Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette
Speaker 1: and I am an editor here at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Sitting across from me as he always does
Speaker 1: on Friday afternoons when we talk about tech things, is
Speaker 1: senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Remember, no matter where you go,
Speaker 1: there you are dre pithy. Thank you. So today we
Speaker 1: wanted to uh have a little chat. Yes, actually we
Speaker 1: want to have a little chat about a chat protocol
Speaker 1: or a chat system that predates the World Wide Web.
Speaker 1: And this, uh, this is a request from Charles and
Speaker 1: also from Christopher. These are two independent requests. Both Charles
Speaker 1: and Christopher wanted to hear a little more about I
Speaker 1: r C or Internet Relay Chat. Yeah. Um, actually it
Speaker 1: dates back to so this is a pretty pretty uh
Speaker 1: robust protocol to have made it, uh you know, good,
Speaker 1: almost twenty two years now. It's August of is when
Speaker 1: it started to make its appearance. And um, as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, that's that was sort of my introduction
Speaker 1: to the Internet. And I say sort of because it
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly I r C UM. I became acquainted with
Speaker 1: using online services through a similar system uh called bitnet
Speaker 1: Relay chat um. And as a matter of fact, one
Speaker 1: of the founders of of I r C and I'm
Speaker 1: probably totally mispronouncing this, um Yarko arkin In, who has
Speaker 1: a fin Uh. He apparently took some of his direction
Speaker 1: from using bitnet chat um. And the two systems really
Speaker 1: aren't all that different, but uh, it is a has
Speaker 1: a much different system, uh, or at least it's a
Speaker 1: different protocol from what you would see for so many
Speaker 1: the other different Internet uses, right. Uh. And leading up
Speaker 1: to I r C, before that, there was a program
Speaker 1: called Talk, and Talk was really it's like what would
Speaker 1: happen if you were to phone someone and uh, it's
Speaker 1: just a regular phone line and so it's two people,
Speaker 1: one person on either end. And that's the extent of
Speaker 1: that conversation. That was the limitation of Talk and uh
Speaker 1: and really the I'm not even gonna try and say
Speaker 1: his name because my finish is terrible. I'd be finished
Speaker 1: myself at any rate. Our our intrepid inventor thought, well,
Speaker 1: why should we be limited to having two people in
Speaker 1: a single discussion. When the Internet really gives you the
Speaker 1: opportunity to connect with people all over the world, why
Speaker 1: doesn't need to be a direct connection to two We
Speaker 1: we could have a centralized connection where a connecting point
Speaker 1: where where thousands of people potentially could join in and
Speaker 1: have a conversation. Yeah, systems like talk and other early
Speaker 1: different communication protocols like y talk and x y z
Speaker 1: z Y. Remember that one, Um, we're we're seriously talking
Speaker 1: like your Your whole screen would essentially look like uh,
Speaker 1: a divided window uh and and two chats you would
Speaker 1: see what the other person was typing in. Uh. They weren't.
Speaker 1: It wasn't even integrated like AIM or h I c
Speaker 1: Q or any of the other chat services that are
Speaker 1: in use today. You know, it's like this is everything
Speaker 1: your friend has said, and this is everything you have
Speaker 1: said in reply. So you could go back and forth
Speaker 1: between the other and UM and gradually. Yeah, that the
Speaker 1: idea of of Internet relay chat actually would divide it
Speaker 1: up and divide up the service into different channels, and
Speaker 1: you know, theoretically you could be talking about you know,
Speaker 1: a whole different conversation on one channel where from the
Speaker 1: people who are talking in other channels. So it's it's
Speaker 1: basically one service where everybody goes and you can go
Speaker 1: from channel to channel and talk about whatever is the
Speaker 1: topic of the day or topics of the day are.
