"If they were carrying a bomb instead of a camera, there might be a problem."
If they planned their little experiment (and have proof they planned it), then I have no problem with them doing this.
If, on the other hand, they were caught and said something like "Oh... um... uh... Camera! Yeah, we have a camera! We're... um... journalists or something! You can't touch us, you facist pigs! Come see the violence inherent in the system!" then I'd have a problem.
Documenting possible security holes and publishing them is one thing, running around for shits and giggles (or for some other, darker ulterior motive) with a camera handy as an excuse shouldn't be allowed.
I have a feeling that keeping something at L1 long-term is easier than keeping that same something in LEO. Gravity is easier to deal with than atmospheric drag.
"In roughly the same orbit around the sun, a much smaller mass has to travel MUCH slower than the Earth to maintain that orbit."
Follow along in your copy of Principia Mathematica and repeat after me:
An object maintains linear velocity unless acted upon by an outside force.
Force of sun on asteroid: outside force Force of asteroid on sun: not involved
It doesn't matter whether the mass in question is you, a '57 buick or the Death Star. An object 1 AU away (on the average) from something with the mass of the sun orbits once every 365.2429 days, give or take.
Galileo figured out in the 17th cenutry that all objects reguardless of mass fall at the same acceleration. Where have you been in the past 350 years or so?
"In addition, you'll probably have to change the state constitution and that in itself will take no less than a decade."
Have you seen most state constitutions? Most of them don't seem to be worth the paper they're printed on, requiring a simple majority to amend. Here in Louisiana there always seems to be two or three amendments on the ballot about this and that.
There's a reason why you'll be hard-pressed to find a state constitution dating from before the 20th century.
"the President will federalize your own National Guard to defeat you."
1.) You assume that such a state would have a reasonable number of volunteers in the National Guard.
2.) You assume that the state in question doesn't have a State Guard that can't be federalized.
"Yeah, Jefferson Davis thought he could do the above too. Lincoln thought different. We all know what happened next."
I don't recall any negotiations of any sort. Hell, South Carolina seceded before Lincoln was even sworn in. The states that left the union didn't try to discuss things in Congress to decide the proper way to leave, they just took their toys and went home.
As I've said elsewhere, joining the union requires an act of Congress and therefore so should leaving it. A great deal of interdepenence between the states exists (politically as well as economically), too much for a clean break in such a short time.
Anyway, I'm surprised nobody's thought of a non-state to go into. Puerto Rico? Guam? Especially in Puerto Rico's case, 20,000 would probably be more than enough to tip the scales towards the independence camp.
"that federal law is supreme when Congress speaks to a question of law (trumping state law)."
Only when Congress is given explicit control of one area of law by the constitution.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
They just went about it the wrong way. IMO, since becoming a state requires an act of Congress, leaving the union should as well. Or it should at least involve doing more than saying "Screw you guys, I'm going home!"
"The Progressive wanted to publish a layman's description of an H-Bomb in order to show that it was not some "secret" and that keeping it as a "secret" would not work or help anything."
Yeah, armed with this information, anybody can go to the local Lowe's, pick up some enriched uranium...
Of course, if you can figure out how to build an H-bomb with out fissionable matierial... you just have to go down to the local gas station and pick up some deuterium and tritium...
"We are experiencing MVS processor spin loops, the programs are running while holding a disabled CPU. This is causing XCF communication delays to the point where we are losing VTAM RTP routing, are suffering OSPF adjacency failures on TCP/IP dynamic routing and MIM VCF failures. Whatever this code is, it should NOT be propagated to production or we run the risk of losing the development plex if XCF signaling is adversely impacted by processor disabled spin loops"
When will sysadmins ever learn to keep their anti-virus software up to date, lest they become the victims of the Good Times virus like these poor souls?
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?
Your NIC has to decide whether a particular frame on the wire is going to your node or not. Does the fact that no frames are going to your particular node at this exact time make the job of a core router appreciably easier?
The "economy of scale" comes through in the fact that it's cheaper for the USPS to send your mail guy to your address even when he has no mail than it is to send him out on special trips to your address only when there is mail. Talking about the "30 seconds wasted" is like talking about the extra electricity your computer has to use to read the MAC on a frame that isn't destined for your computer.
"No work was done for me other than (hmm none for him)."
