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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.
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 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.
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!
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
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
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
.. when spam was fought against by military.At least Jimmy Carter didn't have the audacity to make a speech about the war on spam while standing in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner after this bold email was sent.
The CB App. What's your 20?
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
How come Al Gore isn't on this list? Interesting...
A: Older than spam, kiddo.
Q: ooooooooh
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Actually, by 1978 6-bit terminals were pretty rare, at least in the computer labs I frequented. There were no longer any significant 6-bit networks, so the only reason to have a six-bit terminal was if your terminal was a electromechanical teleprinter, because mechanisms that could print the entire 7-bit ASCII character set were more expensive than those that couldn't. And by 1978, electronic terminals were beginning to replace teleprinters. This was the period in which Bill Joy used an ADM3a to write vi — the fact that vi/vim still uses h, j, k, & l for cursor motion reflects the fact that the ADM3a had arrows on those keys (its cursor motion sequences were the corresponding Control characters)
But it doesn't surprise me that ARPA was still using 6-bit teleprinters. I can't give a logical reason, there's just something very military about it. Major Czahor probably didn't even enter the message himself; he would have dictated it to a Signals Clerk. Quaint term, that.
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 */
I wonder what one of those babies goes for nowadays. It might be a neat addition to my collection...
...wait, a 30-year-old spam just WORKED on me. Fucksocks!
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
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
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!