Happy Spamiversary! 345
Shippy writes "Ten years ago today, a pair of Arizona attorneys launched a homemade marketing software program that forever changed the Internet. It was the birth of spam. They did this by whipping up a Perl script that flooded message boards advertising their legal services." Update: 04/14 05:26 GMT by S : That'd be ten years ago, not twenty.
The new math? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The new math? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The new math? (Score:5, Funny)
PERL is mother.
PERL is father.
Humans where deamed advanced enought in 1987 for PERL to be shown to them.
PERL is everything (Including the secret behind happy fun ball).
Re:The new math? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The new math? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The new math? (Score:5, Funny)
A pair of Arizona attorneys sent the spam 10 years ago each, for a total of 20 years ago.
Ah so it's not new math, it's RIAA math...
Re:The new math? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Job Security (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Job Security (Score:4, Interesting)
All you Lawyers and Spammers out there.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The new math? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The new math? (Score:2)
Re:The new math? (Score:2)
It was sent in March not April! (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems they just picked a date so they could say today is the tenth aniversary.
The main spam run was April 12 (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, there were previous incidents. The Arpanet DEC spam was much earlier, but it was manually typed by a secretary. Zumabot [geekt.org] was an earlier robospammer, but he was noncommercial. April 12 1994 [google.com] is the true Pearl Harbor (or 9-11, for the historically challenged) of spam. The day that convinced us it was time to fight back hard.
Show of hands: who else here remembers exactly where you were (and what you felt) when you saw Green Card Lottery in every newsgroup? I spent a good long time mailbombing dumps fromRe:The new math? (Score:2, Funny)
1994 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:1994 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:1994 (Score:5, Funny)
That can't be right. My resume says I have 20 years of Perl experience.
Re:1994 (Score:4, Informative)
That's OK, you worked 12 hours per day and the time adds up to the equivalent of 20 years.
Re:1994 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:1994 (Score:3, Funny)
Someone called in the late 90s, looking for someone with ten years of Linux experience. The response? "Well, the only person I know who can even come close to that is Linus Torvalds." "Great! Can you tell me how to contact him?"
Then again, I remember headhunters looking for people with five years of experience with Access in 92, 93, 94. Access came out in November 1992 (and only cost $99).
Re:1994 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:1994 (Score:3, Interesting)
They hire the person that lies and says they've been doing it for 10 years. If the HR dept is clueless enough to ask for 10 years of experience with young technology, then they're not going to be smart enough to call you on it.
I guess you could point out that they're requirements are not possible. They'll probably think you're jealous of the 4 guys who interviewed before you that lied about it.
-B
Re:1994 (Score:5, Funny)
Strangely, I haven't got a job yet. I guess managers just don't like know-it-alls....
Re:1994 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:1994 (Score:5, Interesting)
Being able to trace your ancestry back 1400 years is rare indeed.
But being descended from royalty almost certainly isn't.
Consider: you have two parents. That's one generation back -- and let's assume that each generation averages 25 years -- it's actually a bit less, but we'll say 25 to keep things simple. Two generations back, 50 years back, you have 4 grandparents. Three generations back -- 75 years ago -- you have 8 great grandparents.
At this point anyone who's ever used base 2 can see where this is going: number of ancestors is 2 to the power of generations ago, and years ago is generations ago times 25.
So ten generations back is 250 years ago, at which point we need to find 2^10 = 1024 ancestors of that generation.
Twenty generations back, around 1500 CE, we need 2^20 ancestors. That's 1,048,576, or somewhat more than one million.
Thirty generations back, in 1250, we need 2^30 or over a a billion ancestors, just for you. But the estimated world population -- even including those peoples in Australia the Americas not in contact with Europe -- in 1250 is only 400 million. We're "short" more than 600 million people.
How do we account for the "missing" ancestors? It's simple really: in the thirtieth generation back, you indeed had to have had those billion ancestors, but they needn't have been one billion unique ancestors.
Consider: Bob have whatever number of ancestors in generation N that Bob has. Alice also has some number of ancestors in generation N. If Bob and Alice have a child, Chris, together, Chris's ancestors in generation N+1 are simply the union of Bob's ancestors in generation N and Alice's ancestors in generation N. For example's sake, let's set N=2, the generation of Bob and Alice's grandparents. Bob has four grandparents, Alice has four grandparents. So Chris has eight great-grandparents. But if Bob and Alice are cousins, they share two grandparents, and while Chris still has eight great-grandparents (in a manner of speaking) he has only six unique grandparents.
