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Brad Templeton On Spam's Silver Anniversary
Brad Templeton writes "This Saturday marks the 25th anniversary of the first spam I was able to find, and one month ago was the 10th anniversary of the first time a USENET posting was called a spam and the birth of the term (at least beyond mudds)." Templeton was also cited in the American Scientist article featured last Sunday.
Actually, Spam, has been around for over 100 years...just check the spam museum!
Hormel was started in 1891...way more than 25 years...in fact, last year the 6 billionth can of spam was made!
The anti-salmon
of AOL blocking innocent mail servers just because they aren't on corporate IP blocks.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
* often refered to a 'dupe'
Hello, my name is Indigo Montoya. You spammed my father, prepare to die.
-- Some days you're the dog; some days you're the hydrant.
His story reminds me of how Abe Simpson (Grandpa Simpson) tells stories...
"I needed a new heel for my shoe. So, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. 'Give me five bees for a quarter', you'd say. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah...the important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war; the only thing you could get was those big yellow ones..."
Producer: NEXT!!
Ralph Wiggum: Chicken necks
What do you think Hormel thinks about this mess? All publicity is good publicity? I don't think so. I haven't bought a can of Spam for the last three years. Guess why.
I'll tell you their lawyers are constantly tearing their hair out, for not slapping Monty Python with a cease and desist, all those years ago. Now do you understand people like American Greetings? If they don't defend their trademarks, they might end up as the next Spam. What would you do if your trademark for the last hundred years, suddenly were smeared into oblivion by greedy net users all over the world?
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
You know the scary part about this, is that he probably got 20 extra people to show up and made a sale off of the first spam.
Spam is here because it works. Worked back then, works today. If it did not work, there would be no spam.
Linux O Muerte!
Somehow, somewhere along the way, the term was applied to unsolicited commercial email, and the original meaning was more or less forgotten. Besides, the practice of flooding peoples' inboxes doesn't really happen that way very much anymore.
I can see the fnords!
You don't buy meat (or something that closely resembles meat) because its a synonym to unsolicited email?
Would it be safe to guess you live in a house (or closet, or cave) with only doors too?
The parents of the original Usenet spam, a lawfirm promoting a "green card lottery" (and I thougt those were a new invention), wrote in their book about online advertising:
"From that day forward, the Internet never stopped discussing us... After lengthy deliberation, it was decided to call the practice 'spamming' in honor of a well-known skit by Monty Python's Flying Circus, the famous British comedy group. We were unfamiliar with the skit, but apparently it involved throwing lunch meat at a wall."
Humourless lawyers.. they'll be the first against the wall when we take the us.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
... For you might just Get It.
[Insert partial list of the 10 gazillions Internet dating services found by Yahoo alone].
I hope that unearthing this ancient post will not make RMS lose his aura of geekness. What, he wanted to get laid? With all that code to write? Sheesh... What was he, a business major?
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
First, nothing begins if not opening
Hormel sure got their $100 worth out of the term.
Jason
ProfQuotes
It's trademark was removed from Bayer by the Allies as part of the WW1 reparations against Germany. 10 points for knowing the other trademark that was taken ....
How many times have you filled in a "You must give us an email address" box with something like "fuckoff@spam.com" or similar?
Poor bloody mail admins at Hormel, their lives must be hell. And what about if they accidentally left an open relay?
Worth a read imho.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
You can read the original spam email on Templeton's site. The list of addressees is like a directory of the early net, including addresses like KLEINROCK at USC-ISI and POSTEL@USC-ISIB. I wonder how many spam harvesters will find these addresses and try to send them mail, now that they've been posted to the web :).
You know the scary part about this, is that he probably got 20 extra people to show up and made a sale off of the first spam.
I note that the big gripe was that it was commercial speech on the ARPAnet, at a time when it was restricted to research projects. (This despite the fact that such a product announcement, intrusive as bulk eamil was, might actually have been consered "news" rather than a mere advertisement.)
Of course that changed with the legislation that got Al Gore his rep for "claiming to invent the Internet". What the bill he pushed did was open the Internet to commercial use. On one hand, it's a boon. On the other hand, advertising is a "commercial use", which makes it a bit tougher for companies charging for Internet access to argue that the behavior is improper. Thus "Al Gore legalized Spam".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
No, Dilbert was already doing quite well when I picked it up, though it had not reached today's astronomical success and become an Industry unto itself yet. Scott was still living in the Bay Area, and still working for Pac Bell at the time.
