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One Million AOL discs to be returned to AOL
nicedream writes "Two guys from California are trying to give AOL a taste of its own medicine. They're asking people to send them AOL discs, and they're going to drop them off at the company's doorstep once they collect 1 million discs. My favorite quote: "We're going to AOL and say, 'You've got mail"." seems like a better taste would be to dial out and use all 1000 free hours. A million people do *that* and I bet they'd stop filling our mailboxes with the landfill of tomorrow.
I remember this from a year ago....
It seems like if they're going to go through that much effort, they should send them to countries where there is a desperate shortage of drink coasters.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
They pay a lot of money to the post office, and this money helps keep the cost of regular mail, that you and I send, cheaper. If AOL stops, and other companies stop, we'll all end up paying more for our mail. So, I say, keep sending the discs!
Ooo, that's really going to hurt AOL. I bet these guys get arrested for littering or AOL refuses the package.
Or maybe AOL will rethink its number one marketing ploy (ubiquity) and go to something more subdued. Uh huh.
I called AOL and asked them to take me off their mailing list. They thought it was an odd request, and the agent didn't know what to do at first. After being put on hold for a couple of minutes they got down my information and told me that they'd take me off their list.
To this day I have yet to receive an AOL CD in my mailbox.
Where will I get all my shiny coasters from now?
Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.
Drop off a million discs in a truckload, and they'll just have someone on the maintenance staff cart them off. End of problem. But if you just mail each disc *back* to AOL, then they'll have to continually weed out all of the discs they get, possibly for years.
At least the floppies you could use them for something else.. how about a law that says that they can not use cd-r, only allow them to use cd-rw? Free cd-rw for us all!
Various links for Slashdotites pleasure
Haikus
No More AOL CD's.com
Fun things to do with AOL CD's
1 million disks * 1000 hours each = 1 billion hours free.
Thats about 10 minutes for everybody on earth.
Take a thick black marker, and all along the edges, the inside, and the back of the disk, cover the disk in ink. This will uphold your right to "stay legal" and never copy a copyrighted work. The unexpected and delightful side effect is you cannot use the disk ever again, eiher.
fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
I think the least AOL could do is publish their software on CD-RWs.
Ceci n'est pas une
I don't know if this is still true (the last time I used AOL was about '94), but once you started using the free hours, AOL needed a credit card number. Just in case you, uh, go over the limit. What they didn't tell you is that if you did go over the limit, you wouldn't be notified; they just quietly started billing you. Then it was the devil's own work to try and get them to stop, and especially to get your CC out of their database.
If this is all still the case, using your "free" hours is shooting yourself in the foot.
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
On the flip side, there are some strange people who collect the various thousands of different AOL discs, like people collect baseball cards or comic books.
l /3 accd753.723,.html
http://www.kcstar.com/item/pages/local.pat,loca
especially the ones that come with DVD cases or the CD cases.
helps me store my burned VCDs, downloaded from Kazaa.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Why don't articles actually post the URL to the site?!
http://www.nomoreaolcds.com/
Mail all your unwanted AOL CDs to: No More AOL CDs! 1601 Navellier St. El Cerrito CA, 94530 U.S.A.
http://www.nomoreaolcds.com/
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
... by cutting down their costs of making the disks?
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." -- Plato (427?-347? BC)
"seems like a better taste would be to dial out and use all 1000 free hours. A million people do *that* and I bet they'd stop filling our mailboxes with the landfill of tomorrow"
Last time I used there free hours I spent 45 minutes on hold trying to cancel the service. And then they called me early on a Saturday Morning a week later asking if I missed AOL and wanted to come back.
My advice, just use the damn disks turned upside down as shiny coasters and ignore AOL, it will eventually go away.
It really bothers me that a quasi government institution advertise for AOL.
It even looks like they are "approved" by USPS, as the boxes are sitting next to posters mentioning ability to check deliviry via Internet.
That being said the box you get from AOL once a month or so is very sturdy and excellent to mail home made CD's to friends and family. Send the CD's back to AOL but keep the box. ;-)
Help fight continental drift.
Or DVD on the better ones. My physics professor got a bunch of these for some reason, so I just scrape off or cover the annoying stickers and have a high quality cd case. I really think they must be getting the cases from the same place as the DVD people. They're even better than music cd style jewel cases since they don't crack as easily, and they're a heck of a lot better than those thin ones.
