Spam (spiced pork and ham) is the name for a canned luncheon meat made by Hormel. So why is it used to describe flooding the internet with many copies of the same message?
The generally accepted origin is the Monty Python "lunching Vikings" skit - featuring a song with the lyrics:
Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, lovely spam, wonderful spam.
In a restaurant where all the meals include spam, the Vikings sing the chorus over and over with increasing volume, drowning out other conversation - which is similar to what spam or Uce (unsolicited commercial email) does to normal discourse on the net.
It is also said the use of the word originated in chatrooms and on multiplayer adventure games called Muds. According to Jennifer Smith, author of the frequently asked questions (FAQ) list for the rec.games.mud newsgroup, a few delinquents would write the same message again and again in a chatroom, filling the screen, and these messages were dubbed "spam."
Links:
www.spam.com
Monty Python's "lunching Vikings"
* More information:
www.cybernothing.org
http://spam.abuse.net
www.msg.net/nospam
www.jmls.edu/cyber/index/spam.html
www.spamfree.org
www.oreilly.com/catalog/spam
www.cauce.org
