The letters M and O

[nbk2000]

Rather enigmatic title for a topic eh? :)

The reason I'm bringing this up is because, in my job, I get to go through an inordinate amount of other peoples garbage. Most of it is bottles and cigarette packages. As such, I collect marlboro miles by the fistfuls, and (currently) soda contest caps.

Right now, Pepsi is having a "Cool Million Cash Caps" contest where you collect letters under the pepsi bottle caps and spell the words "Cool Million". You do that and you get a random drawing entry for a $1,000,000. As it stands, I have the following letters:

Cxxx
Ox
Ox
Lxx

M
Ixxx
Lxx
Lxx
Ixxx
Ox
Nxxxxxx

The x is the number of caps for that letter that I already have. I get several every night. What I don't find in the trash I drink up while stocking the cooler in back. :D

As you can see, I'm lacking an "M", and am woefully sort on "O".

The reason I'm bringing this to your attention is because this is a chance to help out the Forum with no cash outlay on our parts.

With our collective numbers, I'm sure someone here has an "M", or can at least start collecting the caps they'd otherwise throwaway. Then these caps are mailed to me and I enter us in the drawing.

If I win, this is what I'm doing with the million. They offer the option of either taking a $400,000 lump sum, or $1,000,000 over 20 years. I'd take the 20 years, and sell the rights to a viatical company for $800,000 lump sum. Most people don't know about viaticals. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

With the 800G, the Forum gets hosted on FAT bandwidth with huge storage space forever. All the staff gets new kick ass rigs with broadband to go with it. A paid Forum FTP with all kinds of software that you're not going to find on Kazaa or e-donkey (think high end chemical and engineering progs/explosives calculators/etc). And $100,000 will be split evenly among the people who donated the caps that made it possible.

The balance will be used to fund research by members who've demonstrated a capacity for such things. Such as Xoo(?) and the claymores, the new guy with the LSC, and others. Kind of like a Carnegy grant, only for stuff that goes boom! :D

Of course, I'd also use funds for my own PDF research and, being neuvo riche', I would give away the DVDs to anyone wanting 'em since I'd have more than enough money to do so without having to charge for them.

So, anyone interested in helping in this endeavor can e-mail me, or just post your willingness to help here and I'll contact you.

[PYRO500]

You do know how this scheme works right? there are several diffrent caps, and there are one or two letters that are "rareified" that is that they know exactly where they were sent to and usually they are serial numbered to prevent forgery, keep the blue seal in the cap intact at all costs. I admit it would be awsome for us I would have an SGI workstation two way sattelite internet connection with unlimited download bandwith, a high power rail gun that'll rival sam barros's 20 Kj one in construction, the world's most powerful stun gun with aerogel capacitor ~3Kj (enough to explode flesh) remote firearms mount, barb launching cannon, a very large HERF gun, super high gain recever, all frequency's all modes (including digital spread spectrum) enough chems to make CL-20, a commercial blaster's liscence and manufacture liscences, user@rogueesci.org email domains for everyone, break the world's record for most bottle rockets launched simultaniously, and to top that all off 9V batteries for all the smoke detectors and a fire supression system (i'll probably need it) well that's all I can think of I want right now, but I think that the letter M is probobly the controlled letter and there are very very few of them in circulation. As for my part, I'm possibly gonna walk to the store later and I'll pick up a pepsi and tell you what letter I get (that's if they updated their products (cheap bastards keep the same stuff on shelf for loooong times).

[Resident Evil]

I take it this prize thing is only to people in the US? If it's worldwide, I'll see what I can do to help. :)

[Tyler_Durden]

Yeah, does anyone remember that McDonalds monopoly game? You buy food and you get the real estate stuff, complete a set and win a hefty prize?

Everyone and their brother was one away from EVERY set... of course the last one will be the money one.

Then again, maybe since its a DRAWING, it actually IS possible to get them all, many many times?

Just one problem I have with this... how do we know that you, nbk, the master criminal, will not take the cool million and run? :p

[frostfire]

where is this cool million contest stated? :confused: I find null related results from google, and none either at the pepsi website. The last thing I haven't checked is the soda bottle since I don't drink softdrink.