So we can account for those "missing" 673 million ancestors by assuming that there's quite a bit of overlap in everybody's family trees. And indeed, when we consider that breeding most often takes place in a local area -- no Danes were having kids with Australians in 600 CE, and indeed few Frenchmen were crossing the channel to mate with the English, the overlap must be even greater.
Add to this that of the enduring perquisites of success for males -- indeed, for the Darwinist, the only measure of success -- has been access to females, we can assume that a monarch's sexual access was in most cases extensive. Historians tells us that in pre-Columbian America, sometimes a whole village's "crop" of virgin girls would be set aside exclusively for the solely for the Aztec king, on pain of death.
Or consider Moulay Ismail ("the Bloodthirsty") Moroccan Emperor from 1672 to 1727; he's said to have sired eight-hundred eighty eight children on the 500 women of his harem.
While we know of no European monarch this audacious, the tradition of droit du seigneur and the ready availability of "wet-nurses" in royal nurseries attests that kings would be men even in Christendom.
Given this Darwinian competition for sexual access, and the necessary overlapping of family trees, it seems probable that anyone alive today can proudly claim descent from at least one, if not several monarchs -- and our all being "princes of the blood" is, ironically, as good an argument for democracy as any.
Re:1994 (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, wait. I know this one! I'm driving the train!
Re:1994 (Score:4, Informative)
I feel I should point out that droit du seigneur is a myth. It never really happened. See this collumn by Cecil Adams:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_181.htm
Dear Cecil:
Did medieval lords really have the "right of the first night"--that is, the right to be the first to bed the local brides? This figured in the movie Braveheart, and I know I have seen other references to it. I'm not saying the big shots didn't take advantage, but I have a hard time believing this was a generally accepted custom, much less a law. --Paul S. Piper, Honolulu, Hawaii
Cecil replies:
My feeling exactly. It's one thing to have your way with the local maidens. It's something else to persuade society as a whole that this is a cool idea. "Sure, honey, we can get married, but first you have to do the rumba with some old guy with bad teeth." Also, once the element of surprise was lost, don't you think this policy would present some risks? Granted women were supposed to be the weaker sex and all, but they knew how to fillet fish.
The right of the first night--also known as jus primae noctis (law of the first night), droit du seigneur (the lord's right), etc.--has been the subject of locker-room humor and a fair amount of scholarly debate for centuries. Voltaire condemned it in 1762, it's a plot device in Beaumarchais' The Marriage of Figaro, and various old histories refer to it.
The 16th-century chronicler Boece, for example, says that in ancient times the Scottish king Evenus III decreed that "the lord of the ground sal have the maidinhead of all virginis dwelling on the same." Supposedly this went on for hundreds of years until Saint Margaret persuaded the lords to replace the jus primae noctis with a bridal tax.
Not likely. Skeptics point out that (1) there never was any King Evenus, (2) Boece included a lot of other stuff in his account that was clearly mythical, and (3) he was writing long after the alleged events.
The story is pretty much the same all over. If you believe the popular tales, the droit du seigneur prevailed throughout much of Europe for centuries. Yet detailed examinations of the available records by reputable historians have found "no evidence of its existence in law books, charters, decretals, trials, or glossaries," one scholar notes. No woman ever commented on the practice, unfavorably or otherwise, and no account ever identifies any female victim by name.
It's true that in some feudal jurisdictions there was something known as the culagium, the requirement that a peasant get permission from his lord to marry. Often this required the payment of a fee. Some say the fee was a vestige of an earlier custom of buying off the lord so he wouldn't get physical with the bride.
Similarly, ecclesiastical authorities in some regions demanded a fee before a new husband was allowed to sleep with his wife. Some think this means the clergy once upon a time exercised the right of the first night too. But come on, how many first nights can one woman have? What did these guys do, take a number?
The more likely interpretation is that the culagium was an attempt by the nobles to make sure they didn't lose their serfs by marriage to some neighboring lord. The clerical marriage fee, meanwhile, was apparently paid by newlyweds to get out of a church requirement for a three-day precoital waiting period. (You were supposed to pray during this time and get yourself in the proper frame of mind. Guess they figured a leather teddy wouldn't do it.)
Did the droit du seigneur exist elsewhere in the world? Possibly in some primitive societies. But most of the evidence for this is pathetically lame--unreliable travelers' accounts and so on.