Speaker 1: And depending on on when you used I r C,
Speaker 1: because it did evolve over time, that's certificantly. In fact,
Speaker 1: you could occupy multiple channels at one time, depending on
Speaker 1: their client. Uh. Client is an important thing that we
Speaker 1: should talk about very quickly. UH. So you've got a
Speaker 1: server that's hosting this program, the I r C program,
Speaker 1: in order to access that information. In order to be
Speaker 1: able to participate in these conversations, you as a user
Speaker 1: would need to have a client. And there are different
Speaker 1: ways of getting clients. Uh. You could compile a client,
Speaker 1: get a sort, get source code, and compile your own
Speaker 1: client if you were using a Unix based system, um,
Speaker 1: which would require a level of of tech savvy that
Speaker 1: is beyond my own means. But just because I've never
Speaker 1: used a NEX system, if you never used Unix, well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's being that's not entirely true. But I've
Speaker 1: never got to say I thought you had. I've never
Speaker 1: I've never owned a you know any sort of machine
Speaker 1: or worked exclusively on a Unix based machine. I've worked.
Speaker 1: My time with Unix has been very limited, I understand. So,
Speaker 1: uh so I would not be able to do this.
Speaker 1: I just don't have that knowledge. I mean it's not
Speaker 1: that I couldn't learn. I just if you sat me
Speaker 1: down in front of a computer right now, I'd be like, uh,
Speaker 1: help or maybe slash help. So but once you had
Speaker 1: a client to access this, then you could go and
Speaker 1: uh and start having a conversation with other people. Now,
Speaker 1: some people have have a little difficulty grasping the whole
Speaker 1: client concept, but I'll give you a very simple analog
Speaker 1: to that. Your web browser is essentially a client. It's
Speaker 1: a client that lets you access the world Wide Web. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think this is a good time to remind people
Speaker 1: to that, UMU, the Web is only part of the Internet.
Speaker 1: The Internet itself is is a network of networks, is
Speaker 1: more or less the Yeah, it hundreds of them. Actually, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got you've got your mail protocols, you have the
Speaker 1: world Wide Web. Um you can still do things like
Speaker 1: use Gopher or waste or I r C or you
Speaker 1: know all these different other things. Yeah, use net and
Speaker 1: you know we should do a podcast on that, Yeah
Speaker 1: we should. Um, but uh but yeah, I mean there
Speaker 1: are there are a number of things that that travel
Speaker 1: over the Internet and I r C is just one
Speaker 1: of those protocols um that can be used that way.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you need in order to do to actually
Speaker 1: access that service though, you need a program that can
Speaker 1: understand that traffic and make it into something useful for you.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it's just a bunch of ones and zeros. So
Speaker 1: back when I r C was was really pretty young, um,
Speaker 1: you would be using one of these client and that
Speaker 1: you would have to have installed on your computer. You
Speaker 1: would have to have either built it or had someone
Speaker 1: else build it for you. Uh. Today it's a little different.
Speaker 1: You can actually find clients that are built into web
Speaker 1: pages so that you could go to a web page
Speaker 1: and log into an I r C chat area, um,
Speaker 1: and you never have to worry. You know, it does
Speaker 1: all the work for you, all the all the coding
Speaker 1: and everything is is essentially hidden away from you and
Speaker 1: you can just log in. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: that the commands are all going to be intuitive to you,
Speaker 1: because it turns out there are lots and lots of
Speaker 1: different commands that you can use within I r C
Speaker 1: while you are having conversations, And some of them are
Speaker 1: very basic, things like being able to create a channel
Speaker 1: so that you have a separate channel that you can
Speaker 1: you can go into and have other people go into
Speaker 1: if you want to take part of a conversation away
Speaker 1: from the main room that you're in. The idea here
Speaker 1: being that perhaps maybe you and three other people you
Speaker 1: find out are all huge fans of a particular book series,
Speaker 1: let's say yes, so that the room in general doesn't
Speaker 1: have that interest. Well, the polite thing to do would
Speaker 1: be to create a room specifically for you and your
Speaker 1: three new book friends to go to and have a
Speaker 1: conversation that doesn't doesn't interrupt the flow of the general conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I r C. It's considered pretty rude to have
Speaker 1: off topic conversations. Now, there are some channels that are
Speaker 1: are generic, kind of free for all. Yeah and UM
Speaker 1: usually on what I was going to get into some
Speaker 1: more depth on this, let's let's just say usually there
Speaker 1: is something called a channel called talk or chat. These
Speaker 1: are very very generic, but if you were um and
Speaker 1: and they also often have a description that goes along
Speaker 1: with it. So you might have a channel for say
Speaker 1: Terry Pratchett. Let's go with an author, your channel would
Speaker 1: want to you'd want to do something descriptive and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, generally in the title of the h of
Speaker 1: the channel, the channel name, you would often see the
Speaker 1: topic or a topic with a little descriptive material like,
Speaker 1: you know, Terry Pratchett the greatest author ever or something like.
