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- The Internet Relay Chat Program - IRC
-
- Author: Jeff Trim, April '89
- Revised: Greg Lindahl, Oct '90 (gl8f@virginia.edu)
- Re-Revised: Helen Rose, March '94 (hrose@kei.com)
-
- Have you ever wanted to talk with other computer users in other parts of
- the world? Well guess what? You can! The program is called IRC and it
- is networked much over North America, Europe, and Asia, Oceania, and parts
- of Africa. This program is a substitution for talk(1), ytalk(1) and many
- other multiple talk programs you might have read about. When you are
- talking in IRC, everything you type will instantly be transmitted around
- the world to other users that might be watching their terminals at the
- time - they can then type something and RESPOND to your messages - and
- vise versa. I should warn you that the program can be very addictive once
- you begin to make friends and contacts on IRC ;-) especially when you
- learn how to cuss in 14 languages.
-
- Topics of discussion on IRC are varied, just like the topics of Usenet
- newsgroups are varied. Technical and political discussions are
- popular, especially when world events are in progress. IRC is also a
- way to expand your horizons, as people from many countries and
- cultures are on, 24 hours a day. Most conversations are in English,
- but there are always channels in German, Japanese, and Finnish, and
- occasionally other languages.
-
- How To Get IRC (technical)
-
- IRC is a fully-distributed client-server system, much like
- NNTP-Usenet, with several clients availble in C and elisp. You may ftp
- documentation and clients from any of the following sites:
-
- many kinds of clients (C, elisp, X11, VMS, REXX for VM, MSDOS, Macintosh):
- cs-pub.bu.edu:/irc/clients
- ftp.funet.fi:/pub/unix/irc
- coombs.anu.edu.au:/pub/irc
-
- If you have any questions about IRC installation, write to hrose@kei.com.
-
-