Do you like to chat? Do you like to meet people from all over the world??
Wanna join me on IRC? Sure!!! Just let me tell you what it is all about.
The Internet Relay Chat is a multi-user chat system where people from every corner of this planet gets together to chat in groups, or privately on private or public channels. It is a perfect environment for you to meet new people, especially if you are a shy person, because all the conversations that are going on are not face to face. No one really knows about your real identity, so on IRC you can be yourself, or be an imaginery character that you make up, or even Superman if that is the image you want to appeal to on IRC. Some people make friends on the internet, and if you're lucky enough, you might even be able to find your prince or princess in your life. Many romance stories were originated from the Internet Relay Chat. Some people think that it is fate that brings 2 people from the opposite of the world together, and they believe that IRC is the place where they can find this fate. To these people, technology is a high acheivement of the human kind that not only brings us civilization and raise our standard of living, but also makes miracles happen by bring the "love birds" together.
Chatting on the internet is like chatting on the telephone, but even better and more advance because you get to talk to as many people as you want at the same time. That is actually the original motive of IRC, it was developed to replace the talk program which only two people get together to talk to each other at the same time, but it has become much more than that. The history of IRC goes back to 1988 in Finland, the father of IRC is Jarkko Oikarinen. IRC gained international fame during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, where updates from around the world came across the wire, and the information was shared on a single channel. IRC was also used as such information center during the coup against Boris Yeltsin in September 1993, the unstable situation of Moscow was given on a channel.
IRC is runned by a "client" program, which connects to the irc network via another "server" program. Servers are the link that pass messages from one user to another over the IRC network. To get started, type "irc" at your prompt. It will automatically connect you to a server, but you can also type "/server server address" in order to change the server, it is best to use the one geographically close.
First of all, you must give yourself a nick name, you can use your real name if you want to. All IRC commends starts with a "/", so in order to give yourself a nickname, you would have to type "/nick nickname".
To join a channel, simply type "join #channelname", you can creat your own channel if you make up a channel name that does not exsist. There are many channels that are already created on the internet, each with a specific topic or no topic at all. There are also foreign language channels, like #viet, #espanol (Spanish), #Russian (Russian), #Polska (Polish). To leave a channel, is "leave #channelname.
"/who*" is a commend which you can use to see who is on the channel that you are on. Once you type this commend, a list of the people who are on the channel that you are on would come up.
You can also send private messages by using this commend, "/msg nickname message". It allows you to send a message to the person you refer to by his/her nickname that no other person would be able to see.
Do you know that you can also do all kinds of action on IRC? When you type "/action the action you that you want to perform, your action would appear on the internet. It is no doubt that IRC is a virtual place where you have to use your own imagination on IRC.
Netsplit is a rountine part of IRC life(???). It is caused by the spliting off of some servers away from the part of the net that you were on. All you can do during a netsplit is wait for the net to mend itself, the servers will eventually netjoin again.
The IRC Primer-irc user's manual is available in the plain text, post script, and LaTex.
What is addiction??? It is spending an extraordinary amount of time sitting in front of the computer chatting, maybe to the point of abandoning the normal routine of daily life. I was an addict before, I actually brought my rountine of life in front of the computer. How so? I ate in front of my computer, I studied in front of my computer, I painted my nails in front of the computer, I even slept in front of the computer. Doing two things at once means that you get neither one of them accomplished. AT the time, I did not eat good, did not study well, did not sleep well because my life was on the computer all the time. The worse part of the addiction is when you take your IRC life so serious that it started to disturb your real life. People "falls in love", may even become overly obsessed with these virtual characters of whom they imagine they are. IRC can cause emotionalattacks to an addict. There are people who eventually finds out that they are in love with a non-exsisting person, because that same person on IRC may not act the same in real life. There are many more cases which people leaves their husband or wife and their children for their new love on IRC People IRC at work, in school, or wherever there is a computer and a modem. IRC could be a trap, one that catches people's souls. So, you better watch out for your SoUl!
FliP tO tHe BiBliOgRaPhY