Speaker 1: It might just be as something as simple as hashtag
Speaker 1: Pratchett fans, Yes, exactly, um and yeah. That that's something
Speaker 1: else to remember too, is the hashtag is generally what
Speaker 1: shows you the uh that it's a channel name, which
Speaker 1: is important both for their command and to identify where
Speaker 1: you are in I r C. Yeah, because they can
Speaker 1: get kind of confusing. I mean, you also create a
Speaker 1: nickname when you go to an I r C chat rooms.
Speaker 1: You know, you might have one assigned to you, or
Speaker 1: you can always choose your own. Some of them even
Speaker 1: allow you to register your nickname. Uses a thing called
Speaker 1: nick Serf, which disappeared for a while off of I
Speaker 1: r C. It was hosted in Germany for a while,
Speaker 1: then disappeared and then came back. Um. Which it's really
Speaker 1: just an administrative system that keeps nicknames and passwords together
Speaker 1: so that you can reserve a nickname because of course,
Speaker 1: otherwise what will happen is if you log off, then
Speaker 1: anyone else could log on choose the same nickname you use,
Speaker 1: and then that can cause confusion, whether it's intentional or not. Right, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you have a like you want your nickname
Speaker 1: to be optimist, prime or something okay where it's you know, well,
Speaker 1: something where it's really identifiable, and presumably more than one
Speaker 1: person could choose it, just you know, just by chance,
Speaker 1: not necessarily by design. Um. Yeah, as a matter of
Speaker 1: fact that I've had that happen to me on different channels,
Speaker 1: and um again in the now is a good time
Speaker 1: to point that out. Um, there are actually a number
Speaker 1: of different UH servers that that take uh different I
Speaker 1: r C protocols. So um, there is not one standard
Speaker 1: I r C that is roaming around the world. And
Speaker 1: apparently in the past um twenty two years or so,
Speaker 1: there have been disputes between people who are running I
Speaker 1: r C. So you have uh, you know, the r
Speaker 1: C net, which is which is part of the original group,
Speaker 1: and then you have e F net. I remember under
Speaker 1: net also being a very very large UH group of
Speaker 1: I r C folks, and they have they also maintained
Speaker 1: multiple servers in those groups, and from what I can tell, UH,
Speaker 1: it appears that from time to time the people behind
Speaker 1: those UH services have maybe butted heads with one another,
Speaker 1: because when I started looking up commands, I noticed they
Speaker 1: were different. Some of the commands were different than what
Speaker 1: I had remembered. I imagine that's probably because they have
Speaker 1: updated that. But I understand that UM having multiple nicknames
Speaker 1: and the way to deal with those has also been
Speaker 1: an issue between the different UH server organization groups and
Speaker 1: networks of I r C servers, so they may be
Speaker 1: running slightly different versions of you know, the I r
Speaker 1: C protocol. And when you have these issues, like let's
Speaker 1: say that I logged into I r C and realized
Speaker 1: that the handle I wanted has been taken by another user,
Speaker 1: and let's say even that I've used that handle of
Speaker 1: the past on I r C, UM, there's not a
Speaker 1: whole lot you can do about it. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can message the person and say, hey, dude, that's UH,
Speaker 1: that's kind of my nickname. I'm kind of known for
Speaker 1: that nickname. Do you mind logging off so I can
Speaker 1: have it because you can't take someone's name. You can't
Speaker 1: take someone else's name if they are currently logged into
Speaker 1: the system. You could add a number at the end,
Speaker 1: so you know, I could become John Strickland one or
Speaker 1: John Strickland two or something like that, but I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to be John Strickland, um if someone had
Speaker 1: already taken that name on I r C, if I
Speaker 1: if I had not been able to register it. Uh.
Speaker 1: So that the same thing goes for channels. Let's say
Speaker 1: you want to create a channel and someone's already taking
Speaker 1: the channel name that you wanted. It's like the exact
Speaker 1: same sort of situation. You'd have to message that person,
Speaker 1: ask them nicely if they would relinquish that channel name
Speaker 1: for you to be able to use it. Uh, And
Speaker 1: if they say no, then you know, that's kind of
Speaker 1: tough luck for you. It's not like someone taking a
Speaker 1: nickname or taking a channel name is a bootable offense.
