What is E-Mail?

E-Mail is electronic mail.  It works worldwide -- all you need is an
address for the person you wish to contact.  (of course, they need to have
an address on a computer somewhere also)

An example is:

jones@myvax.cmu.edu

The above address (ficticious, of course) would be an example of a user
that would be named 'jones' that has an account on myvax (that's the name
of the machine) at Carnegie Mellon University.  (cmu stands for Carnegie
Mellon and .edu always refers to educational institutions)

E-Mail need not be to people in the US.  Many people send e-mail between
continents. 

An example:

nguyen@hee.tokyo.edu.jp

This breaks down to user 'nguyen' at hee, somewhere at tokyo university, in
japan.  (the jp refers to japan)  Other domains in foreign countries would
include:

.sw - sweden
.fi - finland
.uk - united kingdom (britain)
.ck - czechoslovakia
.de - deuchland (germany)

There are many more.  All you need to know is who you want to contact and
what their address is.

How to contact someone you've seen through 'news':
(see the news area for an explanation of what 'news' is)

As part of every news message, there is a (hopefully valid) user address.
If you should want to contact someone that posted a message, you can simply
reply through e-mail.  After editing the message, it will be send to that
person.  If everything checks out, and the mail is deliverable (meaning,
it's able to get to it's recipient), the user will get the mail on his
machine.  He will hopefully reply in kind by sending a return message to
you.

Please note that if the above fails (the mail is undeliverable), it's
possible that it my have disappeared down the dark hole that appears
occasionally to eat mail.  Also note that it does take time (sometimes
days, based on how far away the machine that the user uses is) for the
e-mail to get there.  If you don't hear back within a week, consider the
mail 'gone'.


