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Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam

Posted by R. Berg on August 30, 2001

In Reply to: Email posted by Q on August 30, 2001

: Why does the industry refer to unsolicited email as "Spam". Are the letters acronyms?

From John R. Levine et al., "The Internet for Dummies":

Why call it spam?
The meat? Nobody knows.* Oh, you mean the unwanted e-mail? It came from the Monty Python skit in which a group of Vikings sing the word Spam repeatedly in a march tempo, drowning out all other discourse.

*This isn't true. Spam the meat product, produced by the George A. Hormel Co. in Austin, Minnesota, where my mother was born, was named for "spiced ham." --rb

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