A few holdouts claim we don't have any definite evidence that the right of the first night didn't exist. But I'd say most reputable historians today would agree that the jus primae noctis, in Europe anyway, was strictly a male fantasy.
None of this is to suggest that men in power didn't or don't use their positions to extort sex from women. But since when did some creep with a sword (gun, fancy office, drill sergeant's stripes) figure he needed a law to justify rape?
--CECIL ADAMS
Re:Bill Bryson covered this nicely. (Score:5, Funny)
That's not as much of a coincidence as it seems, because, now that you mention it, I'm related to Bill Bryson.
You see, his great-great-great-great-great....
Re:Bill Bryson covered this nicely. (Score:3, Funny)
( Lonzo & Oscar )
Now many, many years ago, when I was twenty-three,
I was married to a widow who was pretty as could be.
This widow had a grown-up daughter who had hair of red.
My father fell in love with her, and soon they, too, were wed.
This made my dad my son-in-law and changed my very life,
My daughter was my mother, cause she was my father's wife.
To complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy,
I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy.
My little baby then became
Re:1994 (Score:2)
1984? (Score:2)
Damn... so much for my theory that spam == newspeak!
-a
jerks (Score:2, Insightful)
/me raises wine glass (Score:2, Funny)
It's 2014!!!??? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It's 2014!!!??? (Score:3, Funny)
20 years, or 10? (Score:3, Funny)
math is so hard
Re:20 years, or 10? (Score:3, Funny)
I thought... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I thought... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I thought... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the whole ten year spam anniversary thing is made up by people that didn't get Internet access until after Windows 95 came out.
Re:I thought... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I thought... (Score:3, Informative)
Anyone remember those good old days when you would get an unsolicited email, reply to postmaster@domain with a suitably indignant response
Re:I thought... (Score:3, Informative)
Here it is: http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamreact.html [templetons.com]
Please (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Please (Score:5, Informative)
Nevertheless, the female died a few years back after they were both disbarred in Florida, or Tenessee or maybe Arizona, they were licensed in a number of states. I think the male went on to be a used car dealer or something quite suitably of that ilk.
Oh, and to the article poster/slash non-editors, 20 years: Were you trying to give me sudden mid-life crisis syndrome or what? Like I don't feel old enough already not being a part of a flash-mob super-computer, geeze...
Re:Please (Score:3, Funny)
Dude, anything before this current year was "before gay marriage was popular".
Re:Please (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, Shippy, fix your clock (Score:2, Troll)
so what this is saying is... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:so what this is saying is... (Score:3, Funny)
Fatal flaw in Usenet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Web boards today aren't bulletproof against spam, but they've at least raised the bar high enough that the cost of writing a program to defeat the security would wipe out any profits from a spam exercise.
That's not it... (Score:3, Informative)
Not at all. The reason that it isn't that popular is that with web boards, each server may simply change the posting process a little, breaking compatibility with any script with little effort at all, including their own past system.
While on Usenet, it's write once, run everywhere because you can't chang
Re:That's not true. (Score:2)
A single web board, sure... but the USENET spam was one against every forum in existance at the time. You can't do that in one script, there are too many differences between the various implementations.
Sometimes standards are a strength, sometimes it's a weakness...
Re:That's not true. (Score:3)
It works on the same principle as googlebombing [wikipedia.org] (like the miserable failure [whitehouse.gov] thing), except you post stuff like video poker [evilspammercasino.com] (so that, in this example, google searches for "video poker" lead to the spammer's website). It works because many bloggers use default settings for everythin
Heh (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe not so ironic?
Just Great! (Score:5, Funny)
Surprise? (Score:4, Funny)
(J/K, There are some lovable lawyers, like the EFF and FSF ones
Lawyers Started Spam... (Score:5, Funny)
It's only 99% of them that give the 1% a bad name.
- Neil Wehneman
Re:Lawyers Started Spam... (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, that one spam post was all anyone could talk about for a week! And on hundreds of groups, people were posting followups to the original post, warning any foreigners that might be reading that the service being offered (they were selling an opportunity to enter the INS green card lottery, IIRC) was available from the U.S. Government for free. (Didn't help- they still made a fortune.) I remember the green card lottery post being mentioned prominently in the Cyberscope column in U.S. News (the print version). Everyone was just stunned that someone would do this.
