Yup, really. If you’re interested, the first-ever piece of spam is still available off Google Groups via the following link:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.pub.coffeehouse.amethyst/msg/477832eb09859797
Or, you could just click the thumbnail below for a screenshot.
Interestingly enough, the subject line would probably draw a fair volume of eyes today as well. Click here for the deets, courtesy the Wikipedia.
Two years after, Yahoo! went public.
No. No relation. Just trivia. Don’t dust off those nicely bound law books just yet.
Its been thirteen years since. Almost everyone (and their pet parakeet) has a Yahoo! mailbox. And spam, whether its a Yahoo! mailbox or not, is everywhere. Like, really – everywhere. In your mailbox, on your blog, and on your cellphone. If it can connect, it can, and will, receive spam.
Every moment of every mail server on the Internet probably involves processing enough spam to fill up the equivalent of a Mack truck in megabytes.
Ok – maybe that was a bit much.
Want a Nobel prize and the opportunity to go through life knowing that you really played a huge part in bring about world peace? If you were to invent a system that would accept spam and turn it into some form of perceptible energy that could, in turn, power something of relevance; I’d wager that you’d be cinch for the Nobel Peace prize, and the good wishes of the gazillions on the Internet, all across the planet.
If it were to power something like, say, an engine – you’d be all that, and living with a lot of bodyguards. But hey – y’know..that’s celebrity for ya.
