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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Why don't articles actually post the URL to the site?!
http://www.nomoreaolcds.com/
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
AOl sends their CDs 4th class bulk, meaning that if you try to return to sender the post office just throws them away. AOL won't pay a dime.
"Moderate drinking can help prevent amputated limbs" -- Abigail Zuger, NYTimes, 12/31/02
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,
...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
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.
"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
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.
in a related story, all your base are still belong to us.
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.
Thats BS.
Mail was never much more expensive *before* AOL CDs started soming in. If anything it causes more overhead. An increase in volume through the mail system with mail that very vey few people would actually want.
There would be less overhead if AOL would stop sending out so many CDs. The post office would have that much less to worry about.
You know what I do everytime I go to the mailbox and there is spam mail in my slot - I stick it in the Outgoing mail slot.
One time I walked up to the mailbox when the mailman was busy stuffing it full of crap. I asked him if he would please just not put that stuff in my mail box. He said that there is only one way for him to stop putting such mail that is addressed to "So & So OR Current Resident" and other spammings such as the coupon newspapers and pizza offers - get a P.O. Box.
PMBs are apparently the only thing where there is regulation limiting the unsolicited mailings that are allowed.
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
Yeah... you wouldn't want to pay a few cents more for your mail to get rid of all this garbage.
After all, there's probably a spot somewhere that isnt a landfill yet.
How long does it take for a cd to dissolve anyway?
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.
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!
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.
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
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
"I don't think there is a considerable profit margin for waht they mail. AOL ships these things bulk rate which is a reduction from standard mailing."
The more proper term for "bulk rate" nowadays is "presorted," which is why their postage is cheaper than our one-piece first class mailings (they sort so the USPS doesn't have to).
That's the only break they get (unless they do drop shipments, which involves mailing them from post offices close to the destination). It's the same break you and I could get if we went to our local post offices and paid $150 for a presorted mail permit.
"The labor cost to process all these has to eat up a large portion of what they charge."
AOL is doing a good deal of the Postal Service's labor themselves by presorting it. It's called work sharing, which I've heard (but can't confirm) is something unique to the USPS as compared to other post offices.
"i don't know... I'm not confident is helps the rest of the US population with postal costs."
The larger the volume of mail to be moved, the more justification the USPS has for faster but more expensive sorting and delivery equipment. The occasional birthday card to your grandmother is not justification for the USPS to invest in high-speed OCR machines, barcode printers, 18-wheel trucks, airplanes, ships, etc. AOL CDs are.
And as for postage rates, we live in the third largest country in the world and yet we have amongst the lowest postage rates among industrialized nations. Most Europeans, for example, have to pay the equivalent of $0.50 or $0.60 to mail what what we pay $0.37 for. And that $0.37 will get your letter from Puerto Rico to Guam.
No, I'm not a postal worker, I've just been learning way too much information as I prepare to print up several thousand letters to voters in my district.
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
Perhaps, but I doubt you can argue against the idea that AOL CDs help keep postage rates low. Why else are we able to send an ounce at $0.37 when the average European has to pay closer to $0.60? For mail within a country not much larger than a typical US state?
Economy of scale is a wonderful thing.
"If anything it causes more overhead."
A million AOL CDs mailed at once causes less overhead than a million people sending a greeting card. In order for AOL to take advantage of presorted mail rates, they have to presort their mail. Part of the $0.37 we pay for a first class mail stamp pays for sorting and barcoding as well as delivery, while AOL does most their own sorting and barcoding, mailing the CDs already sorted in their own trays.
A single CD mailed at first class rates:
$0.37
A single CD mailed at presorted rate (which doesn't automatically include features built into first class like "return to sender" or "forward to new address" and doesn't require the stamps to be cancelled as with first class), presorted by area distribution center (pretty much the first two digits of the ZIP code):
$0.268
Same as above, only sorted by first three digits of ZIP code:
$0.248
Sorted by area distribution center, pre-barcoded and address electronically verified:
$0.219
And the prices keep on dropping as AOL does more and more of the labor themselves, all the way down to $0.12 if AOL
- sorts by carrier route (ZIP+4, more or less)
- verifies the existence of all addresses electronically
- barcodes the addresses themselves
- mails a copy of the mailing to each and every address on the carrier routes ("postal patron" means they don't have to figure out which boxes get one and which don't)
- inserts the CDs into the mail stream at the destination post offices themselves
Now, then, who has more overhead?"An increase in volume through the mail system with mail that very vey few people would actually want."
An increase that justifies the USPS paying for faster (but more expensive) sorting and delivery equipment. If the only people sending mail were the average person sending a single letter or card a week, there wouldn't be any reason (or money) for the USPS to do anything but manual sorting.
"I asked him if he would please just not put that stuff in my mail box. He said... get a PO Box"
What were you expecting? Guess what: the cost of delivering advertising to your mailbox is 100% paid for (by law) by the sender. This isn't e-mail we're talking about here. If the disagreement is between you and the sender, and the sender is the only paying customer between the both of you, why should any business listen to anybody but the person paying them money?
No, I'm not a postal employee, I'm just learning this as I prepare to send out 11,400+ letters to some of the voters in my district.