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Spam Is 30 Years Old
holy_calamity writes "New Scientist commemorates spam's 30th anniversary, a week from today. The first spam message — archived here — was sent to 393 users of ARPANET on May 2, 1978 by someone from computing pioneers DEC. They had to type in all the addresses by hand first."
In the spirit of the history of Spam, I think it also bears mentioning something I didn't see in the article: a Usenet phrase "Eternal September" which was September of 1993. An exponential growth of spam and gullible users ensured constant income for spammers and provided the initial hit of income for people like The Spam King (I won't even dignify him with printing his name). They've been chasing the dragon ever since at the expense of the hardware and software of the internet. And to think that if the spammers had missed that initial exposure of thousands of people willing to "increase what she prefers your size XXL no one will know you use works 100%" then we might not be in the situation we are today.
Judges today should force spammers to work with law enforcement and security companies to figure out how to stop others before they even start. If not for an initial hit of funding, I doubt any spammer would continue.
My work here is dung.
Heh, nice pro spam message by RMS there.
This is the first time I've purposely clicked a link to view spam.
I love the fact that the message starts with a buffer overflow.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
"APPROPRIATE ACTION IS BEING TAKEN TO PRECLUDE ITS OCCURRENCE AGAIN."
So, uhm, they failed?
ok i won't write in caps but it's a quote damnit.
ok i won't write in caps but it's a quote damnit.
ok i won't write in caps but it's a quote damnit.
ok i won't write in caps but it's a quote damnit.
ok i won't write in caps but it's a quote damnit.
I half-expected to see a message more along the lines of, "Xp4nd y0ur R4m, d3creeese ur l4tency".
Thanks for making people focus less on sending me physical junk mail. The development of a spam filter which automatically rubs it in feces and sends it back to the originator wasn't going so well. The robots were the hard part. Stupid robots.
-- http://www.criticalassets.com
that we can't get today's spammers to manually type in every address too. That might cut down on spam a bit.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
It was sometime in the early 1990s when some lawyers posted a message to every usenet newsgroup advertising a greencard service. I dont think they did it by hand, but automated script.
Usenet hasnt fared too well lately. Soem Chinese guy piosts tens of thousands of messages a day trying to sell direct factory output. Changes the posting address in every messsage so normal filters have problems.
I think the younger crowd has long moved over to special interest groups on social netowrking sites.
I think they should each be made to eat a 30 year old can of SPAM(TM) for what they unknowingly started.
Invenio via vel creo
This is spam's "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you." It's so special, it brings a tear to my eye.
They forgot to include a remove link though. WTF?
And he couldn't get laid, even then !
And RMS is STILL a whinging windbag.... Some things never change!
RMS truly is a visionary.
For those wondering, the original spam (nee Hormel spiced ham) turned 70 last year.
IN ENFORCEMENT OF THIS POLICY DCA IS DEPENDENT ON THE ARPANET SPONSORS, AND HOST AND TIP LIAISONS. IT IS IMPERATIVE YOU INFORM YOUR USERS AND CONTRACTORS WHO ARE PROVIDED ARPANET ACCESS THE MEANING OF THIS POLICY.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.
MAJOR RAYMOND CZAHOR
CHIEF, ARPANET MANAGEMENT BRANCH, DCA Did Major Czahor have a 6-bit terminal, or was he just indulging in the traditional military fondness for capital letters? But what's really funny is that he doesn't care about the spamming as such, he just wants to remind everybody that the network was for "U.S. Government Business Only". Which is laughable, since unofficial use of ARPANET was rampant, especially in 1978. That's how Zork got developed, with its authors writing it in pieces and using feedback from the ARPANET community to improve the game. There was also an excellent database of limericks; a friend with ARPANET access was good enough to print it out for me, but I've long since lost it. Anybody seen it online? For that matter, is there a PDP-10 emulator somewhere running the original Zork? Not the Fortran port (which never had the complete game) the original MDL version.
So, no more DEC-20, no more Dunfey's, but we still have spam.
The vikings ate SPAM almost a millennium ago.
It looks like RMS was looking for love back then too!