Speaker 1: You know someone They're not gonna get an administrator to
Speaker 1: boot that person. So there's certain basic commands that everyone
Speaker 1: has access to, more or less depending on the version
Speaker 1: of I r C or in the things like slash
Speaker 1: nick would they all have slashes that precede the command. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you just type, if you just start typing when
Speaker 1: you're in a channel, everyone in the room is going
Speaker 1: to see the message that the words that you are
Speaker 1: typing as soon as you hit return. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: real time like, so if you leave that slash out
Speaker 1: instead of the command that you were hoping to execute,
Speaker 1: you're gonna it'll be as if you said, quote unquote
Speaker 1: said that in the room. Yeah, So a forward slash
Speaker 1: proceeds the command, and then any strings that you need
Speaker 1: to include after that. Of course, you would want to
Speaker 1: leave a space in between. So right, So if I
Speaker 1: wanted to create my nickname, I would do slash in
Speaker 1: I C K space John Strickland, Yes, and that would
Speaker 1: change my whatever my generic login name was to John Strickland.
Speaker 1: And then um, if you wanted to join uh the
Speaker 1: text stuff channel, you would do slash join and then
Speaker 1: a space hashtag tech stuff. Right. And there are other
Speaker 1: basic commands like quit clearly that would make you quit
Speaker 1: out of the I r C client help, which would
Speaker 1: get you more information who is, which would give you
Speaker 1: information about a particular person logged in under a handle
Speaker 1: You would do you know, the slash who is all
Speaker 1: one word w H O I S and put in
Speaker 1: the name, which may or may not give you a
Speaker 1: good amount of information. All depends on how the person's
Speaker 1: set his or her account, or who was even work
Speaker 1: if the person has recently changed the nickname or disappeared. UM,
Speaker 1: slash away lets people know that you are not paying
Speaker 1: attention to what's going on in the chat room at
Speaker 1: that time. So maybe you know, have to get up
Speaker 1: and go to the restroom, or make a cup of coffee,
Speaker 1: or put out a fire, or walk a dog, or
Speaker 1: apologize profusely to a spouse. Then that would be a
Speaker 1: good thing to put so that people know that you're
Speaker 1: not paying attention to the screen. I'm sorry what that
Speaker 1: last one happens a lot to me. Um. But then
Speaker 1: there and and I shall say, there's also a way
Speaker 1: of sending private messages to people. You can do slash
Speaker 1: msg and then a message and that sends it instead
Speaker 1: of going to the room in general, it'll send it
Speaker 1: straight to another person. Yeah, that's embarrassing because I thought
Speaker 1: that that was the way to put monet. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you were like you were like frantically trying to poison
Speaker 1: people and it turns out you were just saying hi,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly, um um, then there and if they were
Speaker 1: rebuffing my attempts to poison them with MSG, they could
Speaker 1: be slash ignoring me. Yes, that's a very useful uh command.
Speaker 1: If you ever run into trolls them and you know
Speaker 1: you don't maybe the the administrator of that channel, the
Speaker 1: the operator that channel doesn't necessarily care if there is
Speaker 1: a trollish person in there. Ignore is your friend. And
Speaker 1: if you are a channel operator, if you're the person
Speaker 1: who owns the administrative power of that channel, you have
Speaker 1: other commands that are at your disposal, including things like
Speaker 1: you know, usually there's a kick command where you can
Speaker 1: kick people from the room if they're being really obnoxious um,
Speaker 1: and I'm along with other ones. You can even ban
Speaker 1: people from a room. And sometimes there's different settings like
Speaker 1: you can ban uh that one user or you can
Speaker 1: ban anyone from that particular users domain. You can get
Speaker 1: pretty nasty um, depending on the the the rights that
Speaker 1: the channel opp has. And also you can accidentally or well,
Speaker 1: you can give other people operator rights as well. Can
Speaker 1: and if you're not careful, you can give other people
Speaker 1: operator rights and relinquish your own rights, and the next
Speaker 1: thing you know, you're at the whim of somebody else.