:-)
If they really want to make a splash, why not collect the cases, devise some easy and cheap way to get the stickers off, and resell them by the crate? Making a profit off of junk mail - now THAT would be a story
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Look, they are asking 1 million people to spend upwards of 40 cents each to send a useless CD to them, then they are going to spend how much to deliver the truckload to AOL?
Think about it, that's at least $400,000 dollars down the drain! Why not ask people to contribute $0.40 towards infrastructure costs in their area for public 802.11b hotspots. Tell them to mark any and all AOL mail "RETURN TO SENDER" and AOL will bear even greater costs, at no cost to the consumer.
Egad, people, use your brains.
Besides, AOL is going down the toilet anyway. Their shiny discs aren't going to be very useful to them after a few years as dialup dwindles, especially since broadband doesn't net them nearly as much profit as dialup once did. They're going to change their business model significantly over the next few years - it'll be interesting.
But seriously, put your effort into providing free net access for everyone.
-Adam
Turn those disks into something useful; Purchase the AOL Construction Kit?
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
So it doesn't cost money, while AOLs bulk rate goes up.
Evil is making an operating system based on planned obsolescence. I've got a whole file cabinet full of useless floppies and CDs that I actually paid for. They all came with stupid restrictive liceneses and died with the OS they were designed for. If it were not for free software, I would have replaced each and every one of those programs multiple times by now. Instead, I have Debian with free mirrors everywhere so CDs are almost useless.
I encourage AOL to adopt the Debian distribution model for all of their software, but I'm not going to burden their landfill with my CDs. You might go to jail if you tried the same stupid stunt with lead sinkers. AOL's Mozilla project shows that they understand much and keeps them on my good side. No, you two don't get my CDs.
Asside, is the AOL server package in Debian really all you need to be an AOL ISP?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
WAKE UP PEOPLE!
They are going to use those one thousand free hours from 1 million discs to get themselves 1,000,000,000 free hours of AOL!
Free AOL for them, their kids, grandkids and great-grandkids.
I'm on to you bastards...
Trolling is a art,
At least I could get some practical use out of them. A quick reformat and I was set. Ever since they started sending out shiny plastic discs, I have to actually buy a pack of floppys from time to time. (not that use that many). Maybe if they would send the CDs out on CD-RW.........
I made a huge tracer gun "remember these things?"
that had a gear that traveled along a rail with
teeth on it, and had a slick incline based release
system. It could fire one AOL cd fast enough to
go through a cardboard box. I got bored with it
and stopped work before I solved the problems
with rapid reloading and charging. It was also
woefully inaccurate much like the original tracer
gun. The ammo was free though.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
1,000,000 AOL CD's would be a measely 50,000 feet.
Just think, if they collected 302,860,800,000 AOL CD's they could stack them and it'd touch the moon!
...of geeks. I really wish AOL had put these on CD-Rs or CD-RWs... I think that if you make a buttload of them, it's probably doable. If, everytime you got an AOL disk, you knew you could put another 650 meg on it, would you throw it away? (Maybe). But you'd probably keep them around as spares.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
My favorite part of the 1000 free hours campaign was when they were offering 1000 free hours (to be used in one month).
Hmmm... 31 x 24 = 744
Wasn't long before they changed to 1000 free hours (to be used in 45 days).
I guess MA101 isn't required for a Marketing major
I covered 55 aol disks with fondu fuel and burned them into one mass of metal. I know use it as a paperweight.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
They should donate them to chairty and let the country folk use them for skeet practice with shotguns.. I know they make nice self destructing frisbees when you throw them hard enough... I actually have a 6.0 disc right here holding up my coffee cup....
What is stopping them from kindly taking the returned CDs and SENDING THEM BACK OUT? Are they destroying the CDs somehow?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
They're going public? In this market? That's crazy! ;-)
Anybody know what their ticker symbol is going to be?
Back in the floppy era (when diskettes cost a buck apiece), whenever we ran out of good reliable disks, we'd call AOL and ask them to send us a set of install disks. Over the next year they'd send us a good double handful of Officially Blank disks. AOL's diskettes were always top quality!