And he's the only one working on getting mail to your mailbox?
The economy of scale comes into play in the fact that, while there may not be mail for you, there is always mail going to your zone, always mail going to your ZIP code, always mail going to your street, etc... If something is going to you, it gets tossed onto a truck that is already going in your direction anyway. They don't have to pay the extra money involved in a "special trip" to your mailbox. A good metaphor is taking the bus instead of a taxi.
Back to the networking analogy, they can keep your network in the route cache instead of having to go through a labor-intensive route table look-up.
"This is a goverment service. Not a busness."
It's been closer to the other way around since the 1970's or so. Postage moves your mail, not taxes.
"It should be minimum scale. It should serve the public."
Make up your mind. Small scale, or a scale large enough to be useful to the public?
"The rate went UP remember."
So has inflation and the price of gas. What's your point? We still have among the lowest postage rates in the industrialized world.
In the US, $0.37 will move a one ounce letter from any US address to any US address. $0.37 from San Juan to Guam. $0.37 from Point Barrow to Pago Pago. And that's before we get into APO/FPO addresses.
In Austria, as an example, a 20 gram (0.71 oz.) letter costs the equivalent of $0.50. That will get your letter from Austria to... Austria. Alright, it will also get you to other European countries, but it certainly won't move your letter through different hemispheres.
An airmail letter from the US to Austria costs $0.80. An airmail letter from Austria to the US costs the equivalent of $1.06.
" If a driver had 3 houses out of a hundred to deliver to would he stop at all hundred? No he would wizz by and hit the 3"
If a driver only had 3 houses out of a hundred for days or weeks, would he bother going out every day, or would he wait until he had a decent amount? He keeps going out every day because it's usually more like 97 houses out of 100 that have mail.
Economy of scale: There is enough mail that it is cheaper for them to maintain a regularly scheduled route than to make repeated "special trips."
"So now what took a half hour to do now takes 2 hours."
You assume he'd still be coming out every day as opposed to cutting back to weekly or bi-monthly trips.
"Scale that out to a whole town. Suddenly you MUST hire more people just to get to all the houses in 1 day."
And the postage from all those mailings mean suddenly you can afford to hire people to go to all those houses each and every day. If you want to mail something out, you can put it in your curbside mailbox and know it will be picked up today instead of "some time next week."
"Not to mention the sorting that happens at the dock even if it is presorted down to the neighborhood."
The stuff I'll be sending out Monday is sorted down to the carrier route. The letters in each carrier route are in the exact order the delivery person drives past the addresses. That's why I'll be paying $0.139 for each of those mailings instead of $0.164. If it's being sorted at the dock, that sorting has been paid for in the postage.
Besides, why sort at the dock when the volume of mailings lets you afford high-speed OCR equipment to sort the mail at centrallized facilities before it even gets to its destination? Even back when OCR was an "emerging technology?"
"Also IF you look at the rates you can see it specificaly set up to HELP companies and not the little guy."
They're there to help anybody and everybody who happens to mail out more than 200 things at one time (a limit that makes having customers do their own pre-sorting worth the effort). There's no difference between the fees paid by the individual and the corporation. If anybody is being helped by the rates, it's the non-profit organizations that get very preferential pricing. Which wouldn't happen if the USPS couldn't afford to give them a break, which brings us back to "economy of scale."
If you want to compare apples to apples, pre-sorted first class mail (which requires mailings of 500+) saves a "whopping" 1.8 cents per letter or post card.
"That sorting machines do already..."
You missed it by a mile.
Sorting machines cost money and consume time (and time=money).
It costs USPS money to sort mail.
Money is paid for by postage.
Mailer X does his own sorting.
USPS saves money by not sorting presorted mail.
Money is saved, passed on to Mailer X through lower postage.
The USPS sorting machines are there for the little guy who can't be bothered to sort their own mail and/or don't have the time and resources to do his own sorting.
"Why send it to me?"
A broadcast is easier (cheaper) to do than a multicast.
"How is this helping me?"
It pays for the sorting machines the "little guy" uses without having to use them.
"How much landfill (of which is always filling up) does this waste?"
Depends on local recycling programs.
When you buy something made from recycled paper, it usually says "X% recycled content, Y% post-consumer content." X-Y (which is usually bigger than Y) comes from non-consumer sources, like the USPS eliminating presorted standard mail that can't be delivered.