10-MAY-78 23:20:30-PDT,2250;000000000001
Mail-from: MIT-AI rcvd at 7-MAY-78 2316-PDT
Date: 8 MAY 1978 0213-EDT
From: RMS at MIT-AI (Richard M. Stallman)
Subject: MSGGROUP# 697 Some Thoughts about advertising
To: stefferud at USC-ISI
Redistributed-To: [ISI]<MsgGroup>Mailing.List;154:
Redistributed-By: STEFFERUD (connected to MSGGROUP)
Redistributed-Date: 8 MAY 1978
---EDIT--
4) Would a dating service for people on the net be "frowned upon" by DCA? I hope not. But even if it is, don't let that stop you from notifying me via net mail if you start one.
Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. But I didn't dive up! Thus, I have figured out a way to beat the system, here it goes:
while echo "SPAM!"; do echo "SPAM!"; done
So for much for a SPAM filter, slashdot!
It's entirely possible that he really did have only a 6 bit character set. It was 1978, after all.
...laura
Thank you spam for providing me with a relatively high paying job for the past five years.
If it were not for spam I'd still be doing maintainance on crufty old Fortran applications.
Ahhh yes, the "DECSYSTEM-2020". Brings back fond memories...
Damn AC, you beat me to it. That comment alone made the whole thing worth reading. I was reading along, not really paying attention to who was who, but I got to that line and thought, 'okay, who is THIS yutz?' So I scrolled back and lo-and-behold! It's Stallman.
Someone should make a Richard Lolman pic, "I'm in yer ARPAnet, begging for dates." Or "Online Dating: yer doin' it wrong." Or even "I can has girlfriend?"
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I just couldn't resist.
Man: You sit here, dear. ...spam spam spam egg and spam; spam spam spam spam spam spam baked beans spam spam spam... ...or Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam.
Wife: All right.
Man: Morning!
Waitress: Morning!
Man: Well, what've you got?
Waitress: Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam;
Vikings: Spam spam spam spam...
Waitress:
Vikings: Spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam!
Waitress:
Wife: Have you got anything without spam?
Waitress: Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Wife: I don't want ANY spam!
Man: Why can't she have egg bacon spam and sausage?
Wife: THAT'S got spam in it!
Man: Hasn't got as much spam in it as spam egg sausage and spam, has it?
Vikings: Spam spam spam spam... (Crescendo through next few lines...)
Wife: Could you do the egg bacon spam and sausage without the spam then?
Waitress: Urgghh!
Wife: What do you mean 'Urgghh'? I don't like spam!
Vikings: Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!
Waitress: Shut up!
Vikings: Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!
Waitress: Shut up! (Vikings stop) Bloody Vikings! You can't have egg bacon spam and sausage without the spam.
Wife: I don't like spam!
Man: Sshh, dear, don't cause a fuss. I'll have your spam. I love it. I'm having spam spam spam spam spam spam spam beaked beans spam spam spam and spam!
Vikings: Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!
Waitress: Shut up!! Baked beans are off.
Man: Well could I have her spam instead of the baked beans then?
Waitress: You mean spam spam spam spam spam spam... (but it is too late and the Vikings drown her words)
Vikings: (Singing elaborately...) Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam! Spam spa-a-a-a-a-am spam spa-a-a-a-a-am spam. Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Spam spam spam spam!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
PS. to the slashscript: that's a quote, stupid, it's not "yelling", dumb idiot, it's 1978. Everybody was "YELLING" at that time.
PPS. Sorry, guys, just skip this part. This is for the noble sake of quoting the original content IN ORIGINAL FORM.
History
"Idiot" was originally created to refer to "layman, person lacking professional skill", "person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning".[6][7] Declining to take part in public life, such as democratic government of the polis (city state), such as the Athenian democracy, was considered dishonorable. "Idiots" were seen as having bad judgment in public and political matters. Over time, the term "idiot" shifted away from its original connotation of selfishness and came to refer to individuals with overall bad judgment-individuals who are "stupid". In modern English usage, the terms "idiot" and "idiocy" describe an extreme folly or stupidity, its symptoms (foolish or stupid utterance or deed). In psychology, it is a historical term for the state or condition now called profound mental retardation.[8]
Disability
In 19th and early 20th century medicine and psychology, an "idiot" was a person with a very severe mental retardation or a very low IQ level, as a sufferer of cretinism, defining idiots as people whose IQ were below 20 (with a standard deviation of 16);
In current medical classification, these people are now said to have profound mental retardation, and the word "idiot" is no longer used as a scientific term.