PYRO, I think your wishlists could cost more than .,.,.(just from the satellite connection alone)

If this REALLY happen, it would be interesting though, since I believe some identities would be inevitably revealed

<small>[ July 19, 2002, 03:11 AM: Message edited by: frostfire ]</small>

[PYRO500]

Actually the 2 way sattelite internet connection would cost around 650$ in eqipment and 325$ a year in service. That's the only high speed internet you can get around here. I think all my stuff on my wish list could be easily acomplished for around 25K most of witch relys on my ingenuity to create and modify things.

<small>[ July 18, 2002, 10:26 PM: Message edited by: PYRO500 ]</small>

[Tyler_Durden]

pyro: yeah, same here, livin out in the boonies means no easily accesible broadband. :( :( :(

just an fyi: if you havent already, dont get it unless you just have the money to burn, as i have hear LOTS of bad reports of how terrible and unreliable sattelite internet is. the local sattelite places here dont carry it any more because they give them so much trouble. also, if you expect good gaming pings, dont, because they will be as bad or worse than dial-up. then again, maybe you will have good luck with it, or you already have it and havent had trouble.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
back on subject!
-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-

i also couldnt find any information for any such sweepstakes, perhaps it is only a local/regional promotion?

[PYRO500]

I know all about sattelite internet, what do you expect from a sattelite that's about 22,000 miles away! and the signal has to from the ground net to the sattelite back to ground, that's gonna take some time. while your latency may be slow you do get good speeds but the problem most people don't realize is that one encryped data stream carries the data for all users! that means that there is not unlimited bandwith, that's why there is download restrictions depending on your package, so you don't just hook up an entire office to one linkup unless you pay extra, of course you could do that but is automatically slows your peed once you overdo your download limit.

[Energy84]

I'm in, but first I need to find these damn letters. I haven't seen this contest either, but then again, I don't usually pay too much attention to them...
There's always the possibility that NBK would just take the money and run, but that's just a risk I'm willing to take, since I don't have anything to lose.

[nbk2000]

Call 1-888-279-0038 for contest details. It's national so you americans can get in on it.

Besides winning the usual free soda, you can also instantly win $10 or $100.

Naturally there's going to be one letter that's very rare. That's why I'm suggesting we pool our manpower from all across the country (US only) to greatly increase our chances.

I called Pepsico and they said that one letter is being withheld as a rare one. They wouldn't specify which one, but only 1 in 5,735 bottles gets it. So that must mean that "M" is the 1 in 5,735 letter. The contest expires 11/01/02, so that gives us almost 3 months to collect letters. Or, in my case, check the bottles at work.

I've discovered that it's possible to shine a red light through the cap and, while holding the bottle at an angle, read what the letter is underneath it. I think I've got a new hobby at my job. And I've got hundreds of bottles to check, and months to go, too.

Everybody knew who John Gotti and Al Capone were. But that didn't stop them, did it? :) Money is power, and a lot of money is a lot of power.

Saying I'd split with the dough and leave the Forum hanging would be like saying Mega would split with the money and leave the forum hanging. I've been here going on three years and am an admin because I helped make this place what it is today. So obviously I'm going to help out the Forum with money if I'm rich. :rolleyes:

One of my other jobs was satellite sales. High speed satellite internet does suffer major lag time, so you'll get your ass wiped on any online games. But, for regular surfing, it's fine. The one thing satellite has going for it is the fact that it's mobile. You can take it with you anywhere in the northern hemisphere. So you can be posting live video feed to the Forum of your desert blast experiments.

A few other things I'd do with an obscene amount of money:

Buy every book Paladin "traitors to the first amndment" Press sells, have them scanned, and uploaded to a server in some country like romania with a URL like "www.freepaladinpressbooks.com". Then post that URL to every patriot, survivalist, and gun-nut newsgroup and website in the world.