The posters wrote a book on how to make a fortune on the "Information Superhighway" (this is what the Internet was called during 1994, before everyone learned its real name). It was full of lovely quotes:
These are the kind of lawyers who keep meth lab guard dogs in their apartments. Now we should resist lawyer-bashing. There are a lot of asshat lawyers around, and it's a real struggle sometimes to keep in mind that most of the rights we hold dear in this country would be empty, unenforceable, and meaningless if we were to give in to our desires to round them up and keep them in concentration camps. My own wife is a lawyer and never made more than $30k as a public defender (before she quit the profession entirely- she's a stripper now). But it's really striking how you can be a lawyer and be a total scumbag, too. It seems scumminess does not interfere at all with lawyering.
Anyway, this is getting away from my point, which is to reminisce about the end of the spam-free days, and to impress on you young kiddies that this was a really big deal when it happened. The second guy who did it didn't get one tenth as much attention. The first one you see is the one that makes you say, "well, there goes the Internet".
Re:Lawyers Started Spam... (Score:4, Informative)
Part of the outrage was that the spammers did not crosspost. Their script posted separately to each newsgroup. If they had crossposted, then the spam message would occupy a small amount of space on each server, but as separate posts, it occupied thousands of times as much. Some small sites with small retention were seriously hurt.
Re:Lawyers Started Spam... (Score:5, Informative)
Time to be festive! (Score:2, Funny)
The _real_ question (Score:2)
Did anyone actually pay them for the privilege of receiving widely available information?
Not the first spam, but a new level of chatter (Score:5, Informative)
The C&S spam had two firsts to it. One, they were the first to not turn tail and run after seeing the anger of the net. Prior spammers had quickly given up. C&S fought back.
That leads to first #2, they caused a lot of conversation and awareness, and that led to the term going mainstream, away from just lesser use in newsgroups and MUDS.
A while ago I wrote a history of the term spam and the early spam events [templetons.com]. You may find it useful in tracing the history of this and other events.
Two of the big anniversaries were about a year ago. The 25th anniversary of the first E-mail spam I found, and the 10th anniversary of the term SPAM being used to describe a USENET flooding.
The first really big USENET spam was january of 94, it was religious. A big commercial spam dates back to the 80s, and jj@cup.portal.com.
Re:Not the first spam, but a new level of chatter (Score:2)
Feanturi shouts, 'SPAM!'
Dufus says, 'So let's kill this thing...'
Feanturi shouts, 'SPAM!'
Feanturi shouts, 'SPAM!'
Filbert says, 'Ok'
Feanturi shouts, 'SPAM!'
Feanturi shouts, 'SPAM!'
Feanturi shouts, 'SPAM!'
Dufus says, 'Let's wait till the spamming stops.'
Feanturi shouts, 'SPAM!'
Feanturi shouts, 'SPAM!'
Feanturi shouts, 'Lovely SPAM! Wond
Re:Not the first spam, but a new level of chatter (Score:2, Funny)
Me: "Captain, the engines are going to blow! They're full of SPAM!"
Bob: "Oh god they're back!"
Mary: "I'm outa here."
Joe: "Groan..."
Me: "Where no SPAM has gone before!"
Spam was invented in... (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.hormel.com/brands/brandview3.asp?id=2 [hormel.com]
I like it fried on a sandwich with honey mustard.
Now we can all celebrate (Score:2, Funny)
Happy dupiversary! (Score:3, Informative)
That's the Answer!! (Score:5, Funny)
Sigh... (Score:5, Funny)
wrong approach (Score:2)
Blaming them for spam would be like blaming richtor for earth quakes. It's going to happen, it's pbvious.
Considering the way people were sreading the word about email presented it, it was bound to happen.
"It's just like mail, but you get instantly!"
Well, what is mail used for? selling things.
OMG (Score:3, Funny)
"Twenty years ago today, a pair of Arizona
Wow what a great idea - has anyone tried it since?
Heh heh, kidding of course - Well, thinking that its only 10 years old - and hated more than a lot of diseases, hopefully there will be a cure soon enough.
There's spam, then there's the partner in crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Trust me, I know spam to the tune of 10,000 spams daily collected at my distributed spamtraps. Overwhelming, spam is arriving through Windows hosts on broadband connections. Ask any mail admin this and they'll tell you the same.
