ELLISTON@BIOVAX.BITNET (Keith Elliston - Rutgers University) (02/13/90)
For people who don't do Usenet, this is a short explanation of where FLAME came
from.
On usenet, a Unix to Unix network that runs mainly on asynch phone (dialup)
lines, the use of the word Flame came from an old Marvel comics (i think it was
marvel) character who would turn into a sort of human flame thrower by uttering
the words "FLame On!!". He would then proceed to flame whatever bad guys were
in the vicinity, and then utter the words "Flame Off" and return to a normal
mortal being. Anyway, this phraseology was adopted by usenet folks when they
wanted to bash the comments of another poster. They would put the words "Flame
On" at the beginning of their caustic critique of anothers posting, and
finishing by putting "Flame off" at the end of their review. Now people use
the word Flame as a verb, as to flame someone.
You will find that netwise people use a lot of abbreviations as well. These
include IMHO (in my honest opinion), RTFM (read the manual), BTW, (by the way),
and others... you simply learn them as you go along.
If people don't have access to usenet news, you should query your system
administrator about the possibility of getting it put onto your system. News
has a lot of interesting newsgroups that deal with things from computer science
(comp.all sorts of stuff) to biology (bionet.etc and sci.bio) to all sorts of
different science groups (sci.misc and etc) to fun recreational groups
(rec.aviation is a favorite of mine). News used to be limited to Unix systems,
but ANU NEWS is available for VMS systems, and there are versions that can even
run on IBM PC's.
Food for thought...
Keith
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Keith O. Elliston | Dept. of Biochemistry & Microbiology
| Lipman Hall / Cook Campus
Arpanet: ELLISTON@biovax.rutgers.edu | Rutgers University
Bitnet: ELLISTON@BIOVAX | New Brunswick, NJ
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Disclaimer: The Thoughts and Opinions expressed above are my own......
Besides, who else would want to claim them anyway???
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