Oh, by the way, your bills by law must be mailed at the higher first class rates. They're getting that miniscule 1.8 cent savings I mentioned earlier.
"If they're making this public, then it's nowhere near the cutting edge anymore."
Except the only cutting-edge technology that counts is what you can get to the battlefield in question. It doesn't matter if what they're playing with now in the middle of Nevada makes the F-22 look like a Sopwith Camel, the F-22 is what we can deploy and have deployed right now.
Of course this doesn't make these black projects any less interesting to think about...
Actually, from the PopSci article (emphasis mine):
"The airplane was made from a small number of carbon fiber composite parts, and--amazingly, in view of its shape--had a simple all-manual flight control system without a computer in sight.
In this day and age, this fact impresses me more than its radar invisibility.
So, this will be the plane we use to fight back against the robot masters.:)
"It may not do much, but its still a few cents more in costs for these companies."
The funny thing is that business reply mail costs them more money than you putting a stamp on it. Basic BRM costs a grand total of $0.97 per envelope. It can get down to $0.348, but only after they barcode their own envelopes and shell out about $7800 a year.
"Mail was never much more expensive *before* AOL CDs started soming in."
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.
"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.
"But of course bail is only granted if its deemed unlikely that the defendant will skip bail...?"
IIRC the problem with skipping bail is that you don't get your money back (not showing up for trial is just an offence in and of their own right). That's the reason why bail bondsmen are so interested in getting their clients who skip bail: They can't get their money back without the perpetrator.
Did Sklyarov get out on bail? What will happen now that he can't show up to reclaim it?
Slashdot Mirror
"I once endured a "Contemporary American Society" class taught by an Iranian immigrant, about how awful the U.S. was. I notice he was here too ..."
Ever notice how so many people manage to confuse the word "contemporary" with "masochistic?"
"If they were carrying a bomb instead of a camera, there might be a problem."
If they planned their little experiment (and have proof they planned it), then I have no problem with them doing this.
If, on the other hand, they were caught and said something like "Oh... um... uh... Camera! Yeah, we have a camera! We're... um... journalists or something! You can't touch us, you facist pigs! Come see the violence inherent in the system!" then I'd have a problem.
Documenting possible security holes and publishing them is one thing, running around for shits and giggles (or for some other, darker ulterior motive) with a camera handy as an excuse shouldn't be allowed.
Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press.
Unfortunately, there's no mention of what ClearChannel can do.
"The CRTs just take up a lot of space on the small college desks."
If the average dorm were just a little bit bigger than the average walk-in closet...
"who thinks that a jaded congress is going to vote a new space station [no matter how much MORE useful than the ISS it may be] any funds whatsoever?"
We won't know what the 108th Congress will look like until November 6th at the earliest.
Speaking of which, if you're a US citizen and think this is a good idea, tell your candidates!
I have a feeling that keeping something at L1 long-term is easier than keeping that same something in LEO. Gravity is easier to deal with than atmospheric drag.
"In roughly the same orbit around the sun, a much smaller mass has to travel MUCH slower than the Earth to maintain that orbit."
Follow along in your copy of Principia Mathematica and repeat after me:
An object maintains linear velocity unless acted upon by an outside force.
Force of sun on asteroid: outside force
Force of asteroid on sun: not involved
It doesn't matter whether the mass in question is you, a '57 buick or the Death Star. An object 1 AU away (on the average) from something with the mass of the sun orbits once every 365.2429 days, give or take.
Galileo figured out in the 17th cenutry that all objects reguardless of mass fall at the same acceleration. Where have you been in the past 350 years or so?
"In addition, you'll probably have to change the state constitution and that in itself will take no less than a decade."
Have you seen most state constitutions? Most of them don't seem to be worth the paper they're printed on, requiring a simple majority to amend. Here in Louisiana there always seems to be two or three amendments on the ballot about this and that.
There's a reason why you'll be hard-pressed to find a state constitution dating from before the 20th century.
"the President will federalize your own National Guard to defeat you."
1.) You assume that such a state would have a reasonable number of volunteers in the National Guard.
2.) You assume that the state in question doesn't have a State Guard that can't be federalized.
"Yeah, Jefferson Davis thought he could do the above too. Lincoln thought different. We all know what happened next."
