Crack the Pepsi iTunes Promo Code 594
An anonymous reader writes "Someone posted a technique to find a winner in the iTunes Pepsi promo giveaway." Next step: a Pepsi/iTMS winning number generator!
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Crack the Pepsi iTunes Promo Code
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On Apple's behalf... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:On Apple's behalf... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:On Apple's behalf... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no idea how the profits break down... But I seriously doubt that Pepsi is paying full price per song. I also have the feeling the record labels are getting paid all or near their usual fees. So I guess it boils down to who you want to screw over-- Pepsi and Apple by scamming the contest, or the RIAA by going back to Kazaa.
But the real question is, don't most of us have enough music yet? How many times have you listened to 99% of those 20, 40, even 100gb+ songs on your hard drive?
Re:On Apple's behalf... (Score:5, Funny)
Pepsi's ad budget is ~$250 million a year.
Also, consider they war with Coca-Cola over "turf" in school districts across the country. Money for nothing for cash-strapped schools.
Also remember we're talking about flavored sugar water. Who's scamming whom?
Re:On Apple's behalf... (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, but it also contains caffeine, the melange of the real world. No, I am not trying to claim that there is only one source of caffeine in the world. The reason compare it to the Spice of Arrakis is because, like how melange allows the guild pilots of Dune to fold space and travel between the stars, caffeine makes certain, critical work in the real world possible, which would otherwise not be done. Imagine all the code that would have never been written, were it not for caffeine!
Re:On Apple's behalf... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, since that 100 gb song is 71 days long, I don't get too many opportunities to listen to the whole thing. I do, however, enjoy sections of it.
Re:On Apple's behalf... (Score:5, Informative)
Sound familar you maybe have read it here [slashdot.org].
This way you don't have to use 'suck'y Itunes, and you still get to stick it to the RIAA.
Re:On Apple's behalf... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then I guess you wouldn't mind me spray-painting a slogan on the side of your car, huh? I haven't destroyed anything, and you're going to throw the car away eventually anyhow, right?
From Merriam-Webster [m-w.com]:
The stickers constitute defacement, in my book. They diminish the value of the CD to the retailer - the message is repugnant, they're large, ugly, and cover the artwork, making customers less likely to purchase a CD (the whole point of their little vendetta).Protest outside the store legally; start a direct-mailing campaign; skywrite for all I care, but don't break the law to make your point!
Re:On Apple's behalf... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:On Apple's behalf... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:On Apple's behalf... (Score:5, Interesting)
I sifted through the gas stations 1:6 winners til I bought all my friends a free coke. we were kids and half the fun was just biking to the gas station. As long as you get some minimumwage employee... no one seems to mind.
Then I discovered the real fun in contests. At the time you could call in an 800 number and punch in your numbers to see if you won a real prize. So, I read the rules and nothing said I oculdn't enter as many times as I liked.
At that point I setup all my little memory dial buttons to enter the sequences for entering. I even played around with it and found certain numbers gave a spanish version.
After school I would sit down and enter a few hundred times a day and even my brother got in on the fun. This went on for a month or so.
In the end we only won a game gear... which was quite expensive and only 500 game gears were available nation wide.
Since then I have never seen coke do such a contest or at least allow the kind of entry I was performing.
Famous Steve Jobs quote to Pepsi guy (Score:5, Funny)
Steve Jobs to that guy from Pepsi. It's on folklore.org somewhere. The Bouncing Pepsis story, I believe.
Re:Famous Steve Jobs quote to Pepsi guy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Famous Steve Jobs quote to Pepsi guy (Score:5, Informative)
John Sculley ruined Apple, and he ruined it by bringing a set of values to the top of Apple which were corrupt and corrupted some of the top people who were there, drove out some of the ones who were not corruptible, and brought in more corrupt ones and paid themselves collectively tens of millions of dollars and cared more about their own glory and wealth than they did about what built Apple in the first place - which was making great computers for people to use.
Re:Famous Steve Jobs quote to Pepsi guy (Score:5, Insightful)
So, yeah, Sculley ruined Apple: he made it profitable and expanded the Mac user base. Such horrible crimes. Real Apple fans know the goal is to become an ever-shrinking demographic until the Mac is sitting on the same shelf as the Amiga, clung to in irrelevancy by rabid fans.
Re:Famous Steve Jobs quote to Pepsi guy (Score:5, Insightful)
Jonathan Ive was more or less put on ice until Jobs discovered him working there. Jobs has otherwise done quite a job himself in turning the company around.
Besides - and this is the clincher - what if Sculley had been good for Apple? Just think how much better he would have been if he and his cohorts hadn't pocketed all that money Jobs speaks of? Just think how much better off Apple would have been!
