Re: The spam problem: older than you might think.
To be fair, Jon was discussing misconfigured servers spewing unintentionally, not intentional sending of junk email.
The first actual "spam" that I'm aware of was sent on ARPANET, mid 1978. If you're interested, search for "Gary Thuerk". I didn't get my copy of the email, alas (my bozo filter worked!), or I would copy & paste it here. Gary got yelled at, none of the rest of us ever tried anything as daft.
I remember a student at Stanford sending every email account on campus a "wanna buy my bike?" email back when I was stanford!sail!vax!jake (address changed to protect the guilty; I'm archived at DejaGoo under the real one) ... Probably 1982 or thereabouts. He got yelled at, loudly, and had computer privileges revoked for the rest of the year.
After that? Probably the first real spam was on Usenet in late 1993 or early 1994. (Religious crap, and a bot kibozing on the word "Turkey"). Followed, of course, by the infamous "Green Card Lottery" spam.
For modern email? Soon after Usenet ... I'm guessing late 1994 or early 1995.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
