The Jackholes at AOL
Ahh, there's a nice name for the dumbfuck drown-'em-in-our-stupid-promotional-cds marketing tactic that AOL has employed for years now, Jackhole - a jackass that's knocked boots with an asshole to create a jackhole. Sending out millions and millions of their CDs exhorting people to try AOL again because its SOOOOO much better than before.

Well here's some news that each and every one of us who was with AOL once and won't ever go back knows. It still sucks. Its still like sitting in the internet's wading pool amid the piss and toe fungus. AOL is slow, its oppressive and expensive. And they cost more than they need to precisely because they flood everywhere with their garbage free sign up CDs.

And, as further sign of their stupidity, today's CD came in a DVD case in the mail that I had to go and stand in line to get (oh the joy of getting a package from Steve Case, I thought he forgot my birthday again). And I also happened to get a new PS2 game that didn't have a case. So I thought it would be cake to rip the AOL junk out and replace it with stuff I actually cared to protect (by the way, AOL cd's do NOT do well against cement blocks or concrete).
But no, the label is glued on the outside with perma-glue and crappy labels so that I could spend a month peeling and rubbing the stupid address label off. And the label inside the plastic cover of the case, now replete with AOL's New and Improved Lies 8.0 (faster dissemination of your email address to their spam affiliates to maximize their profit margins).

So AOL's going to generate another monstrous pile of trash that no one wants. I mean, how many of these stupid CD's they force on people are used? More than 5%? I highly doubt it. More than 1% might be pushing it. So they are losing money on nearly every CD they mail out (and let's not forget the cost to ship things), expenses that they pass on to the AOL user. And the burden of getting rid of the millions of CDs falls on the communities they inundate with their garbage.

Yet another reason to hate the once king of the pre-packaged and sanitized internet. That and they are going to kill off Netscape. But as long as I've got my Safari I'm a happy guy (though I do wish they'd get the password issues fixed soon as re-entering passwords again and again on some sites is a wee bit of a pain in the ass.