Re:Famous Steve Jobs quote to Pepsi guy (Score:4, Informative)
For reference, Sculley's last year at Apple was 1994. After that, Mike Markkula took over. In 1995, Gil Amelio took over. Then The Holy And Praised Return Of The Steve occurred in 1997. Sculley pushed one and only one good product... the Newton. Unfortunately, he didn't last long enough to push it to the unassailable top of the heap.
Then Markkula pushed the Performa, killed Newton for all practical intents and purposes, and diversified the product line into about 35 different models.
Amelio is generally an underrated Apple exec. He killed most of those product lines (which were milking Apple dry), tried to revive the Newton, despite Palm's arrival on the scene, and discovered Jonathan Ive and promptly set him on the task of making the iMac. Amelio made two mistakes: clones (which kept the milking going even after the product line was trimmed) and buying NeXT and bringing Steve Jobs on board.
Steve Jobs threw Amelio off the roof, stole his praise, and fortunately, kept up the good moves Amelio had started. Note that after Amelio's projects were finished, Steve's first pet project bombed. The G4 cube was a market failure.
Lately, they've been focusing less on cool new computer features and focusing more on cool new software (iApps, MacOS X, etc.) and cool new peripherals to help the computer get things done (iPod, iSight, etc.). That might account for the drop in sales. The economy's current shitter-dwelling state also might have something to do with that.
So, a short review: Sculley was not pushing the Mac like he should've been, but he wasn't killing the company like Markkula did. Amelio actually was turning Apple around until Jobs fucked him in the ass and took all the credit. Jobs isn't as wonderful as some people would have you believe, but he is doing the best he can in the current market environment.
Oh, and you need to learn a little Apple history. Consider this your first lesson.
Re:Famous Steve Jobs quote to Pepsi guy (Score:4, Insightful)
See, you hire someone, have them cut lots of fat out of the company, fire lots of folks, and consequently everyone hates them. Then you get rid of them and in swoops the savior to take control of a leaner, restructured company without any of the ill will because you just fired everyone's friends.
Sculley: FEH. (Score:5, Interesting)
Just out of high school, I worked for apple as a phone jockey/dope in the thick of the Sculley era. Every single day my job consisted of taking desperate (to the point of suicidal) calls from these poor, pathetic bureaucrats in the purchasing departments at school districts who had sent their entire computer hardware budget to Apple some six, eight, 12, 18 months ago, and they had still not received their orders.
We were told explicitly and with great threat that we were never to reveal this to the customer, and were in fact to continue to feed them the "Real Soon Now" line of bullshit ("Next week, I promise... It's shipping tomorrow... It already shipped..."), when the blunt reality was that they would not be receiving their orders the next week, month, four months, six months, EVER - eventual refunds were assumed, amounting to a zero-interest loan from the school districts to Apple - because Apple had in fact shipped every one of their orders overseas, to be sold at a higher markup in foreign retail. They had sold their standing inventory at least twice, and probably several times more, and only actually delivered it to the highest bidder. It was pathetic.
Mind you, "profitability" of Apple aside, this was the height of the "MacInTrash" era, when every government department in the United States, outside of the toniest school districts, was replacing their entire IT infrastructure of Apples with cheap first-generation beige boxes running some godawful proof-of-concept "Windows." I vividly recall watching newscasts showing dumpsters overflowing with discarded Apple machines and thinking to myself, "this company is fucked."
Sculley made Apple "profitable" for the X many months it took him to ruin its reputation and forever doom it to the statistically irrelevant fringe market.
Oh, come on! (Score:5, Funny)
No, really--this would never have occurred to me.
I mean, really--the tipping of the bottle I could probably get to, but then to look through the clear plastic--inspired, my friend, inspired. And differentiating between 'again' and a random string of numbers? This guy has to be into hardcore pattern recognition. NSA, are you seeing this?
Yeah.
There exist elegant solutions to truly vexing problems that, once discovered, are striking in their simplicity. There also exist people who try to pass off the painfully obvious as an elegant solution to a truly vexing problem.
A free iTunes code to the person who can guess which category this falls into...
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:4, Insightful)
A bottle usually costs between $0.99 and $1.49, depending on where you buy it, so even if I'm a "winner" every time, I'm pretty much breaking even compared to just giving iTMS my credit card number and downloading whatever I like.
Hey, Steve... Is this what it has come to? You sell sugar water to children for a living now?
(I keed, I keed!)