I don't recall any negotiations of any sort. Hell, South Carolina seceded before Lincoln was even sworn in. The states that left the union didn't try to discuss things in Congress to decide the proper way to leave, they just took their toys and went home.
As I've said elsewhere, joining the union requires an act of Congress and therefore so should leaving it. A great deal of interdepenence between the states exists (politically as well as economically), too much for a clean break in such a short time.
Anyway, I'm surprised nobody's thought of a non-state to go into. Puerto Rico? Guam? Especially in Puerto Rico's case, 20,000 would probably be more than enough to tip the scales towards the independence camp.
Yeah, we could take British Columbia. We could always use another California... /me rolls eyes
"that federal law is supreme when Congress speaks to a question of law (trumping state law)."
Only when Congress is given explicit control of one area of law by the constitution.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
The ol' Number Ten strikes again.
They just went about it the wrong way. IMO, since becoming a state requires an act of Congress, leaving the union should as well. Or it should at least involve doing more than saying "Screw you guys, I'm going home!"
"he has hooked up an XCam2"
He supported those pop-up bastards with his money? Say it ain't so!
"The Progressive wanted to publish a layman's description of an H-Bomb in order to show that it was not some "secret" and that keeping it as a "secret" would not work or help anything."
Yeah, armed with this information, anybody can go to the local Lowe's, pick up some enriched uranium...
Of course, if you can figure out how to build an H-bomb with out fissionable matierial... you just have to go down to the local gas station and pick up some deuterium and tritium...
"Question is, what are they going to do with it?"
PROFIT!
People only want the .su domain because it's a natural typosquatter haven for people imitating the .us domain.
"We are experiencing MVS processor spin loops, the programs are running while holding a disabled CPU. This is causing XCF communication delays to the point where we are losing VTAM RTP routing, are suffering OSPF adjacency failures on TCP/IP dynamic routing and MIM VCF failures. Whatever this code is, it should NOT be propagated to production or we run the risk of losing the development plex if XCF signaling is adversely impacted by processor disabled spin loops"
When will sysadmins ever learn to keep their anti-virus software up to date, lest they become the victims of the Good Times virus like these poor souls?
"How about Monday October 28th at 8PM"
Time zones.
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?
Your NIC has to decide whether a particular frame on the wire is going to your node or not. Does the fact that no frames are going to your particular node at this exact time make the job of a core router appreciably easier?
The "economy of scale" comes through in the fact that it's cheaper for the USPS to send your mail guy to your address even when he has no mail than it is to send him out on special trips to your address only when there is mail. Talking about the "30 seconds wasted" is like talking about the extra electricity your computer has to use to read the MAC on a frame that isn't destined for your computer.
"No work was done for me other than (hmm none for him)."
And he's the only one working on getting mail to your mailbox?
The economy of scale comes into play in the fact that, while there may not be mail for you, there is always mail going to your zone, always mail going to your ZIP code, always mail going to your street, etc... If something is going to you, it gets tossed onto a truck that is already going in your direction anyway. They don't have to pay the extra money involved in a "special trip" to your mailbox. A good metaphor is taking the bus instead of a taxi.
Back to the networking analogy, they can keep your network in the route cache instead of having to go through a labor-intensive route table look-up.
"This is a goverment service. Not a busness."
It's been closer to the other way around since the 1970's or so. Postage moves your mail, not taxes.
"It should be minimum scale. It should serve the public."
Make up your mind. Small scale, or a scale large enough to be useful to the public?
"The rate went UP remember."
So has inflation and the price of gas. What's your point? We still have among the lowest postage rates in the industrialized world.
In the US, $0.37 will move a one ounce letter from any US address to any US address. $0.37 from San Juan to Guam. $0.37 from Point Barrow to Pago Pago. And that's before we get into APO/FPO addresses.
In Austria, as an example, a 20 gram (0.71 oz.) letter costs the equivalent of $0.50. That will get your letter from Austria to... Austria. Alright, it will also get you to other European countries, but it certainly won't move your letter through different hemispheres.
An airmail letter from the US to Austria costs $0.80. An airmail letter from Austria to the US costs the equivalent of $1.06.
" If a driver had 3 houses out of a hundred to deliver to would he stop at all hundred? No he would wizz by and hit the 3"
If a driver only had 3 houses out of a hundred for days or weeks, would he bother going out every day, or would he wait until he had a decent amount? He keeps going out every day because it's usually more like 97 houses out of 100 that have mail.