Speaker 1: And they're even ways where I mean, if if people
Speaker 1: trick you into typing a certain kind of string, that's
Speaker 1: essentially what happens. You give over the right of not
Speaker 1: only of the channel, you could actually give over the
Speaker 1: ability to control the client, and the person could control
Speaker 1: your I r C client. You could you could accidentally
Speaker 1: relinquished control if you if you posted the right command
Speaker 1: in there. You know, honestly, I've never heard of that happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um, it's actually if you look at there's a
Speaker 1: couple of really good I r C Frequently asked question
Speaker 1: files out there on the on the web, and a
Speaker 1: few of them will tell you. They don't tell you
Speaker 1: specifically what the string is, but they will say, you know,
Speaker 1: do not if someone gives you a string of seemingly
Speaker 1: random commands and says you need to type this in
Speaker 1: because it'll, you know, solve your problem or whatever. You
Speaker 1: should not just automatically do that, because there are commands
Speaker 1: that can end up coming back to haunt you when
Speaker 1: you hand over. Essentially you hand the steering wheel over
Speaker 1: to a maniac and then they laugh at you and say,
Speaker 1: ha ha, we tricked you, and now you know all
Speaker 1: your base belong to us. Someone set us up the bomb.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, should we mentioned bots? Bots? Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: so bots are and that's an automated program and automated essentially,
Speaker 1: it's like like a script script. Yeah, and it's a
Speaker 1: script that often takes the form of what looks to
Speaker 1: be a normal I R C. Chatter. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and basically they can they can stay in the channel.
Speaker 1: Say if if you own a very popular channel, um,
Speaker 1: and you don't want to lose control of it, but
Speaker 1: everyone's going to bed, your bought could be sitting in
Speaker 1: there for you. And uh. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: a bot can can automatically be configured to give people
Speaker 1: operator privileges. Yeah, you can, especially you know, like certain
Speaker 1: people can you know, your buddies, your most trusted buddies
Speaker 1: when they pop in and it will automatically give them ops.
Speaker 1: And then as soon as they do that, you know
Speaker 1: they're running a channel even when you're not there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can script a bot to do lots of different things.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to just uh, you know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to just sit there. In other words, like the reason,
Speaker 1: as Plett was pointing out, the reason why you would
Speaker 1: want to have a bot sit there would be so
Speaker 1: that you could hold on to a certain channel name
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't have to worry about someone stealing it
Speaker 1: once you logged off. You would have a squatter essentially,
Speaker 1: But you could also give a bot like I've seen.
Speaker 1: Um there's one I R C. Each chat room I
Speaker 1: occasionally go into that has a bot that what its
Speaker 1: main purpose is to scan for for any instance of
Speaker 1: foul language. So it essentially is is uh scanning everyone's
Speaker 1: lines and if words that match up to its database
Speaker 1: of naughty words pop up, it automatically boots you from
Speaker 1: the room. So if you were to say something that
Speaker 1: was you know, like if you were to to to
Speaker 1: say an obscenity, type in an obscenity and and into
Speaker 1: the main room, UH, it would notice it and kick
Speaker 1: you from the room. Um. Other things that it would
Speaker 1: kick you for are things like if you typed in
Speaker 1: all caps, because that's the equivalent of counting online I
Speaker 1: mean in text based chat rooms, all upper case is
Speaker 1: like you're yelling, and just like any other party, no
Speaker 1: one wants to be around the guy or or girl
Speaker 1: who is screaming at the top of his or her
Speaker 1: lungs uh and thinks it's funny. Yes, that is correct.
Speaker 1: I can say that specifically after working for now as
Speaker 1: the time of recording this podcast five weekends at the
Speaker 1: Renaissance Festival. The loud ones are the ones that always
Speaker 1: think they are the funniest people, and they are always
Speaker 1: wrong unless it's me right. There is that exception to
Speaker 1: the rule. So if you wanted to join I r C,
Speaker 1: you don't have to really do all that much. As
Speaker 1: long as you're on the internet, you should be able
Speaker 1: to uh, you know, choose a client. There are many
Speaker 1: many pre I r C clients or as Jonathan pointed
Speaker 1: out earlier, you can go on the web to certain
Speaker 1: sites and access from there, um you know, they are
Speaker 1: their clients. Also that you can pay for shareware clients
Speaker 1: if if you're really, uh really getting into the I
Speaker 1: r C thing, they might have special you know, especially
Speaker 1: configured windows that you can use that just make life easier. Um.