... heh heh heh.
Now, whenever we run out of nifty DVD cases
Oh, and the CDs work great to chase away starlings and gophers -- just hang 'em where they'll twirl in the wind. Nice of AOL to print 'em in all those pretty colours.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I tried AOL for awhile back in 1995. Dropped it in 1996 and went to Earthlink because I realized I didn't need AOL--just access to the Internet. (Been on cable for the last couple of years.)
At last count I had approaching 25 "come back to AOL disks." They do make good coasters, but I don't need 25 coasters...;) I continue to receive them on a regular basis.
I've often wondered how much money AOL spends to send out these disks. Assuming a cost of $1 per disk, including postage (which might be low), AOL could be spending anywhere from $10M a year to $100M a year just sending out these disks and doing nothing else. Remarkable.
I'd love to know the percentage of "hits" AOL gets on a mail-out like this. The company must certainly consider them successful as they've made no effort to cease and desist--just got another one a couple of weeks ago.
I saw an interesting e-mail the other day that proposed a solution to junk snail mail. Lots of companies send you junk mail with a postage-paid reply envelope, right? If you take that envelope and stuff it with unrelated junk mail from a different company, seal it up and send it on it's merry way, the junk mailer pays the postage TWICE (once to you, and again back to them), you force them to sort through their mailbox just like you do, and you help out the cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service at the same time.
Irony or Insanity: a guy who's sick of getting AOL CDs says, "send me a million of them!"
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Because the so-called 'Editors' don't actually do any editing. All they do is pick stories.
/.
What slashdot need is a couple of real editors who regard quality stories, lack of duplication etc as their top priority, and let CmdrTaco, Michael, Timothy et al can get back to what they're good at - the technical side of running
Now, whenever we run out of nifty DVD cases ... heh heh heh.
DVD cases, I get my AOL CD either shrink wrapped, or in a cardboard pouch, not a DVD case.
I just bought a box of 100 CD envelopes (transparent face) for $5, thanks, I'll try and survive without AOL.
"seems like a better taste would be to dial out and use all 1000 free hours. A million people do *that* and I bet they'd stop filling our mailboxes with the landfill of tomorrow."
How about we follow through on that idea? How about Monday October 28th at 8PM we dial in using the free hours and start downloading huge files, for as long as you can stand tying up your phone line. We can continue every night at 8 PM for the next 2 weeks.
Do that for two weeks...what do you think that will do to the already floundering AOL?
I know you must provide a CC # to sign up, we'll just have to ensure that we all cancel service within the first month. Anyone had experience cancelling AOL service? Is it hard?
I'm sure most of us could find an old machine to do this on.
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
I don't go that far, but I've found it behooves me to keep one of each different edition (they are not all the same binaries, even with the same version number) since you never know when some AOL-using client will need a reinstall and only ONE particular version gets along with their system. Easiest method is just save one of each different-coloured CD.
We always checked the older versions (floppy and early CDROM) for nifty undocumented utilities, sometimes discovering files like findport.com (useful little modem detection program).
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Supported by the USPO. My friend just changed his address, and in changing his address the Post Office sends you a "Welcome to your new Address" package thing. Inside of it was an AOL 1000 free hours disk - with "welcome to your new address" or some such slogan printed on it.
Lame. I dont need the post office advertising my new address to companies (dont knwo if it actually does that though)
But what if you changed email addresses or ISPs and the new ISP or email provider would then send you a welcome email, and you would also receive a bunch of other spam emails from spammers saying "Welcome to your new Email account. Get a bigger penis free by clicking here"
I hope AOL eats it.
As a dumpster diver, let me say that when AOL used to send out floppy diskettes, that when they did a software update they just threw the old labeled and unlabeled media out by the thousands. I have boxes and boxes of rescued AOL floppies that I reformat when I need to pass out a small file over old media.
Given that they treated reusable media with such discontempt, it only makes sense that they are already accustomed to disposing large quantities of non-reusable media.
Will this action even be a blip on their radar? Probablly not, unless environmentalists and the media are dragged into the lot.
No, it would be just the same as if you threw it in the trash. AOL ships the CDs 4th class mail, which means that if you mark it return to sender, the USPS returns it to the earth.