United States law
The California Penal Code Section 26 states that "Idiots" are one of six types of people who are not capable of committing crimes.[9]
In several states, "idiots" do not have the right to vote:
* Arkansas Article III, Section 5[10]
* Iowa Article II, section 5[11]
* Kentucky Section 145[12]
* Mississippi Article 12, Section 241[13]
* New Jersey (Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 6)[14]
A resolution was passed by the State Legislature in January 2007 to remove "idiot or insane", and to add the qualifying phrase "who has been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting." As the resolution put it succintly, "This proposed amendment to the Constitution shall be submitted to the people at the next general election occurring more than three months after the final agreement. This constitutional amendment shall become part of the New Jersey Constitution upon approval by the voters." [15] The amendment passed the referendum on November 6, 2007. Hence, "New Jersey" is now crossed out in this list. [16]
* New Mexico Article VII, section 1[17]
* Ohio (Article V, Section 6)[18]
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Speaking of spam, there are all kinds of spam. There's what some humorless dweebs call comment spam, and then of course I must try to sell you some of this stuff.
Then of course there's Spam, SPAM, and S.P.A.M..
CLICK HERE FOR FREE!! pr0n
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
While it is very common to only refer to electronic messages as spam, it would seem that a more general definition would put Spam much older.
Spam should be defined to include ANY unsolicited proactive message. For instance, I consider it spam when some telemarketing company has a computer call my cell phone and play a recorded advertisement (despite being on the DNC list). For that matter, it's also spam when a person telemarketer wastes my time, trying to sell something.
Aside from unsolicited phone calls, how much junk mail do you receive. Think how many trees are killed, and how much fuel is burnt transporting, and how much energy was used, producing junk mail which goes into the trash after trying to sort out important mail.
As for estimating an actual age, who knows.
Nov 23, 1987 - 1st documented use of the word "spam" to describe unwanted electronic correspondence.
See http://tinyurl.com/4jg5w4 (the url is a tinyurl that links to a google groups posting)
And yes, I'm the one who said that back then, and no, I didn't think I was doing anything big, it just seemed, well, obvious at the time.
Paul Czarnecki Cezanne
30 years later one crap message to a list can still generate dozens of messages bitching about the extra traffic and waste of resources.
Never argue with a man carrying a water buffalo
Lowercase letters that we now take for granted.
This title is misleading. Spam is actually 70 years old, going on 71; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(food)
How come Al Gore isn't on this list? Interesting...
If the first message were sent out on April 25, 1978, then it would be the birthday now. This story is posted a week early.
In this form, the story I'm responding to is just advertising the upcoming birthday of spam - thus it is meta-spam.
A: Older than spam, kiddo.
Q: ooooooooh
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Nice. Apparently this means I've never known a world without spam. ;-(
I was there, but the list seems to start with D and my name starts with C, so I didn't get the spam. I did hear about it, but it wasn't all that big a deal.
Those who weren't around in 1978 seem to be unaware that ALL WE HAD WERE DUMB GLASS TTYS THAT ONLY SENT CAPS. If you don't know what a TTY is you might want to look it up...
It's kind of neat to read TFA - they mentioned many things which ARPAnet wasn't intended for but would eventually become profit centers on the internet: dating services, job finding services, advertising, and general announcements (births in this instance). In this one discussion of what the network should and shouldn't be for they called out some of the major industries to come.
I realized spam was overkill when I received a letter (real, dead tree letter) from some USA company wanting to sell me penis enlargement products at my home address... ... in a forsaken city in Mexico. Really, how much did it cost for them to send me such letters?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I believe the meat product sold in cans often is, too.
/* No Comment */
>>Nevertheless, the email was a portent of things to come. Today, spam makes up 80 to 90% of all emails sent - around 120 billion messages per day - and is a multi-billion dollar industry.>>
Steel and textiles, those are industry. The waste e-mail activity is not an industry.
What we should be doing is shuting it down.