One thing I did observe about Dilbert to Scott was that part of its appeal was that it was one of the few comics to make fun of not just high-tech but modern office life. There are other office comics -- Cathy, Sally Forth, even Blondie, but none attack the office the way Dilbert does. His best work seemed to come with Dilbert at work rather than Dilber at home.
Now I doubt it was because of my comment, but after that I noticed he started doing more stuff at the office, which was not necessarily a good thing since you needed some balance. But he did become a mega-industry so who can complain?
And sure, one can be proud of starting the first dot-com, by which I mean a company created to use the internet as a platform for business, which ClariNet was the first at. (UUNET was earlier but its business was to deliver you connectivity, rather than use the connectivity.)
Back then it was something new and exciting. Other people gave dotcom companies a bad name, wasting venture money (which I never took) and creating an illusion.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Green Card Lawyer spam was indeed was caused the term to really take off, but it was in use before their posting. People pay attention to Canter & Siegel (instead of giving them the footnote of obscurity they deserve) because they had such bravado about it. Other early massive posters, including jj@portal.com and the Jesus is coming poster had turned tail and run when they faced criticism. C&S met it head on, and that got people really angry.
And thus the term really grew. But theirs was not the first spam, not the first to be called a spam, not even the first big spam. It was the first for a new level of anger.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
I'm a unix geek like the rest of you.
The mudder's use is not recorded, of course, as far as I have found. Simply reports from mudders say that when people started flooding a mud with text, and later objects, somebody called it spamming. From the Monty Python, because the vikings keep repeating the word over and over and over again.
I have conflicting stories on the first use, but without logs we may never know.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
> You still haven't answered my question. What does verbosity or a full screen have to do with salty canned meat?
Nothing, except that Monty Python's Flying Circus did a skit where a modern, normal-looking guy goes into a restaurant full of 10th C. Viking customers and a lady (played by a guy in drag) behind the counter. He asks for something to eat, I forget what. He's told that he can get "Spam, eggs and spam, or spam, spam, and spam." After some discussion that goes nowhere, the Vikings break out into a chant of "Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam-ity spam!" They repeat this chant over and over until it drowns out everything else going on in the scene.
The idea is that screen flooding becomes like the Vikings chanting "Spam." Nothing else goes on because nobody else can get a word in edgewise over the racket.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
The ISP was indeed shut down, just from the load. This is not something to be proud of, the ISP was entirely innocent in all of this and suffered quite a bit. There was no reason for "them to get the message." They were the victims, not the perps. Especially then, before spam was common. Any ISP could have been victimized in this way. Later, a lot of sympathy came out for the ISP after people felt some guilt over what they had done to the ISP.
Sadly, we continue to blame the ISPs for the actions of their users when it comes to spam, but defend proudly their non-responsiblity when it comes to their users running filesharing tools, or putting up "offensive" websites etc.
The Jesus spam, and several of the earlier ones were also not crossposted. Check the links included in my history. I point to the original sources. What C&S did that was new was the sleaze of it, and the fact that while their ISP got wiped out (they just switched) they were unrecalcitrant, and even published their silly book.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
The DMA wants laws that outlaw the penis-pill spammers, while preserving the utility of your inbox as an advertising medium for their targeted important message, and outlaw any filtering/blocking of that message. (In other words, they want to allow their main-sleeze spam. :^)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Any bets that political spam by "responsible" organizations isn't defined as spam? The DMA lobby also makes sure that their "targeted marketing" isn't spam either.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Cantor and Siegel, I believe, back in 1994 was the first USENET spam... meaning 9 years ago. or am I mistaken, and there was an even earlier example?
:)
The earliest instance I could find (on groups.google.com) of the infamous Cantor and Siegel Green Card Lottery spam was posted 7 Feb, 1994.
Sometime in the evening of 17 Jan, 1994, a chap by the name of Clarence Thomas sent out the "Global Alert For All: Jesus Coming Soon" message.
Then of course there was the Dave Rhodes "MAKE.MONEY.FAST" post. I couldn't find the earliest instance, but I found people complaining about it in 1993.