I liked it when they sent me free floppies...those i could use for something more than my can of coke
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
If you go to computer stores like CompUSA where they give out free AOL discs, you can ask them for boxes they have in the back (that's hundreds at a time). Ought to get you to a million quicker.
"Time is an illusion.
Lunchtime doubly so."
-Douglas Adams
David Borowitz
Perhaps this is the ultimate play for big-time Karma
Table-ized A.I.
Craig Shergold is seven years old and suffering from terminal cancer. It is his ambition to be included in the Guinness Book of Records for the largest number of AOL CD's ever collected by one person.
Craig would be grateful if you could send all of your AOL CD's to the address below and also send the enclosed pages, including one of your own, to another ten companies.
Obviously, speed is of the essence....
Craig Shergold
c/o Steve Case
22000 AOL Way
Dulles, VA 20166
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
So what you're saying is, we could stop receiving spam in our mailbox forever if we would just pay more for a stamp?
I'M SOLD!
"And like that
Does anyone else think it's funny that this article (published by a subsidiary of AOL) doesn't give the URL of the website that they specifically mentioned?
Well, I found it - http://www.nomoreaolcds.com
so there =P
I'll wager AOL gives up the CD campaign before they reach their mark, leaving these guys with a really big pile of CDs, and no campaign to protest.
Don't get me wrong, I do think it's a neat idea, I just think they set their sights a couple orders of magnitude higher than is practical.
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
Look to the right of the article in the Related box...
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." -Homer Simpson
48 hours after the CDs are returned to AOL, they will be recycled.
One Million will receive the pre-owned CD.
And the complaint calls will begin, and somoene at AOL will remember the line from the article that says:
"McKenna and Lieberman scratch the CDs so they can't be sent out again and then they loop them on string"
And AOL sends them out anyway.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
It is illegal to publish plans for making weapons of mass destruction under the US Patriot Act. Please report to your local police station for incarceration.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Irony or insane! I'd say both if that is his personal address, because he'll still get CDs long after he has moved onto some other cause. He should have acquired a PO box or mailbox at something like Mailboxes, Etc, so that it could be returned.
Regardless, I admire his intention, his intent to make a point. Sure, AOL will dismiss it and have the 1,000,000 hauled off in a blink of an eye. It's the principal of the matter! What ever happen to principals!
Later,
-Slashdot Junky
.
Landfill Mining Co.
Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
I don't know if this is still true (the last time I used AOL was about '94), but once you started using the free hours, AOL needed a credit card number. Just in case you, uh, go over the limit. What they didn't tell you is that if you did go over the limit, you wouldn't be notified; they just quietly started billing you.
Ah, gees, I feel so sorry for you. C'mon! This company is giving you free internet access and now you expect/demand them to send you a curtousy message when you're approaching the magic 1000 hours? I don't see why they are under any obligation to provide this warning service to you. Sure, it would be awfully sweet of them to do so. But, seriously, you should be able to determine after A FEW HOURS if you like the service or not! If you're trying to play some kind of game of getting as close to 1000 hours without going over then I would argue you're really taking advantage of them. Go ahead and do that if you want to 'stick it to the man' but don't be upset when the company doesn't provide warning services to allow you to screw them over more effectively. Gees, how hard is it to write down a log of how many hours on a piece of paper by the computer so you can keep track of this yourself? Accept some responsibility for your actions.
Looking through the comments here I see a lot of "heh-heh, let's stick it to AOL" messages. Why do people hate AOL? Does anyone have a LEGITIMATE REASON for hating them? And I mean something more important than "I don't like getting those disks in the mail". There are lots of evil entities out there in the tech world. Does AOL really deserve to be place side by side with Microsoft et. al in the Technology Hall of Shame? AOL has been responsible for helping millions of people discover the internet.
GMD
watch this
Not to mention, if you read the article, they scratch all the CDs so they can't be sent out.
The CD's make decent coasters. If you have some acrylic paint you can paint 'em and they actually look quite cool. Getting a whole crapload of these in a month is annoying though. However, on to use #2
My last AOL CD came with a rather nice thick plastic black case. This case is similar to the ones used with most DVD's. I wish they'd send me more CD's with these cases, as I tend to have a case shortage (buy my CD-R's in 50-packs) quite often. Take off the logo'ed AOL paper and these are great for putting discs in when I lend them to friends etc.