Economy of scale: There is enough mail that it is cheaper for them to maintain a regularly scheduled route than to make repeated "special trips."
"So now what took a half hour to do now takes 2 hours."
You assume he'd still be coming out every day as opposed to cutting back to weekly or bi-monthly trips.
"Scale that out to a whole town. Suddenly you MUST hire more people just to get to all the houses in 1 day."
And the postage from all those mailings mean suddenly you can afford to hire people to go to all those houses each and every day. If you want to mail something out, you can put it in your curbside mailbox and know it will be picked up today instead of "some time next week."
"Not to mention the sorting that happens at the dock even if it is presorted down to the neighborhood."
The stuff I'll be sending out Monday is sorted down to the carrier route. The letters in each carrier route are in the exact order the delivery person drives past the addresses. That's why I'll be paying $0.139 for each of those mailings instead of $0.164. If it's being sorted at the dock, that sorting has been paid for in the postage.
Besides, why sort at the dock when the volume of mailings lets you afford high-speed OCR equipment to sort the mail at centrallized facilities before it even gets to its destination? Even back when OCR was an "emerging technology?"
"Also IF you look at the rates you can see it specificaly set up to HELP companies and not the little guy."
They're there to help anybody and everybody who happens to mail out more than 200 things at one time (a limit that makes having customers do their own pre-sorting worth the effort). There's no difference between the fees paid by the individual and the corporation. If anybody is being helped by the rates, it's the non-profit organizations that get very preferential pricing. Which wouldn't happen if the USPS couldn't afford to give them a break, which brings us back to "economy of scale."
If you want to compare apples to apples, pre-sorted first class mail (which requires mailings of 500+) saves a "whopping" 1.8 cents per letter or post card.
"That sorting machines do already..."
You missed it by a mile.
- Sorting machines cost money and consume time (and time=money).
- It costs USPS money to sort mail.
- Money is paid for by postage.
- Mailer X does his own sorting.
- USPS saves money by not sorting presorted mail.
- Money is saved, passed on to Mailer X through lower postage.
The USPS sorting machines are there for the little guy who can't be bothered to sort their own mail and/or don't have the time and resources to do his own sorting."Why send it to me?"
A broadcast is easier (cheaper) to do than a multicast.
"How is this helping me?"
It pays for the sorting machines the "little guy" uses without having to use them.
"How much landfill (of which is always filling up) does this waste?"
Depends on local recycling programs.
When you buy something made from recycled paper, it usually says "X% recycled content, Y% post-consumer content." X-Y (which is usually bigger than Y) comes from non-consumer sources, like the USPS eliminating presorted standard mail that can't be delivered.
Oh, by the way, your bills by law must be mailed at the higher first class rates. They're getting that miniscule 1.8 cent savings I mentioned earlier.
"If they're making this public, then it's nowhere near the cutting edge anymore."
Except the only cutting-edge technology that counts is what you can get to the battlefield in question. It doesn't matter if what they're playing with now in the middle of Nevada makes the F-22 look like a Sopwith Camel, the F-22 is what we can deploy and have deployed right now.
Of course this doesn't make these black projects any less interesting to think about...
"at least our new robot masters will look cool"
:)
Actually, from the PopSci article (emphasis mine):
"The airplane was made from a small number of carbon fiber composite parts, and--amazingly, in view of its shape--had a simple all-manual flight control system without a computer in sight.
In this day and age, this fact impresses me more than its radar invisibility.
So, this will be the plane we use to fight back against the robot masters.
"It may not do much, but its still a few cents more in costs for these companies."
The funny thing is that business reply mail costs them more money than you putting a stamp on it. Basic BRM costs a grand total of $0.97 per envelope. It can get down to $0.348, but only after they barcode their own envelopes and shell out about $7800 a year.
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.
"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.
"But of course bail is only granted if its deemed unlikely that the defendant will skip bail...?"
IIRC the problem with skipping bail is that you don't get your money back (not showing up for trial is just an offence in and of their own right). That's the reason why bail bondsmen are so interested in getting their clients who skip bail: They can't get their money back without the perpetrator.
Did Sklyarov get out on bail? What will happen now that he can't show up to reclaim it?