RE: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Origin of SPAM (Yes! I am a google GOD)

["Spurling, Shannon" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

In the posting at 
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=SPAM&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&scori
ng=d&as_drrb=b&as_mind=12&as_minm=8&as_miny=1988&as_maxd=30&as_maxm=12&a
s_maxy=1989&EMAIL:PROTECTED&rnum=6
(Sorry for the URL leingth... :-)
They say
">(but please don't krill me)

Notice X(ee)bo didn't say we're not allowed to krill him.  He knows
we're
allowed to krill him and thus we get to choose whether to be polite
and not krill him or to be bozotic and krill him.

I think I'll spam him.

Hey, X(ee)bo:  spam spam spam spam spam TREET spam spam spam TREET!

Kibology is better than Spam and Treet combined!  Wow!  Woo!  Good
religion!

WOO!  GOOD ARTICLE!!!"

Which is the first incarnation I could find of someone saying they would
spam someone else. This clearly shows a spam spam spam similar to the
skit, but also includes the TREET meat product. That indicates that
There are equal parts involved here. :-)
(Sorry, I'm just being silly)
I think that guy from the other article pointed out why the term spam.
He stated that the contents of the SPAM song were used many times as the
text garbage used against the mud. One thing to keep in mind here is
that Spam, as a word, was one step down from Foo and Bar. Spam was not a
meat product or a line from a skit any more. It was a nonsense word like
widget, foo, bar, etc... But, it was much more fun. When being silly and
knocking other people off the net with a repeated text, why not just
create a message that says spam spam spam, and hey, it looks just like
the Vikings singing in that one skit. I think you have to understand the
nonsensical fun loving academic geek attitude of the early Usenet. Now
it's all full of stodgy old AOL, marketing driven, pop culture livin',
investor givin' people who have no silly sense of humor. :-) They need a
definition of spam that is short, terse, and definitive. They say,"
yeah, it's from the skit because it drowns out any thing useful". That's
so not in the same sprit as the original internet. I guess that's why I
don't like the way the popular media defines the origin of the word
Spam. It's so incomplete and in a way inaccurate. 
So, in short, it's spam because it's a short silly word that the early
internet was in love with and could easily be machine generated to cause
a DOS. :-)


Shannon Spurling
WAN Engineer -Specialist

MOREnet, Network Services, Core Network
3212 LeMone Industrial Blvd.
Columbia, MO 65201

Main:(573) 884-7200   Fax:(573)884-6673

EMAIL:PROTECTED
EMAIL:PROTECTED


-----Original Message-----
From: King, Jonathan W. 
Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 11:11 PM
To: MLUG Off-Topic Discussion
Subject: RE: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Origin of SPAM (Yes! I am a google GOD)


On Tue, 30 Sep 2003, Ross, Matthew wrote:

> > Community 4 clearly overlaps with Community 3, and it is the KEY to 
> > the mystery.  Group 4 sprouts up as the BBS movement is waning, but 
> > the MUD movement is growing fast in the late 80s.  In the MUD world,

> > "spamming" comes to mean a few things.
> 
> Which brings us back to where we started, what caused it to "mean
> a few things"? Was it because it irritated them in the same way
> the Viking song did?  Was it because they responded to it "But I
> don't like SPAM"?  Or was it because they saw the term overused on
> communities 1-3, and if so, which source was the origin?

MUDers would use the term, it appears, whenever a network resource 
was being abused in some way.  So it seems to start with people 
overloading servers by running multiple characters, or spewing 
garbage text messages at each other, and then even writing utilities 
(spam (1) in particular) to do so.  From that use, it glides easily 
to a use in terms of email ("don't spam my mailbox"), where it means 
to send unwanted stuff.  This part is really clear now.  What's less 
clear is why they picked on the term "spam".  In the early to 
mid-80s, "spam" mostly is used on Usenet in the form of host-names, 
or .sig quotes ("I'm pink therefore I'm SPAM.") and, of course, 
quotations from that famous Monty Python skit.  So I think the amiga 
community was key, since they were bbs-ers, became MUDers and 
started to talk about SPAM all out of proportion to its role in the 
amiga platform.

Sorry to make this seem less clear.
 
> I don't think it has been narrowed down to that by them, but more
> by the media. You can still see "No spamming" in MOTD's on many
> IRC servers, and I've heard it used for various other systems.

I don't think that's right.  The term is still used for Usenet,
MUDs, (to the extent they still exist?) email, and apparently IRC.  
Email abuse has now become the primary meaning, but that road
started pretty early.

jking


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