AOL disks. The most useful things that AOL used to send. While I rarely use disks anymore, I used to have a small stack of post-AOL formatted diskettes.
Can anyone tell me where I sign up for more free coasters/cases/disks, I'm running low again?
p.s. AOL CD-holders were also nice for storing disks that you don't want people to pick up, few people open an AOL CD-case.
How can I go about collecting Big Fucking Slashdot Ads so I can return a million of them to the advertisers?
AOL has been responsible for helping millions of people discover the internet.
Just like Microsoft was responsible for helping millions of people discover PCs. In my opinion, AOL's product sucks, and those millions of people are dumber because of it. There are some good things about their service, but overall I think the internet as a community would be better off if AOL was simply an ISP rather than a content/software/advertising provider.
Evil is the money of root.
Get the government's attention. In Canada at least, mail to your Member of Parliament (federal representative) is free -- it doesn't require a stamp.
Mail your AOL CDs (and other junk mail) to your MP. If they get enough, maybe they change the law.
Complexity is Easy. Simplicity is Hard.
1,000,000 x 15g = 15,000 Kg
15,000 Kg = ~ 16.5 Tons
CD thickness = ~1mm, width = ~120mm
1 stack = 1Km high.
Stacked 3m high = 334 stacks (one with remainer), ~2m to a side
Assuming I've done my math right, that's not going to fit any mailbox I've ever seen.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Hey, you don't need AOL's 1,000 free hours. I pay $35,000 a year for HIGH SPEED internet in my dorm room... then I get an education for free! What a deal!
I always thought it would be cool to wallpaper my room with CDs (shiny side).
The ultimate in geek sheik.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Find a mailing address for AOL and have people mail them to that address instead. Skip the middle-man. Have it on some significant date and make it a national holiday, preferably a Monday. I really hate Mondays.
"But the cars are all flashing me, bright lights are passing me, I feel life passing me by" - Stiff Little Fingers
I am surprised that AOL competitors, like Earthlink, have not made fun of AOL disks in ads.
For example, they could have a TV ad where the doorbell rings, and a guy in a bathrobe answers the door to see an AOL salesperson, who hands him an AOL disk.
He says, "Thanks!, I'll put it over with the rest", and then show him place it onto a huge, tall pile of disks in the middle of the living room.
Then the announcer says, "At Earthlink we spend your subsciption fee on better quality internet service, not silver christmas trees for Lance Statton."
Well, you get the idea.
Table-ized A.I.
specifically "detournement"... literally, to turn back. The act itself (depositing a bunch of useless media on the doorstep of AOL) is not necessarily meaningful... it is the fact that it says something about AOL's wasteful marketing tactics to everyone who participates in it or even hears about it. It takes their tactics and turns it against them. It could be coupled with some kind of media campaign to get the word out for maximum effectiveness, although I think their plan to get lots of people to send them disks IS a publicity campaign. It should work because the next time [possibily] millions of people get their next AOL cd they might actually think about it more than just "junk mail... toss it." It kind of forces people to ask "why?" Why does AOL keep sending these out at great expense to themselves? The best culture jams startle people into looking at something they took as mundane into something new. The detournement will work even if they never actually deliver the disks to AOL in the end.
seems like a better taste would be to dial out and use all 1000 free hours.
/dev/null
Make a perl script that takes in the account number from the cd and automatically creates an account on AOL and logs in. Then the script should goto Google, search for the letter 'e' and then wget -r the Internet. You might want to send the output to
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
AOL sends out a lot of their discs in those nice plastic DVD cases (which I usually keep, tossing the CD and inserts).
Warner Bros. DVD come in those cheap cardboard DVD cases.
I'm not keeping the AOL CDs! Use the plastic cases for the movies! I wanna keep those!
</RANT>
Could someone write a script that would log into AOL and use all 1000 hours of each of these disks? Since 1000 hours = 41.67 days you would need more than one computer making simultaneous connections to use all the time in one month. In my house I could dedicate 5 comps to the problem through a broadband router (would this count as a separate connection?) to use up all the time in 8 days 8 hours. If the script were written and posted to a popular website (example) I think that could go a long way to ending the free coaster flood.
