Regards the use of the term 'spam' for unwanted email, my impression
> has always been that Hormel treats it like a joke.
No, they have a policy these days, in summary, the word 'spam' has been added to the English vocabulary, while 'Spam' is still a registered trademark, and is to be used only in reference to their (Hormel AFAIK) product.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: All well and good, but how does one pronounce an upper case /S/ differently than a lower case /s/ in order to avoid violating any trademarks? Perhaps in verbalizing it we could refer to 'upper Spam' and 'lower spam' but somehow I think that would be even more confusing; it would make it come out sounding like a country in Asia or something. PAT]