Oh Spam, my how you have grown! Thirty years ago, on this day, you came into the world as a little misguided e-mail sent by an equipment engineer over Arpanet to promote a new line of computers. You were quickly shot down by other Arpanet users who called it an “insult… to have an obvious commercial message sent out over a research network.” Yet, at some point in time, people stopped protesting you loudly enough. Now you comprise 80 percent to 95 percent of all e-mail sent, your crafty trojans and pesky viruses have infected millions of computers, and you’ve cost IT departments nearly US$200 billion to combat you. But since it’s your birthday, instead of telling you like we usually do to GTFO, let us sing you a little song instead. It goes something like this:
Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, SPAM! LOVELY SPAM!