One shall speak only if what one has to say is more beautiful than silence
seems like a better taste would be to dial out and use all 1000 free hours.
Make a script that create an AOL account with each registration number on the cds. Then have every account generate and forward mail to every other account. Especially emails with large attachments. I sure AOL's systems will feel that.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Does anybody besides me find it odd that this story is being carrried by CNN? Who's going to be there to cover the story when the CDs are delivered? CNN?
Something smells fishy about this...
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Let's give AOL 1000 free hours of finding out what to do with their own mailed-back discs...
Some folks have said (jokingly) it's all about getting 1Billion hours of free Internet. You don't really need the physical media, or at least only one copy not 1,000,000. What if everyone who got an AOL CD and was never going to use it, took their login for 1,000 hours free and posted to some website. Then folks could go there and download a new one an have continual free AOL.
I imagine they make their money from advertising, not access. This idea could backfire. With my luck, using 1000 hrs w/o paying WOULD make them money. /.'ing their mail might not work. What do you do with the advertising you get in your mail? :{)||
What if when the smoke clears from the annihilation of life as we know it: the half cockroach/half human forms that rise from the ashes decide to use these AOL CD's as the basis for their new form of currency? That is why I am hoarding my precious few -- and will be laughing at you all on my way to the post apocolypic exchange center of the future.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
I keep considering getting the people who live in our subdivision to do the same thing. All these clowns who think it's effective marketing (it ain't) to put a flier and some little rocks (for weight) in a baggy and throw it in my lawn, just ANYWHERE in my lawn, have another thing coming.
I think it would be really cool to have everybody in my subdivision (96 houses) to contribute these offerings, and we can make weekend trips to the "advertisers" and throw them onto their property.
RP
I took 217 of these CDs from a local CompUSA one night to get them out of circulation for one, and also incase i ever know 217 people that would want to come to my house and set cups down. Assuming that my parents havn't thrown them out since the last time I have been home from school, I'm sending them in.
why send the envelopes back empty? Stuff them with other junk mail or candy wrappers or whatever... make them pay even more.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
If these guys succeed, what's stopping AOL from re-packaging each CD and mailing it out again?
read the faq on the site. you can't return that class of bulk mail to the sender.
1,000,000 CD's is such an abundance that it will really piss off the multinational corporation...but this jackass has a nice, convenient place to store them in the meantime? Does he realize he has to have the million CD's sitting around annoying him, before giving them back to the company who is going to send them back out to us?
Jackass..
Seen at the Seventh Sense Fashion Show in Santa Cruz last year:
http://www.sosaywe.com/cdgirls.htm
not quite true...there's a PO form you can fill out that interdicts specific companies/ppl from sending you mail.
the original purpose was to stop pr0n junkmail to people who don't want it, but the PO itself has verified that this is the correct form to use to reject junkmail. the best part is that once notified, the offender has to pay a bigass fee ($500?) every subsequent time they violate it.
the form num is: 1500 "Application for Listing and/or Prohibitory Order"
http://www.usps.com/forms/_pdf/ps1500.pdf
But AOL -- with 35 million subscribers worldwide -- uses the tactic most frequently. The AOL discs appear in magazines, at the movies, in the mail and at parties, but an AOL spokesman wouldn't say how many discs are sent out every year.
Cool. I can start having AOL disc parties (kinda like Tupperware, 'cept different). I can showcase the different AOL CDs now flouting through the USPS. And tell people how they too can receive 4 discs in one day.
We can have games, like name your favorite AOL customer service rep and pin the tail on Steve Case. And door prizes, we have to have door prizes... maybe AOL CDs from around the world.
And cake, punch, and cookies... emmmm cookies.
I've had no previous problem with using the cds as coasters (condensation only happened on the outside of the ring for me). However, that is not my main usage.
I have, in fact, walked off with hundreds of them carefully swiped into a bag from various movie theatres, pharmacies, and book stores (the place where I usually see them in massive cartons full).
Then I proceed to clear-tape them all together and reflect light into my apartment. My apartment gets light only from a single window and sliding glass door on one short side of the rectangle of the apartment. Since it faces south-east, it works rather well to reflect lots of light in.