Laugh as they try to have site shut down, but romanians don't care about copyright and tell capitalist dogs to "kiss their babuska!". HAHAHHAHA!! Then laugh my ass off when PP goes out of business because nobody with a computer buys their books anymore. :p

Punks! That's what you get for selling out the constitution to a bunch of money grubbing muds with kike lawyers. :mad:

Naturally, all these books would be on the Forum FTP for download.

What I always thought would be a neat idea would be to start the worlds first off-planet bank. Since banks are nothing more than computers that keep track of who owes who how much, why can't that computer be in orbit or sitting on the moon? There's no jurisdiction then, thus no one and no country can snoop through the files or seize the money. A TRUELY offshore bank. :D

Naturally, this bank doesn't PAY you interest. Rather, it CHARGES you interest to keep money in it. But that's alright. Would you rather pay 1% annual interest to an offplanet bank? Or 30% to the IRS?

I can see the debit cards for the bank...Ultra hard and ultra clear synthetic sapphire with a hologram of the moon floating in the middle. No visible magstrip since the magstrip is made of transparent magnetic media (I'm sure someone has it!). Greater prestige and bragging rights than any gold, platinium, or iridium card.

Naturally, only accounts with balances of $10,000,000 or more need bother to apply. Wouldn't do to sully the banks reputation by allowing any old riff-raff with a million dollars to join, now would it? :p

The chinese are planning on a manned moon mission before 2010, so that's how the bank would be set up there. Getting financing to set up such a bank shouldn't be a problem. I've heard there's plenty of columbian gentlemen interested in investing in banks. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

A good name (I think) would be "Tranquility Bank". The Sea of Tranqulity is where Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon.

[Ctrl_C]

What exactly do you mean by red light? Will a laser pointer or something work? A red christmas lightbulb?

I have a friend that works a conveinence store also and would be willing to help out I bet.

btw, with this $10m or whatever, can I get a secure underground server room with multiple servers, t3 line, and a diesel generator to serve the FTP and site from? please?

<small>[ July 19, 2002, 02:09 PM: Message edited by: Ctrl_C ]</small>

[Tyler_Durden]

Not to mention your "snitch.org" idea. :D

I was going to mention that there are weys to read under the cap w/o opening it... now I just need a small light w/ lense (or a laser if thats what he means) so that I can read them w/o drawing suspicion.

[PYRO500]

The prize is only one million, while having a t3 dedicated line for a private forum ftp would be very nice the line installation would be astronomical, the service for a t3 is a nice 10,000 a month meaning about 6 years and the service has drained the funding totally (that's assuming that you buy nothing else) it would be far cheaper to rent some rack space at an internet company and have your server hooked to their t3 line and have your own RAID of high speed scsi's to store the files, that could be anywhere from 600-2,000 a month but you get your own server and you share a company's server room.

[frostfire]

alright, mission verified....search on M & O has begun (btw, I assume if I got other letters, it would be no interest to you?)

I'll experiment with all sort of lights; pointers, AAA maglite etc...and make sure I'll "check" anytime I get to a gas station....or be a nice person and buy my friends pepsi products for a couple of weeks

If I'm a sig. contributor and got a sig. portion. What I'll do???
heh heh :p if NBK wants to make paladin back to ground zero then my aim is PLAYBOY :mad: (hefner the female "abuser")! and those anti fur clothing maniacs who protect an animal but degradate human by au natural demonstration in the name of propaganda for animal
rights :mad: .....feminist ALL THE WAY!!!!!!

ps: for PB it's basically same method; since going to court will definitely swap me away in nano seconds (since he for sure got BIGGER bucks), I really don't like this either but so far this looks like an ultimate option; buy every magazine, every cyber club, every centerfold etc etc etc , and distribute it FREEEEE to everyone + who knows? ER Rudolph's method???

<small>[ July 20, 2002, 12:27 AM: Message edited by: frostfire ]</small>

[PYRO500]

Go ahead whith that frostfire, playboy is much to soft for my taste. to quote Larry Flint: "what's with all this blurry shit?".

