Software utilities

I’m not sure if this is an anniversary worth commemorating (apart from the a**holes who send it out in the first place), but today is the 30th anniversary of the irritating phenomena that is ‘spam’. Yes, dear readers, break open a bottle of champagne, and munch on copious chunks of cheese, because 30 years ago, on the 3rd of May 1978, the first ever spam was sent out.

On that blessed day of our Lord, a ‘marketing message’ was sent to 400 people via Arpanet (a pre-internet network). Alas, if only 400 was still the magic number. Nowadays, it’s far more common for 400 spam mails to be sent to one person every day. My Yahoo account comes pretty close to half that every day and I know of people who get way more than that.

‘Spam’ was given its name in 1993 by a guy called Joel Furr who worked as an administrator for Usenet. Joel got his idea for the name after watching a Monty Python sketch in which a bunch of Vikings were shouting and chanting ‘Spam, Spam, Spam’ in a restaurant where too much meat was featured on the menu.

(It would be interesting to find out what ‘spam’ was called pre-1993)

Now sent out in their gazillions, 3rd of May 2008 marks the advancement of technology and more technically-sophisticated and persistently-irritating a**holes who either have nothing better to do, or are looking to scam you out of your money. Either way, these are geeks who really should, instead, be working for Microsoft so that the company never comes up with the disgrace that is Windows Vista EVER AGAIN (wishful thinking, I guess).

In any case, spam is unfortunately here to stay for now. I can only hope that in 2038, on the 60th anniversary of the first spam ever sent, that huge strides would have been made to eradicate it.