I'd actually like to do up the whole patio outside the sliding glass door (I've got about a third of it done) but that would involve swiping more handfuls of cds.
"Would you rather have a playstation addicted dork wearing a star wars t-shirt?"
"But AOL -- with 35 million subscribers worldwide -- uses the tactic most frequently. The AOL discs appear in magazines, at the movies, in the mail and at parties..."
At *PARTIES* ?? Maybe all AOL/Time/Warner employess have to go to company-sponsored parties and get maketed to, like a tupperware party.
I've been saving them for years. Someday I'm going to build a solar collector. Honest.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
I am not sure that bringing a pc or the internet to the desktop of every person out there is a good idea. We talk about how it is great to share information and get everyone into the 21st century with email and web sites and online banking and blah blah blah. But really, I know many people who use a computer, and the internet, and I am not so sure they wouldn't be better off without it. They are not only clumsy and clueless, but they don't seem to want to know how to use the computer. It is almost as if just having one is a status symbol. But attach a file in email? Uh huh, riiiiight. Plus, the market of users has caused a flood of poor software out there. This doesn't help matters at all. But it leads me to the age old question: do you dumb down the computer, or educate the user?
Look at the automobile industry. While I admit that most have no clue how to work on one, they usually are reliable enough, and user friendly enough to get people where they need to go. But in order to use a car, they need to pass a test, and get certified. I don't suggest certifying computer users, but I think they should take some responsibility in learning about the computer that is so proudly sitting on that desk in the office or living room.
AOL and Microsoft are the 'bad guys' for 2 reasons: size- which leads to the 2nd: they think they can get away with shodding software and shodding business practices. And as long as they do these things, and we have users who don't give a crap, they will be on my list of 'shitty software to not recommend to the user'. Especially AOL.
my 2 cents.....out
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
They make great wallpaper... when you put the silkscreen side down. I am wallpapering my studio with them. I still need plenty more, so send me some while you're at it: T. Parker P.O. Box 495 Gulfport, MS 39501-0495 :-)
I wish I moderator access I mod you back down to submission.
Anyways you forgot a step before profit?
3. ???
4. Profit!
...and AOL is NOTHING LIKE a good ISP!
I got my latest AOL coaster (CD) yesterday. It acually came in a metal container. Think of the tins that mints (such as penguin mints or Altoids) come in, but CD sized. I'm not an AOL user. Never have been. Why would they use such a wasteful container? It had to cost 3 times what the CD did - probably more.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
If you took the time to read the article you would have noticed that they score the CD to prevent the media from being used again.
Frequently the little spindle holder in the middle breaks-
My wife ordered an exercise DVD (which is the killer app for DVD, nevermind crappy behind the scenes footage no one cares about! A la carte exercise selection, instantly fast forward past parts you don't want to do, its great!) and it came with the spindle holder broken.
So- a quick change and now the old AOL dvd box does a great job of protecting DVD's I care about.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Reminds me of the time on Seinfeld that Kramer dumped a pile of Pottery Barn catalogs in front of the door to the store so that no one could get in. /., so this had to do.)
(I couldn't think of a Simpsons reference for
-twb
Google located a few droll suggestions for this.
But, does anyone have any *serious* suggestions for economically viable ways to reuse the materials in provided-for-free CDs? They're not yet so ubiquitous as waste-paper or retail shopping bags, but in the places where they are widely distributed, the obvious uses of propping up short furniture legs, mounting on strings to scare birds away from ripe fruit, and amusing children with microwave-oven indoor firework displays must all have been reached long ago.
when we know we all hate email spam even more? Where can I send my spam printouts for delivery?
This space intentionally left blank.
Everyone here at Slashdot should call up AOL, and request a free disc... everyday :)
Make up your mind, people. :P
/. effect. :P
Either post a link in the article, thus dooming a poor web server somewhere, or do NOT post the link, leaving us to dig for it, but having a better chance of it actually being UP.
I think they might have left the link off because of the fact that so many web servers have dropped off the net because of the
if you have THAT many of these things obviously you should bundle them in stacks of 100 and let your kids use them as fort making bricks!
people that want to get back at AOL for snail spam (besides possibly wanting to go back to the hobby buffet for something a little more productive) should just put "return to sender", although IANAP (I am not a postman), I think that AOL would have to pay for that and it's a much more costly thing than the 100$ it will cost AOL to have a million CDs hauled from their lawn to the dump.