If only!
Just look at the language:
"A new low-end member" and promises of an "upward extension".
It would have been for Viagra (had it been invented 24 years earlier).
Guess you never used VMS apparently...
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
From: RMS at MIT-AI (Richard M. Stallman)
If I had a job to offer, I would offer it to my friends first. Is this "evil"?
Interesting how someone who is so strongly against giving access to source code only to specific, trusted people has no problem with giving access to employment only to specific, trusted people.
Rob
TFA is about the first unsolicited commercial email. That became the definition of email that came to be called "spam" well after the first reference to the Monty Python sketch, which was brought up to describe massively multiple posts of advertising to usenet. It says at http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamterm.html that Joel Furr was first to call it spam, but I seem to remember someone else stating that it reminded them of "a Monty Python sketch -- spam, spam, spam, spam."
BTW, the Hormel people never had a problem with the use of the term. In part because it was free PR, but also because they were gracious good humored about it. They went as far as to offer their own selected graphic of a spam can that could be used as a link to their pages. The idea as floated to them was to have their permission to produce a 2-link bar that said "This is Spam" [Hormel link] "and this is spam" [link to page with definition of problematic usenet and email traffic]. I can confidently state their being gracious and good natured because I was the one that suggested the links idea to them, requested the graphic of their choice, and talked with them about their reactions to use of the term. In this respect, the second of the "Cultural References" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(Monty_Python) is incorrect, though the History section of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(electronic) gets it right.
They later reacted a little differently when people insisted on using the capitalized name in their own software and anti-spam sites (such as Spam Arrest) and couldn't see their way clear to use the more generic, lower case term. People criticized them for doing so without bothering to consider that they were forced by trademark law to protect their mark (the capitalized word) no matter how much they disliked doing so, lest they lose trademark status. Sadly, few seem to remember that Hormel asked nicely at first that the lower case be used unless referring to their product. The assertion by Spam Arrest that "No company can claim trademark rights on a generic term" is wrong: a term when trademarked before it comes into common use (trademark status being awarded 40 years prior to this "common use") remains a trademark as long as the owner acts to (at least attempt to) prevent its use as a generic term. Such action kept "xerox" and "kleenex" from becoming an accepted generic terms for photocopying and facial tissue, while failure to do so allowed "aspirin" and "heroin" to become generic terms despite starting as brand names, both originally owned by Bayer AG. As a German company it was unable to protect the marks against generic use in the US, particularly during WW II. Although Hormel lost the court cases that resulted, they acted with a "reasonable attempt" to protect the ownership of the mark, and so didn't lose it.
BTW, TFA is not a novel article. CNET published one on its 25th anniversary in 2003. In that respect, TFA is repeated public posting of commercial (or at least commercially supported) information. TFA fits the original definition of spam. In any case, New Scientist loses points for copying the idea for the article.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Everyone knows that Bill gates "solved" spam years ago...
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/256579_software23.asp
We should have made an example of the first spammer 30 years ago and strung him up by the giblets to a tree or something. Perhaps that would have helped scared people straight.
whew. I'm glad they nipped that in the bud.
You'd swear 30 years would've killed spam off. But it just gets worse and worse.
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
(sigh) if only he were around to combat spam today
how is babby formed?
I'm really curious about how many hours he spent to send all the emails, considering the low speed of ARPANET
Life is a foreign language, every one mispronounce it.
I don't think I've ever seen one that does that, and it shouldn't. However it's just as trivial to change the "From:" field. There's no provision in the SMTP protocol to validate this, or anything else for that matter.
I'm happy to say I've never clicked on the stuff, but one particular message will always have a special place. The subject was for "antitank viagra" I wasn't sure exactly what it was, but I felt maybe the military should be researching it.
How about a can for each recipient they have spammed? Spam's like twinkies. It doesn't go bad until after you open it, but if you had to eat 400 or so cans of the stuff you'd probably die, or at least puke a lot.
College-Pages.com - Online Colleges, Degrees, and Programs
I keep getting emails from 2038.
God spoke to me.
He didn't care that it was an advertisement. He cared that it violated netiquette standards for message formatting.
Big difference. Spamming itself wasn't the issue.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").