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Spam Is 30 Years Old

Posted by kdawson on from the happy-birthday-now-die-already dept.

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."

4 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. And in 30 years... by kevman42 · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is the first time I've purposely clicked a link to view spam.

    1. Re:And in 30 years... by ducatier · · Score: 5, Funny

      "on 2 may 78 digital equipment corporation (dec) sent out an arpanet message advertising their new computer systems. this was a flagrant violation of the use of arpanet as the network is to be used for official u.s. government business only. appropriate action is being taken to preclude its occurrence again."

      whew, glad they took action, such mis-uses could have gotten out of hand.

  2. Fail! by aliquis · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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.

  3. Happy birthday Spam! by ohzero · · Score: 5, Funny

    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