-pyrrho
I love AOL for keeping the price of first class snail mail low... Thank you for picking up the slack for all of us that quit sending letters by snail mail. Now all I have to worry about is the USPS spending 2 Billion on changing their logo from a "stylized eagle" to a "stylized eagle"...
Oh, yeah, if you give the CD's back, if AOL has any creativity, they'll just mail them out again and cut production costs!
$G
-- $G
This poor guy has been collecting disks since 1996. I think it's a more worthy cause!
When I first heard, they were well above 10000, but at the rate things are going it could take a few years - and with the trouble that America Online is reportedly in, they regretfully may not get the opportunity to bring in the sheaves, as it were.
This sig no verb.
I've always told people to simply email all their mp3's back to the RIAA since they believe we shouldn't own them.
If AOL really wanted to have people waiting in eager anticipation of the mailman's arrival then they'd use CDRW media instead of stamped disks.
This way, we'd all be getting something for our efforts -- even if we didn't want to join AOL.
That's why I used to like it when they sent floppy disks instead of CDs.
Instead of sending it to these two guys, why don't we just mail them to the homes of AOL executives by the thousands?
Here's a picture of their current heap from a couple of months ago, approximately 60,000 or so. As you would know if you read the article, they scratch them and then place them on strings for storage.
Also, they've done their own calculations on exactly how much space and weight these will take up (even how many trucks they'll need when they cart them cross country to AOL HQ.)
And finally, moderators, please do your duty and mod down all the retards (who obviously didn't read the article) who keep posting "Won't they just send the CDs back out?"
Are just some of the great substances that you can add to their reply envelopes.
Make sure that you put the required form back in the envelope along with one of the above mentioned substances - so they can whip the form out of the envelope for maximum effect.
Glitter generally just sticks to everything (not just 4 yr olds) and also should screw up automated letter openers.
Inidigo is a nice strong blue powder dye, perfectly harmless but again makes a mess.
And well chilli powder should keep the office smelling like a taco hell.
Has anyone else gotten an AOL cd with their peanuts on an airplane? I swear that is a moment I will never forget. I had to try really hard not to crack up laughing. I looked around and no one else seemed to see the humor in it...
Mail the discs back to AOL, ship them postage due and C.O.D., then either AOL will have to pay the post office again, OR the post office will refuse to ever take their CDs in mass mailing shipments...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
We're lucky that we don't get AOL marketing like this due to CD-use being illegal up North (I think it's because the silver coating freezes in the computers causing poisonous vapours?) but we occasionally still get the AOL floppies but not very often as it probably costs a lot of postage to deliver the 82 disks by sled to all 40,000 habitants, eh?
What if, instead of returning them (or at least instead of scratching them), they got the ID or whatever off the disks, dump them into a database and establish a "free ISP" pool?
From the project's inception on 8/1/01 to the last update on 10/15/02, they collected 64,346 CDs. At that rate of 4,438 CDs per month, they'll finish collecting 1,000,000 sometime in May of 2020.
I'll check back around then for the Slashback.
-They encourage parents to give up responsibility for their children's safety into the hands of parental controls in software.
-They encourage parents to give up responsibility for helping their children with their education since "homework help is just a breeze on AOL"
-Their business model depends on people no realising that they are out of free hours and are going to be charged unless they perform some frustrating and time-hungry tasks to cancel the service. Essentially, they depend on the users thinking they know the whole story when really, they don't until they are forced to pay more.
-They give a misconception of 'the internet' to new users. Some people think that surfing aol:// addresses means they are on the internet.
-They are an ecological menace. Most of the CDs they send out are trashed. Also, consider the waste put out to make the components of the CDs and electricity expended to make something which just fills our landfills faster.
-They reward ignorance. They make it acceptable for you to know nothing about computers and be happy with it even though you are using them as an integral part of your life. (Please no automobile analogies.)
-The stifle choice. Supposedly part of the big news for AOL 8 is that you can now choose between 8 welcome screens and change the colours of your AOL interface ... oooooh ....