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Originally Posted by vash
is SPAM an acronym for something?
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SPAM is a trademark of the "glistening pink gelatinous meat" (google "spam haikus") manufactured by Hormel. They requested the use of that capitalization when referring to their product, to prevent misunderstanding or confusion. Upon first becoming aware of the "big-I" Internet and the widespread use there of a word that resembled a product of theirs, the first instinct the attack lawyers had was to sue everyone back into the stone age for copyright violation. They (Hormel) very graciously changed their stance when it was explained how deeply it was already rooted into common usage.. And this was before AOL got connected ("death of the internet, film at 11!")
"Spam" is the original term, and a reference to UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email). "UCE" is the politically-correct term - but few who aren't professional geeks know what it means.
The use of the term "spam" to refer to UCE is a reference to a Monty Python sketch where the guy is being read the menu in a cafeteria and the word "spam" is randomly injected ocasionally at first, but increasingly frequently - until the end of the sketch where almost every word is "spam".
Which mimics what spam used to do, before effective spam filtering existed (because there was never previously any need for it), to your inbox or NNTP reader; you can't see anything for the junk.
Almost everyone knew instantly what the term "spam" was a reference to 20 years ago and considered it a perfect fit when they first encountered it; probably why it stuck.