Speaker 1: And they're you know, they're pretty you can even you
Speaker 1: can even find them for smartphones now. Um. Although I
Speaker 1: wouldn't recommend I r C and driving at the same time.
Speaker 1: Actually I wouldn't recommend being on I r C on
Speaker 1: a mobile phone anyway, because teeny tiny it's so hard
Speaker 1: to keep up with, especially if you if you tend
Speaker 1: to frequent rooms that have a lot of people in them.
Speaker 1: But the one I was talking about earlier, it it
Speaker 1: often has more than a hundred and sometimes more than
Speaker 1: four hundred, and it peaked times nearly a thousand people
Speaker 1: in it on a significant for an IRC chat room. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a specific chat room that's a fan chat
Speaker 1: room for a technology podcast that I listened to while
Speaker 1: they're doing it live. Unlike unlike our technique where we
Speaker 1: pre record everything and no one gets to hear it
Speaker 1: while we're doing it, this other podcast they stream it
Speaker 1: live and then upload the the actual podcast. Right, I
Speaker 1: think I know the one that you're talking about, the
Speaker 1: one I got to be a guest host on. It
Speaker 1: should be a buzz out loud for seen. It might
Speaker 1: as well go ahead and say it. So anyway, occasionally
Speaker 1: I'll be in the that I r C chat room
Speaker 1: and uh, I've tried to log in through my phone before,
Speaker 1: and the problem, of course is there's two problems. One,
Speaker 1: it's really tiny, so it's hard to read. But also
Speaker 1: because the chat room is scrolling so quickly, and because
Speaker 1: my phone is just occasionally getting updates through the cell
Speaker 1: tower because I'm not I don't have the WiFi turned
Speaker 1: on necessarily. Um, you know, the the updates come in little,
Speaker 1: uh in little bursts. So not only are lots and
Speaker 1: lots of people talking, but I'm getting them, you know,
Speaker 1: all at once, and so everything scrolls off the screen
Speaker 1: and there might be something that I was trying to
Speaker 1: read that was reference to me, and then you know,
Speaker 1: I have maybe a couple of seconds to read it
Speaker 1: and process it before it's gone. And so it's kind
Speaker 1: of a frustrating experience. Another frustrating experience with I r C.
Speaker 1: Something else that can happen is net splitting. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: you know you're familiar with the net splits. Net splits
Speaker 1: are terrible. Yeah. That that that actually used to happen
Speaker 1: to me on bitnet as well. Where part of the uh, well,
Speaker 1: if you remember our podcast a little while ago on
Speaker 1: how the Internet works, essentially we went through the infornet,
Speaker 1: the internet infrastructure. Uh, you know, everything is connected to
Speaker 1: everything else and multiple redundant connections and then every once
Speaker 1: in a while, part of the net gets separated from
Speaker 1: the other part of the net, and they have to
Speaker 1: find an alternate route to move that data through. And
Speaker 1: but in the meantime, there's an interruption in service. Yes,
Speaker 1: and you're going, what happened, Yeah, net splits from the
Speaker 1: From your perspective, if you're in an I r C
Speaker 1: chat room and and a net split happens, it seems
Speaker 1: really weird. It seems like tons of people just left
Speaker 1: the room for no apparent reason. Not everybody, because the
Speaker 1: way I r C works is that there's it's actually
Speaker 1: a network each I r C. There's there're like multiple
Speaker 1: I RC networks on multiple servers. Yes, and you're not
Speaker 1: all on the same server, even if you're on the
Speaker 1: same network. So you could all be on the same
Speaker 1: channel chatting, but you're not necessarily all logged into the
Speaker 1: same server. You're logged into the same network. So there
Speaker 1: might be some people that are logged onto one server
Speaker 1: on the West coast, you're logged into another server on
Speaker 1: the East coast of I'm talking about the United States,
Speaker 1: but really this applies anywhere. And let's say that the
Speaker 1: connections between those two servers get severed for some reason.
Speaker 1: Something somewhere along the pathway fails. Uh. You would each
Speaker 1: be in your own instance of that network, that channel,
Speaker 1: and to you, it looks like half the room just disappeared.