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:4, Funny)
Do ya think this Pepsi/iTunes promo could be Scully's revenge! *gasp*
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who knows anything about iTMS would know that songs are only $.99 and would realize the futility of purchasing a more expensive product just for the less expensive free gift. There's also something to be said for generating hype over a product in general, like we are all doing right this second by reading this post.
So you don't like Pepsi, then don't buy one. If you want songs from iTMS then go directly to the source. Get over yourself.
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:4, Insightful)
In actuality, it's high fructose corn syrup water, which is much, much worse.
[Anti ADM / farm-subsidies rant ommited for the sake of staying on topic]
Oh, I can't help myself. They're spending tax dollars to subsidize giant agracorps to grow too much corn that they have to turn into sweetners and corn-fed beef to rot your teeth and give you mad cow disease!
ahem.....
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:4, Insightful)
The rest of your point is valid, however.
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:5, Funny)
so you can sit in the back tipping bottles while getting paid for it.
-grump
Re:Oh come on! The WHOLE pop machine? (Score:5, Funny)
I tired this in our break room but I had to tip the entire Pepsi machine over to see which bottle I should buy! I hope the boss didn't see me.
Is that why they have that picture of the guy being crushed by the pop machine?
Is it to keep you from checking for iTunes winner bottles?
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:3, Funny)
*sigh*
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:5, Funny)
As far as the idea of a generator, I hope that Apple was smart enough to use strong crypto in their generator, such that you would have to know the key to come up with a winning entry.
I don't see how subverting this promotion is good for anyone in the long term. Do you want more promotions like this in the future? Do you want the store to last? I guess the temptation of a free 99 cent song is too much for some.
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:5, Funny)
I was thinking it is a good thing they don't have Crystal Pepsi because it is so awfully disgusting.
to each their own I guess.
Warning: Joke (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Warning: Joke (Score:5, Funny)
They already do [t-online.de]
Re:Warning: Joke (Score:5, Funny)
Randomness not cheap! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Possibly better than store bought hardware (Score:4, Interesting)
The idea isn't a new one. The NSA (and I dare say the KGB and GCHQ) have been using cosmic background radiation to generate their one-time-pads.
You can apparently get software [willthegeek.com] for your email. (Not sure about 2048 bits being stronger than military though, they have bigger guns :)
A simple FM radio, tuned away from a station, would generate suitable data.
BB
Re:Warning: Joke (Score:5, Funny)
I've got your company's tagline:
"1 in 2^(# of bits on a CD) chance of getting the software you wanted!"
I know you were kidding but... (Score:3, Informative)
And they do have caps on the "Sierra Mist" (sprite/7up-esque) drinks too.
Still, some people will pay $1.10-$1.49 to get a free 99 song... that's just amazing.
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:5, Funny)
Exciting times we live in... (Score:5, Funny)
The Four-Color Map theorem.
Kepler's Sphere-Packing problem.
Fermat's Last Theorem.
And now this.
Brilliant.
Six Ticks on the Cap = Winner! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:4, Insightful)
a crack? hmm. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:a crack? hmm. (Score:5, Funny)
If your only friend is a bottle of Pepsi.
KFG
Re:a crack? hmm. (Score:5, Funny)
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Not a crack. It is a cheat. (Score:5, Interesting)
Stand outside 7-Eleven and ask people for their bottle caps.
For example, I was in Brazil in 1994 and Coke ran a promo for the World Cup. Each bottle cap had three teams on it in order. If you ended up with the top three teams in the correct order you won a bunch of money. Bartenders became very adept at cracking open your bottle open and pocketing the cap.
Anyhow, this is certainly a simple cheat rather than a clever hack.
Re:Not a crack. It is a cheat. (Score:4, Interesting)
I do think that social engineering is a form of hacking. I don't think that anybody would claim that the social engineering that Mitnick did wasn't hacking. This doesn't seem to rise to that level though.
Perhaps it is because you still buy the Pepsi and Pepsi didn't really take any measures to stop you from doing this. It there were some clever way to read the number without opening the bottle that might qualify as a hack. Say, taking an ultra-violet photo of the bottom of the bottle that allowed you to see through the Pepsi to read the complete number. That would qualify as a hack.
For some reason the approach we are discussing seems too pathetic to qualify as a hack. Perhaps my standards are too high.
Slashdotted Already! (Score:5, Funny)
Darn!
Now I'll have to play fairly and by the rules!
That just ain't fair!
Article Text (Score:5, Funny)
Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Too many connections in
Unable to select database
Secret Agent Crack (Score:5, Funny)
As long as the "crack" can be placed in a secret decoder ring I'll be happy.
