors or pushing them away from the marketplace. And now....when their product it's a heavyweight champion...well...now they start to charge. That's unfair.

The fairness of including someone else's information in their product it's another story.

I'm a big supporter of the idea that information and knowledge should be free. But if that "freedom" has a price for the people who made that information, then it's no longer free. If the people who makes the information disappears, then the whole model has no sustainability. It's just a shortcut for google to make some quick money.
I don't see google funding automated mapping projects. Are they? 'Cos they will need it soon.

I found myself a more specialized line of work, some line of work google won't move into. High precision mapping won't be the case for google maps in the next 10 years. Unless my work starts appearing for free on google maps.... get my point?

False: Linux is not windows, you can give it for free, people wanting windows will have to pay for windows. Linux it's a fair competition, not a free giveaway of the same product.

As somebody working on the remote sensing/mapping/gis field for 10+ years. I tend to agree.

It's a long debate, but clearly the new concept of "paid api" it's confusing.

I perceived gmaps as a free tool in the beginning, but now, as they charge, it's no longer a tool, but a competitor.

Many hi definition data available "freely" on google maps/google earth, it's the result of a private customer paying for that data, and the by some weird agreement between the companies that run the satellites and google, the information ended up "FREE" on google maps.

A real life story:
I paid 250+K for 1 meter imagery (ikonos) for a project that was covered in google maps using old 30m imagery (90's landsat). Months later google has the 1m coverage i ordered and paid for, available for FREE to anyone else.

So i'm not only competing against google, but against people who no longer needs to order a quality work, since now it's there FREE.

Duh! That's certainly UNFAIR.

Oil needs a proper environment to stay as "Oil". When i read "below earth's crust"...well, your conspiracy theory is kind of weak to say the least.

You are implying that you can find Oil in a 300+ Celcius degrees environment, wich is unreal.