Spam (was Re: [H-GEN] Mail access file)

David Starkoff dbs at uq.net.au
Thu Aug 21 11:17:03 EDT 2003


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At 2003-08-21T21:46+1000, David Duffy wrote:

> I did realise that the 1st line of the header I included was
> faked in some way. Only SPAM seems to have that characteristic
                          ^^^^
> so I want to filter on it if possible. Is it indeed possible?
> 
> Even though I use SpamAssassin, I am getting fed up with all
> the utter crap (SPAM) that arrives on a daily basis. It still
                  ^^^^
> takes time to check my SPAM for false positives and anything
                         ^^^^

Although with the recent incendiary nature of the HUMBUG lists, this
is a little bit dangerous on my part, but I wanted to ask a question.
This message of David's twigged my recollection that recently, I
recall seeing spam, as in unsolicited bulk or commercial email, being
written "SPAM" more frequently.  I don't claim to be a net.oldfart,
but I thought "spam" was quite happy being just "spam", without the
capitals.  (I don't intend to single David out here, his email just
reminded me, and I think others have also adopted this habit.)

A quick Internet search revealed that Hormel Foods, the owners of the
SPAM trade marks, are happy with "spam" as a description of annoying
mail, and "SPAM" as their trade mark:
<http://www.spam.com/ci/ci_in.htm>.  (Warning: Internet search may not
have been exhaustive and may have failed to turn up oh-so-obvious URL.)

Given the way that most people (with the exception of Nigerian scam
artists) tend to write their emails, capitalising "SPAM" is extra
effort for little reward that I can see.  Is "SPAM" now an acronym?
Is there some sort of cabal (TINC) that has decreed that "spam" is now
"SPAM", either to piss off Hormel Foods or for some other reason?  Is
it just a personal preference?

By way of empirical data, I checked my HUMBUG list archives for the
past couple of years.  The first figure is "grep -c SPAM", the
second "grep -c -i spam".  The third is a percentage of "SPAM" to
mentions of spam in some form.

Jun-2001  0   0  0.00
Jul-2001  0   0  0.00
Aug-2001  0   0  0.00
Sep-2001  0  12  0.00
Oct-2001  0  13  0.00
Nov-2001  0  20  0.00
Dec-2001  0  21  0.00
Jan-2002  0  43  0.00
Feb-2002  0  40  0.00
Mar-2002  0  59  0.00
Apr-2002  0 198  0.00
May-2002  0 103  0.00
Jun-2002  0  45  0.00
Jul-2002 24 126 19.05
Aug-2002  4 199  2.01
Sep-2002 11  62 17.74
Oct-2002 27 403  6.70
Nov-2002  6 278  2.16
Dec-2002  4  33 12.12
Jan-2003  6  81  7.41
Feb-2003 14 237  5.91
Mar-2003 25 132 18.94
Apr-2003 13 245  5.31
May-2003 14 201  6.97
Jun-2003 24 203 11.82
Jul-2003  5 191  2.62
Aug-2003  7 222  3.15

(You don't want to see the one-liner that produced that; it is truly
horrible and only demonstrates my naievete.)

In any case, it indicates that only in the last year has "SPAM" become
trendy on the HUMBUG mailing lists.  I'm just interested to know if
there's a "why" behind it.

David.
-- 
  ``Destiny dressed you this morning, chum, and now fear is
    trying to pull off your pants.''

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