Re:Secret Agent Crack (Score:5, Funny)
8UYM0R30V4L71N3
(don't mod this offtopic if you don't get the joke. read the code slowly)
Re:Secret Agent Crack (Score:5, Funny)
And the winner is... (Score:5, Funny)
Awesome! (Score:5, Funny)
Now i'm off to buy many $1.20 bottles of sugar water so I get get a free $0.99 song!!!! I can't lose!
oh wait............
Never underestimate the stupidity of people in large numbers.
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're a regular iTunes Music Store user, you're spending 21 on a Pepsi.
If you're an iTMS user and a Pepsi drinker, this whole thing is saving you 99 off your regular Pepsi/iTMS purchases.
If you're a cola drinker but not a Pepsi drinker, buying a Coke is really costing you $1.20 + 99 (99 for lost opportunity cost).
You really can't lose!
Never underestimate the stupidity of people in small numbers.
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Funny)
All I wanted was an iTune (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:wtf? (Score:5, Funny)
you're new, right?
I'm not sure I can afford to win... (Score:4, Insightful)
Happy Trails!
Erick
Re:I'm not sure I can afford to win... (Score:3, Interesting)
Here are the images (Score:5, Informative)
Mirror (Score:5, Funny)
Tip the damn bottle.
If it constains the word "song" you won.
Buy that bottle.
The end.
Re:Mirror (Score:5, Informative)
KeyGen Released!! (Score:5, Funny)
iTunes Sweepstakes (c) Apple
SUPPLIER
CRACKER
PACKAGER
RELEASED
TYPE
DISKS
A bit of info (Score:5, Informative)
No, I don't have algorithm to generate winning numbers. (I would have to assume that they are randomly generated anyways) But, after my 5th winning pepsi top in a row, I'm pretty confident in my ability to pick a winner by examining the bottle. Assuming that the intial bottles really are only 1 in 3 winners and are evenly distributed (which isn't a given) then 5 in a row is good, but not conclusive.
Anyways, on the bottles I've seen, you can actually see under the cap you down the kneck of the bottle. If the lighting is sufficient, you'll be able to make out at least a couple of letters. If you see a number then you have a winner. You'll look like a fool staring down bottles to find a surefire winner, but being a cheapskate isn't glamorous work.
I don't know any method to win with the 7-11 Big Gulp cups where the code is on the rim of the winning cup. I've gotten 2 of 3 winners using my patented "pick the first cup" algorithm. The only strategy I've heard of to increase your odds is the "double cup". Some people claim that the stores don't mind if you do it, but to me it's crossing over from legitimate "selection optimization" to "theft".
I've come up with the perfect iTunes DRM crack (Score:5, Funny)
This is just a port... (Score:5, Funny)
Good thing we released it GPL. Now those Apache commies [slashdot.org] can't use it, either!
Free Tibet!
Re:This is just a port... (Score:5, Funny)
Free Tibet? Now that's a competition! None of this buy crappy Pepsi, win crappy Britney tune. Apparently this dude is giving away whole countries.
Where do I enter?
Check around (Score:5, Interesting)
Quick & Dirty Mirror (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.str8dog.com/macmerc/
Slower and Dirty Mirror (Score:3, Informative)
Coke has better implementation? (Score:5, Interesting)
So normally you cannot see anything thru this rubbery sheet, and the message is on the other side (i.e. facing the cap).
I wonder why Pepsi didn't use a better solution.
It's NOT a crack...you still have to buy it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ron
The Random Odds (Score:5, Interesting)
I got a winning cap and did some math. Unless the codes are not random, this isn't going to happen.
There are 8 digits in the code, and they appear to use alphas and digits. Presuming they aren't using zero so it's not confused with the letter "O," this means there are 1.0E+35 possibilities. With 100 million winners, that means one in every 1.0E+27 is a winner. Spelt out, that is 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
However, given that it is not random, I guess the odds are much better.
Actually, it's 10 digits (Score:5, Informative)
Winning caps look like this (fake number, obviously):
12345
ABCDE
ONE FREE
SONG
Centered. The blank line is actually about half a line.
Losers look like this:
PLAY
AGAIN
Simple enough. If you hold it up so that the yellow cap is facing the light, yes, you can peer down the side and make out enough to tell which is which, especially on the Sierra Mist bottles. The Pepsi bottles are harder, but since that foul stuff is undrinkable anyway, stick to the clear drinks.
Note, I have not tried this in a store. I have, however, won a few songs on Sierra Mist bottles.
Great Way to Go Slahsdot Give into the Media Hype (Score:3, Insightful)
With that said, I understand this is somewhat news, but honestly your not really scamming or solving anything here. People are buying songs from itunes - good for them, people are downloading songs from itunes for free - GREAT you just made the powers that be "right" that music "Downloaders" are "teh d3v1l".