It's not because it's broadband; it's because Windows machines are so goddam easy to compromise remotely and execute code on. Just today there was a big patch released for 20 major flaws, of which 8 can lead to remote code execution. It's time we stop shrugging off as spam and realize that Microsoft is responsible for the flood of spam we get today. The flaws in their software will be exploited X days from now in the next automated worm zombie-bot.
Anti-spammers have been doing a great job putting the pressure on spam-friendly ISPs (spamhauses, etc.). We can stop those jerks from hosting spammers. But Windows users, hell, they're everywhere. So it's time Microsoft is forced to take responsibility for causing a worldwide menace with their product. It's in their power to fix (don't let them try to sell you a spam solution... hell, they created the problem).
Re:There's spam, then there's the partner in crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, some 80% of all automobile accidents resulting in FATALITIES occur because at least one driver is using a vehicle made by one of the popular car manufacturers!!!
Believe me, this sort of problem is all over the place.
Re:There's spam, then there's the partner in crime (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, spam is arriving through Windows hosts compromised because they are running faulty software. There are so many bugs in the OS and 'integrated' components (IE, Outlook) that it has gotten ridiculous. The product is flawed and broken, unlike your telecom example and unlike the cars that are involved in accidents. You see how this is differenT?
Poor americans with their spam (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm glad that I'm living outside the US and don't have to worry about spam for cheap medicines, for viagra and to vote Ralph Nader. Euhm....
Take a walk down memory lane! (Score:5, Informative)
But I don't think that was actually the first widespread spam. A few months earlier -- in January 1994 -- was the similarly infamous "Global Alert For All: Jesus is Coming Soon" spam... does anyone remember that? It wasn't commercial spam per se, but still spam.
I spent the next few days collecting various funny responses to the spam from dozens of different newsgroups. A few years ago, I put my compilation [circlemud.org] on the web. Just doing my part to make sure nothing on the Internet ever dies.
Re:Take a walk down memory lane! (Score:5, Informative)
We were pretty much without e-mail for three or four days as the world reacted to their Usenet spam runs.
There's a pretty good synopsis of the whole mess at the Spam Warz [antipope.org] page. Scroll down to "Enter the Spam Warriors."
Re:Take a walk down memory lane! (Score:2)
Wow, prophetic! About 4-5 years before filming even started.
Wait just a second... (Score:3, Funny)
If there's ANY justice to be found in the universe, there's *gotta* be a special 8th circle of Hell that is reserved exclusively for these people. Let me guess, they work a weekend job as a telemarketer too?
His Website! (Score:2, Informative)
Not the first... (Score:3, Interesting)
Amazing news: Lawyers invented Perl in 1984! (Score:5, Funny)
So, did Larry steal Perl or did he come up with the idea independently?
If they had been smarter.... (Score:2)
New idea here? (Score:2)
I'm kind of torn as to how to implement the E-Mail ban on the id10ts...
I'm almost as bad as they are... (Score:2, Funny)
Canter and Siegel's formal response to the complaint I filed with the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility [ebay.com]
I've held this for ten years with the hope it would be valuable someday.
The original usenet post (Score:5, Informative)
Monty Python parody (Score:2, Funny)
"Spamalot!"
"Spamalot!"
"it's only an email.."
"SHhhhh"
60K a day?!? (Score:2)
Does this sound like a gross exaggeration to anyone else?
This was reported on over a month ago (Score:3, Informative)
The Song (Score:2)
Happy Spamiversary!
Happy Spamiversary!
Haaaaappy Spamiversary!
when mailfolder is full;
Happy Spamiversary!
when you get those virus;
Happy Spamiveeersaary!
You want to please the ladies with an extra inch or two;
Happy Spamiversary!
When you want to know what girls do on farms;
Happy Spamiversary!
Happy Spamiversary!
Happy Spamiversary!
Happy Spamiversary!
Haaaaappy Spamiversary!
Your Mission (Score:2)
Good luck!
Laurence Canter's Contact Info!! (Score:2)
Re:Laurence Canter's Contact Info!! (Score:2, Informative)
Interview with Lawrence Canter (Score:3, Informative)
Quoting from it:
-----
How many people received the "Green Card Lottery" spam? Did you generate any business from it?
It was in the tens of thousands. Yes, we generated a lot of business. The best I can recall we probably made somewhere between $100,000 to $200,000 related to that--which wasn't remarkable in itself, except that the cost of doing it was negligible.
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wasn't the first spam sent out in 1978? (Score:3, Informative)
The message (Score:3, Informative)