[Ctrl_C]

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica"> The prize is only one million, while having a t3 dedicated line for a private forum ftp would be very nice the line installation would be astronomical, the service for a t3 is a nice 10,000 a month meaning about 6 years and the service has drained the funding totally (that's assuming that you buy nothing else) it would be far cheaper to rent some rack space at an internet company and have your server hooked to their t3 line and have your own RAID of high speed scsi's to store the files, that could be anywhere from 600-2,000 a month but you get your own server and you share a company's server room. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">haha, I can't believe you typed all that...I know it's expensive. it was a joke. :) :p

[Tyler_Durden]

guys.... i think you are all forgetting that we have to win first <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

[Mr Cool]

Do we? Oh shit, nothing's ever simple is it?

Sounds like a good idea, pitty us Brits can't help :(.

[nbk2000]

Well, after having checked 10 cases of 20 oz and 1 liter pepsi products (over 200 bottles) I didn't find any "M" caps. :(

But, I did find a $10 cash cap. :) That paid for the hour or two it took to check them. And it's a 1 in 700 prize. The $100 prize is 1 in 24,000. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Eek!]" src="eek.gif" /> Got a better chance of finding an "M"!

I used a white LED light this time. It worked fine, though I think red light provides better contrast. Check the bottles when they're warm, if possible, because condensation on the cold bottles makes it a pain to read the caps.

I also made sure to mark every bottle cap I checked so I won't repeat checking bottles I've already checked before.

DON'T try reading the caps in the store if you don't work there. :rolleyes: That'll just get you kicked out of the store, and maybe give the clerk the idea.

The only letter that matters is the "M". All the other ones, including "O", are common. It's the rare "M" that's the moneymaker. Without that one we're fucked.

Oh, and another reason why I (we) need the million comes from one of my favorite despot's sayings:

&lt;Heavy Russian Accent&gt;
What's good for Stalin is good for Russia!
&lt;/Heavy Russian Accent&gt;

In other words, what's good for me is good for the Forum. :D

Ctrl_C, I've got some stuff to mail you. Is that address you sent me still good? Reply here (Yes/No only) as my e-mail is snail-slow now.

<small>[ July 20, 2002, 08:13 AM: Message edited by: nbk2000 ]</small>

[Ctrl_C]

yes

[Mick]

have you read the terms and conditions of entry? i mean really read them in depth?

the reason i ask is, BP service stations(don't know if you have them in america) were running a comp for lord of the rings.
you had to collect a hole bunch of cards(some of which were rare) which had clues to the location of something on a map. then you had to take certain letters from the clues and create a sentence.(i forget the exact details of what you had to do..but either way it was pretty hard because you couldn't only find certain cards)
then you had whack all this stuff in an envelope, and send it into X address.

in the terms and conditions the explained how it was going to be drawn, and a few other things including what the odds of winning were. i forget the what the acctuall figure was but a friend and me worked out that even if we entered the contest with all the correct pieces of infomation needed 100,000 times we would still a 1 in 1 million chance of winning.

man its killing me, i wish i could remember the exact details of the contest - because we worked it that it was basicly impossible to win.

so i guess what i am trying to say is check all the details twice.
because in all fairness who wants to give away a million dollars?

[Spudkilla]

You guys do know that we aren't going to win this. I think that we are all setting ourselves up for a big disappointment. &lt;b&gt;BUT&lt;/b&gt; if we do win, here is some suggestions: For the Forum FTP, just get a T1 or DSL line. No need for T3. DSL is 1.5 mb/s (well not really, you hafta tweak it first), and T1 is about the same or a little slower, just a ton more dependable than DSL. My second suggestion is that we could start our own political party and run for Senator of some state, or mayor of a city. I know politics will corrupt even the purest of heart, but we still have somebody in a poisition of power who is just like us! But then, the Sheeple and current government will overthrow us. Oh well. We could try.

[kingspaz]

we may have a poor chance of winning but working together we have a 1000 times greater chance of winning other than individually.

[Tyler_Durden]

If we go through 5,000 caps, we will probably get one "M", and thus one entry for the cool million.

I'd say its very possible to get the entry... but the big question remains:

How many people will get that far?

5? 100? 10,000?

[Pu239 Stuchtiger]

I binge-drink Pepsi's - if I stumble across any M's I'll save them.