Congratz.
thank you captain obvious (Score:4, Funny)
"WATER H4X0R3D... found to be wet" and
"GRASS P0WN3D.. GREEN ENSUES"
Didn't work (Score:5, Funny)
I took the Pepsi bottle cap, inserted it into my PC CD drive, and could read nothing.
But I forgot to hold down Shift - that may be why.
I just wish people would document these hacks properly before publishing them. I'm pretty computer-savvy, so I don't think it was a mistake on my part.
The best part of the article (Score:5, Funny)
Fatal flaw (Score:5, Funny)
Best promotion (Score:5, Insightful)
1. To Pepsi - increased sales
2. To Apple - more people use and know about iTunes
3. To RIAA - people consider free music downloads a prize rather than taken for granted
Also, because it is so unique it recieves much more publicity than other promotions (such as this article).
Mountain Dew Givaway (Score:4, Funny)
I CAN'T BELIEVE... (Score:5, Funny)
Why do the Editors even *bother* with apple.slashdot.org when something this fundamentally NON-earth-shakingly important (ie remember that credo "Stuff that Matters"?) makes the front page? SLASHDOT is now apple.slashdot.org. Get it? Slashdot = Apple. Everything NON-Apple seems secondary. Linux stories are tolerated. Books are ignored. YRO is buried. Games are irrelevant.
You know, I used to think the guys who say "the Slashdot Editors are on Apple's payroll" and that "Apple is astroturfing here" were crazy. Now, I'm starting to believe it. Or has the definition of "stuff that matters" changed fundamentally since Apple is involved?
Either the editors are slipping or they have an agenda. Take your pick. I like cheating as much as the next guy, but this doesn't deserve front page coverage. I guess that's why I'm not an editor. I'd be fair, I speak in full sentences, and my spelling is adequate. Hell, right there my chances are shot.
Re:Boredom (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, mods are retarded. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wow, mods are retarded. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow, mods are retarded. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow, mods are retarded. (Score:3, Funny)
Its a joke boy, don't ya get it? Yer built too low. The fast ones go right over your head!
Re:Wow, mods are retarded. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wow, mods are retarded. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I swear.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And Apple just got back in the black (Score:5, Insightful)
The majority of Pepsi drinkers probably don't care about the promotion.
Those who do will win. Those who don't care won't win and won't care that they didn't win.
The tunes go to the people who want them, and more or less everyone is happy.
I'd say this would hold true if anywhere under 10% of Pepsi drinkers wanted the iTunes songs. Once you get past that, you wind up having massive inventories of losing bottles nobody wants and things turn ugly fast.
But if that's the case, it's Pepsi that loses, not Apple. Apple has no liability for Pepsi's inventory problems or lack of same.
D
Re: Re:And Apple just got back in the black (Score:5, Interesting)
What they want to do is convert Coca-Cola addicts (like me) to Pepsi addicts. This is a back-handed bribe for me to switch from Coke to Pepsi for a month. The economics actually aren't bad, since as well as shifting my brand, they want me to buy more expensive single bottles at over $1 each, as opposed to my usual 6 and 12 packs at under $ 0.50 each.
The actual sugar water component of a soda costs around $ 0.10. The wholesale value of a song on iTunes is probably around $ 0.50. If they have about a 100% markup at retail, the $1.20 pepsi bottle is giving them $0.60, so they are roughly breaking even on my sodas which are a guaranteed win.
What they're counting on, of course, is that I switch to Pepsi and continue drinking it after the promotion. This is surely not impossible, as long as I decide I like the taste better. If they wind up doing that, they may not care that I'm only picking winning bottles, and they might have even made it deliberately trivial to cheat. They won't tell us that; it ruins the fun. But they may well have done it. Of course that's also why there's a 200 song limit for each email address. They'll let me have $100 wholesale, no matter how I get it.
Interesting, no?
D
Re:Before Long (Score:5, Funny)
hear that, all your numbers are belong to Pepsi. don't try any funny stuff, like making up your own numbers, or "adding" or "dividing". They'll get you... get you, I say!
Re:itunes under wine? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great teach people that open source == cheaters (Score:3, Informative)
Now stop right here.
Anyone who thinks that the Pepsi/ iTMS 100,000,000 song give-away is charity needs some remediation.
Apple & Pepsi aren't being nice to anyone.
The whole iTMS sweepstakes, just like all sweepstakes, are to entice you ... the consumer ... to drink more Pepsi (or purchase/ consume a product). It just so happens that you're enticement here is a 33% chance of a free song.
Re:Already over the 200 limit. (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe Pepsi should be giving away a free diabetes exam instead.