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Question: What is Spam? - and - What is a flame?

Answer: Spam is unsolicited e-mail or junk e-mail sent lots of places lots of times. A flame is an attack to a viewpoint over e-mail or to a newsgroup.

Basically these two of the main things that waste space, bandwidth, time and resources on the internet.

If I want to know something about a product, I could ask to receive it. If I didn't ask to receive information about a product - Do NOT send me information I did NOT request. DO NOT SEND SPAM.

And the flame's are just as bad. There are countless newsgroups on the internet that could be of value to it's readers. But many of these get sidetracked on stupid stuff like - "which is better, MAC's or PC's". My opinion on this is mac's are better (don't flame me) but I know how to use both platforms and think that they each have their strong points. They are both capable of producing basically the same results. I get irritated by people that have never used a mac bashing something they don't understand. It's an argument that can't be won through e-mail. This is just one example.

Something else that might get a flame is a statement that was made in bad taste. You need to know where your messages are being sent and who has access to them. You might not tell certain jokes in mixed company - and you shouldn't post certain comments somewhere they may be offensive.

Answer: The quickest thing to do is this. Click on this SpamCop Logo and follow the instructions. You basically paste an entire e-mail into a form and send it to SpamCop and they take care of the rest. I sent them one the other day and I got an e-mail back (in less than 6 hours) saying that the users account had been closed.

Answer: Look at the reason. You might owe someone an apology. Sometimes we make mistakes. If you did confess - own up to your mistake and move on. If you feel you got flamed without reason - either drop it or try to explain, but you might be starting an ongoing battle.

One method of responding to a flame (that I've heard works well) is to simply send a message that says, "you just might be correct." This usually confuses people that are argumentative.

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