If I ever became bloody rich, I know perfectly well what I'd do. I'd move out to some remote region like Montana. I'd build a home of comfortable size. A few hundred feet away would be a giant, multi-level laboratory, with floor space in the seven-digit range. A 20,000L tank of mixed acid and a 5,000L tank of glycerine would be located nearby for symbolic purposes. I'd buy explosives licenses. I'd buy a couple hundred square miles of land. I'd construct a uranium refinery. And then I'd host the 4th of July party of a lifetime.

I would truly be the neighbor from hell. Fire and brimstone, and radioactive ashes would quite literally be raining down on those foolish enough to not flee from the towering pillars of fire rising beyond the horizon. Homes miles away would crumble under the force of my artificial earthquakes measuring 9.9 on the Richter scale.

<small>[ July 23, 2002, 01:55 AM: Message edited by: Pu239 Stuchtiger ]</small>

[nbk2000]

Even if it was 1 in 10,000, that's many thousands of times better odds than the odds in the lottery for a prize of comparable worth.

Individually, we have probably close to zero chance, but collectively we stand a better chance than most. If we have several store clerks checking hundreds of bottles every week, then we're bound to get at least one, if not several, "M"s and all the other letters needed.

And let's not forget the instant cash winners. (See further details below)

After further talking with the Pepsico people, I was unable to get an firm numbers from them as to projected odds. But they said it could be as few as 10, or as many as 10,000. If only 10 entries are received, and 3 of those are ours... :D

I also learned this is central US regional only. Meaning N. and S. Dakota, Texas, Arkansas, Illinois, Tennesse, Missisipi, Ohio, Misery, Kansas, and related regional states. :( So this may further limit our chances of members collecting the needed letters.

As for the cash winner caps, you're supposed to mail them in and wait for a check from Pepsi. Fuck that! I just walked into a competitors store, showed it to the clerk and told him I won $10 and to cough it up. He did. :) Fool obviously doesn't know the contest rules, but most clerks don't bother reading all the rules for the various contests anyways.

Thus was born an idea. I had scanned in the cap before cashing it in (I'll post it in a couple of days). Next (the following is all theory and has no bearing on any events, real or imagined, that may have taken place.), the phrase "Ten Dollar Winner" is duplicated in photoshop before being laser printed onto clear transparency film at Kinko's, 40 copies per sheet.

These copies are then cut out with an x-acto knife and inserted into "loser" caps with the common letters bleached out. The original plastic seal is removed and replaced with a thin film of dyed wax (wax dyes found at hobby craft stores that sell candle making supplies) that is melted into place over the transparancy film to hold it in place and give it the "offical" look of a real cap.

These caps are then taken to various retailers that sell pepsi where the drag is ran on the clerks. The majority hand over the cash for the bogus caps. The rest say you have to mail it in. Easy money for a quick trip up and down the boulevard.

You're not going to get rich, but it's a very easy scam to pull off with near zero risk. Make a couple of hundred bucks in a few days if you're a busy bee.

If you wanted to, you could substitute "Free 20oz Pepsi" for the cash phrase and collect dozens (or hundreds) of free bottles and sell them for a buck at events or street corners. But that's too much like work for my taste. :p Or stock up for the summer with cases of free soda like a "thug" ant would. :)

[Tyler_Durden]

that would be even better with a $100 winner!

nice idea nbk!

i work 25 hours to get $100, and to think i could get $500 for an hour's work... and people say crime doesn't pay. :D

even though this sweepstakes is not available in my area, this would be viable with any such deal where you can win $10 or $50 or whatever.

[Energy84]

Well I for one am anxiously waiting for the scanned cap to go online! :p
Sorry to hear that the contest is only going on in central US only. Now I can't contribute :(
But, what if somebody can forge an M ? it would likely need to be printed onto thick plastic, same type as used for the real thing, then pressed into the shape of a real bottle cap. You'd have to do a damn good job though because those guys will probably be checking every single entry for forgery.
I wonder how many they get per year....