Speaker 1: The other half still they're chatting, but you're like, where
Speaker 1: did everyone else goes? They're the same way, except they're
Speaker 1: on the other side. They're like, where did everybody? Where
Speaker 1: did all those guys go? Once the connections get um corrected,
Speaker 1: you know, once the data finds a new path to follow,
Speaker 1: everything gets reabsorbed, and suddenly the room is is what
Speaker 1: it's normal size again, there's you know, everyone's together. Uh.
Speaker 1: It can be very frustrating, particularly like I was saying,
Speaker 1: you know that that's seen that one that I go
Speaker 1: to when that splits happen. I'm always on the server
Speaker 1: that is not with the main room, but not with
Speaker 1: like the all the hosts and all the most of
Speaker 1: the people who with whom I chat. They are fine.
Speaker 1: They're all together. Me and like five other folks you know,
Speaker 1: are sitting there twiddling our thumbs and thinking, I bet
Speaker 1: there's lots of funny stuff being talked about right now,
Speaker 1: but I can't see it. Do you think they're trying
Speaker 1: to tell you something? I have no idea, but at
Speaker 1: any rate, there's no way for you to correct it
Speaker 1: on your end waiting for the Yeah, you have to
Speaker 1: wait till the data can find a new path um.
Speaker 1: And I really did not have a lot of experience
Speaker 1: with I r C until fairly recently, because as it
Speaker 1: turns out, you know, you said that I r C
Speaker 1: it was kind of your introduction to the Internet. My
Speaker 1: production was tell neet. I was using tell neet protocol
Speaker 1: tellnet into chat rooms, so you you would log in
Speaker 1: remotely to some computer that's running a chat room program.
Speaker 1: So it's different from the I r C network model.
Speaker 1: And so, uh it's a totally different set of commands
Speaker 1: as well, which was made it very confusing for me
Speaker 1: when I first started using I r C because I
Speaker 1: was thinking about the old tell net commands and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can always tell a tell neet or on an
Speaker 1: I r C, or at least you used to. It
Speaker 1: doesn't happen as much now, but you can always see
Speaker 1: because they would say things like say hi there, you know,
Speaker 1: like they would actually they're typing in the command that
Speaker 1: you would normally have to tighten type and tell neet
Speaker 1: in order to say something. And all the I r
Speaker 1: crs are like, look at this bozo doesn't know he
Speaker 1: doesn't have to type say or you know, doing a
Speaker 1: quotation mark at the front of his sentence. And so yes,
Speaker 1: I was that bozo. I still am that bozo. It's
Speaker 1: just that now I know better. What does never mind
Speaker 1: the UM that's the big red nose. Yes, and the
Speaker 1: fact that every day I played the grand Prize game
Speaker 1: at my cubicle. Yes, anyhow, Yeah, it's it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: actually quite impressive. I think in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: that this, uh, this chat protocol is still as popular
Speaker 1: as it is UM. But it doesn't show any time
Speaker 1: any signs of of falling by the wayside anytime. Seene
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, all the just about all
Speaker 1: of the major UM multi protocol chat clients offer an
Speaker 1: I r C option. And we didn't even go into
Speaker 1: the fact that you can you can use I r
Speaker 1: C to send files even if you were. We were
Speaker 1: mainly talking about the chat aspect, but there there's a
Speaker 1: lot more to it than what we're going into. We're
Speaker 1: just talking about the main use that or I think
Speaker 1: the most popular use for I r C, which is
Speaker 1: to have conversation. Uh, well, that's a good conversation right there,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna wrap it up. I do not have
Speaker 1: any listener mail to follow it up with. I've got
Speaker 1: tons of listener mail, don't get me wrong, but they're
Speaker 1: all all asking for for a podcast on a specific topic.
Speaker 1: So it's it's nothing that we could address very quickly, right,
Speaker 1: So we're just gonna wrap this up. Thanks a lot
Speaker 1: for that request. It was a fun thing to talk about.
Speaker 1: We like looking at the history of the Internet and
Speaker 1: the the early protocols that are still around um and
Speaker 1: the early uses. So keep those requests coming in and uh,
Speaker 1: Chris and I will talk to you again really soon.
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