[PYRO500]

I don't think any cashier is going to have 100$ to give to you in the drawer, let alone actually give it to you. Also they are gonna remember who they gave the 100$ to when their boss fires their ass. also they are going to look at a 100$ cap a bit closer than a 10$ cap, people don't just hand out that kind of cash even if they have the money.

<small>[ July 24, 2002, 01:34 AM: Message edited by: PYRO500 ]</small>

[nbk2000]

RTPB: "Don't get greedy!"

Trying to scam a store for $100 is both foolish and dangerous. Foolish because they're not going to hand out a hundred dollars regardless. And dangerous because your face will be on camera (another RTPB) and passed around to all the other stores if they figure out you're trying to scam them.

Stick to $10 caps. It's both easier to cash, and too petty to bother tracking you down for.

As for the cap picture, here it is:
<img src="http://server3001.freeyellow.com/nbk2000/Pepsi-Winner.jpg" alt=" - " />

Is it real, or is it Memorex? <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" /> :D

[A-BOMB]

Sure that real NBK look kinda like you wrote that with a fine balltip pen :confused: . And if it is real :confused: what type of pepsi did you get it off of? Time to go see if I can get a job at the recycling plant, many many pepsi bottles.

[nbk2000]

Yes it's real. Remember, they print the words inside the caps at the rate of hundreds a minute with a dot matrix printer that goes inside the cap on the assembly line before the seal is put in place. So you're not going to get perfectly straight lines and what not.

Recycling plant would be a good place to look!

As for me, we got another 300 bottles in last night, so I'll be busy for the next couple checking them out.

[A-BOMB]

I better get out to kinkos and start printing. And anyone here work at a pepsi plant or recycling plant?

[nbk2000]

Well, after checking thousands of bottles, and finding only free pepsis and a couple more $10 caps, it's coming down to crunch time. Only about 2 weeks left for entering.

So, anyone get an "M"? I didn't think so.

However, there may still be hope with E-bay. Any takers?

[Eliteforum]

I'd put them all up on ebay seperatly, loads of people are going to be bidding on them, even more so if you don't have a reserve price on them.

[chemwarrior]

I would just wait this game out and try on the next one. I dont suppose anyone on here knows anyone who works for Pepsi Co? I think I might know someone, so there may be a chance to do a little 'cheating' on any near future contests they have. In just a little while Im going to go on a "pepsi frenzy" in a little while so I may become lucky....

[HOOPS123]

I'm not sure what good working at a recycling plant would do. Does anyone here honestly not look at their caps before tossing them?

[zeocrash]

ok i dont think this competion is running in the UK, but If i do get rich the forum will be first on my list of large donations

[Mr Science]

This is a really old (and dead) thread, but after reading this, NBK should have gone to a beverage distribution warehouse, and made an announcment: Perhaps he would pay the management as a whole $20k (assuming he won), then make the announcement, whoever found the letters _ and _ would get $15,000 from him; I am sure that would motivate a hell of a lot of people working there, considering the ~<$10/hr wages. :D

[Silentnite]

Ha, Get the idea from Willy Wonka? "But Veronica, I've got 20,000 girls shelling 100,000 chocolate bars an hour, there's only so fast that they can go!"

[Barnacles]

I'm not sure what good working at a recycling plant would do. Does anyone here honestly not look at their caps before tossing them?

Man would you be surprised at all the junk people throw out at those places. I worked in one last year, amongst the things I found were:

Brand new ipod in a box
2 pounds of weed in a garbage bag really good skunk
160 gig hard drive.
2.4 ghz cpu I think lots of computer stuff, ZALMAN fan and heatsink
Money.
Lots of brand new toiletries
DVD box sets.
My buddy found an 7900GTX or something top of the line video card at the time worth 500$
never ending things, Oh and all of that was found in 2 weeks. tonnes of other things like batteries. I actually found a little bit of explosives. like 1 gram sealed in a bag labeled explosives. I turned it in to get a day off of work lol while the bomb squad came lol.besides with rogue sci....

[Silentnite]

It's just as bad in transportation. You'd be amazed at the stuff left on busses/trains/cabs.