Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff dot com. Say everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren foc Obama. Lauren, I'd
Speaker 1: like to have a little chat, a little Internet relay chat. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's convenient because our topic today is actually about Internet
Speaker 1: relay chats or i r C, which is fantastic because
Speaker 1: it's something I've never talked about before. Uh, or so
Speaker 1: you thought until about noon thirty today. Yeah, longtime listeners
Speaker 1: of tech stuff might be thinking we already did an
Speaker 1: episode on I r C, and you are completely correct.
Speaker 1: Jonathan and christ did one of those way back on
Speaker 1: June called what is i r C? But it was
Speaker 1: it was more of a basic overview of what the
Speaker 1: service is and how it came about and how people
Speaker 1: use it. We wanted to go a little bit more
Speaker 1: into the history of i r C thanks mostly to
Speaker 1: an idea from listener Addie um that's at Addie siram
Speaker 1: one on Twitter, who said, can you do an episode
Speaker 1: on I r C? And we said sure, Yeah. I
Speaker 1: just want to make it clear that I listened to
Speaker 1: that podcast from and I have no memory of ever
Speaker 1: saying those words and I it sounds like I'm making
Speaker 1: a joke, but I was, like I, I clearly recognized
Speaker 1: my voice, but there is nothing in my brain that
Speaker 1: held onto the fact that I did an episode about
Speaker 1: I r C already. So we if you did listen
Speaker 1: to that episode and you have a better memory than
Speaker 1: I do, some of this might sound familiar, but go
Speaker 1: with us, all right, So let's start our our journey
Speaker 1: down memory lane, and and also open up a few
Speaker 1: other doors on the way if I can mix some metaphors. So,
Speaker 1: what exactly is I r C. Well, as we have
Speaker 1: mentioned even just in the past couple of minutes here,
Speaker 1: it stands for Internet Relay check. Wait, I have no memory, Jonathan.
Speaker 1: This is becoming a problem. I know that you're off
Speaker 1: caffeine today that that might be the issue. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: gave up caffeine and now now I'm all sorts of
Speaker 1: messed up, y'all. So yeah, it's it's actually a platform
Speaker 1: for real time chat on the Internet. And it's text based.
Speaker 1: It's not you know, voice or video or anything like that.
Speaker 1: This is actually typing in your little type type. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a type of instant messenger. Might be a
Speaker 1: phrase that people are more familiar with these days, although
Speaker 1: I would argue that most messengers are probably based on
Speaker 1: I r C. Yeah, I r C is also group based,
Speaker 1: as opposed to a one on one discussion. You would
Speaker 1: It's almost like if you were to go to a
Speaker 1: physical location where the people at a physical location are
Speaker 1: all all interested in a particular topic, and you walk
Speaker 1: through the door and you join the conversation. Except in
Speaker 1: I r C you can actually be in multiple rooms
Speaker 1: at the same time, having multiple conversations about multiple topics, right,
Speaker 1: because you're going through a server. Yeah, a server that
Speaker 1: has multiple different kind of rooms, virtual rooms, or or
Speaker 1: channels exactly. And each channel has its own name. Uh.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, the channel name kind of gives
Speaker 1: you an idea of what the subject is some of them.
Speaker 1: Some of them are general subjects. They're pretty straightforward. It's
Speaker 1: uh yeah, like hashtag firefly fans. I guess that would
Speaker 1: be people who really enjoy bugs that light up at night.
Speaker 1: That clearly must be it um. To connect to these
Speaker 1: kind of spaces, you have to use a program, a client,
Speaker 1: an app YEP. So you've got this client server relationship.
Speaker 1: The servers what houses the connections and the client is
Speaker 1: what you use to have your computer connect to the server.
Speaker 1: And these days there are many much clients yeah, and
Speaker 1: lots and lots of servers too, So the clients exist
Speaker 1: for all sorts of different operating systems. So you're not
Speaker 1: going to be left out, you know, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're saying, but I use a Mac, how could I
Speaker 1: participate in this wonderful world that is I r C.
Speaker 1: First of all, I'd say, well, you're about a decade
Speaker 1: late to this party, more than a decade later, as
Speaker 1: it turns out. But also I would say, don't worry,
Speaker 1: because every operating system has a host of clients you
Speaker 1: can choose from. Many have very different capabilities that are
Speaker 1: built in. Some of them are more intuitive than others.
Speaker 1: And there are also lots and lots of servers on them.
Speaker 1: And uh. The other interesting things is that the servers
Speaker 1: can connect to each other to form networks. And in fact,
Speaker 1: that's how I r C got started. It started with
Speaker 1: an a network originally, UH, and then eventually reached the
Speaker 1: world that we're in today where you have all these
Speaker 1: different servers UH and networks that some of them are
Speaker 1: not connected to each other. So in other words, there
Speaker 1: may be channels on one server that you really like
Speaker 1: and channels on another server that you really like, but
Speaker 1: those two servers aren't connected, so you have to connect
Speaker 1: to either one separately in order to access the stuff
Speaker 1: that you want exactly. Yeah, it's not like you can
Speaker 1: just jump from channel to channel if those servers have
Speaker 1: no connection between them. And uh so it's meant for it.
Speaker 1: Like we said, group to gussions, you know, having a
Speaker 1: big group conversation, there are ways that you can send
Speaker 1: private messages back and forth. Um, and to communicate, you
Speaker 1: just type your text into a little text field. Think
Speaker 1: of a divided window. So the window on the top
Speaker 1: is sort of the ongoing conversation within that channel, and
Speaker 1: the window below, it's very narrow, is really a text
Speaker 1: field for you to type in. And then you can
Speaker 1: also enter in commands I r C commands. We talked
Speaker 1: a lot about I r C commands in the two
Speaker 1: thousand ten episode, so I highly recommend you go and
Speaker 1: check that out if you're really interested. For one thing,
Speaker 1: the commands are dependent upon what client you use because
Speaker 1: the different systems use slightly different phrasing. Yeah, just imagine that,
Speaker 1: you know, think of it as evolution and at one
Speaker 1: point all these different client philosophies split and then evolved
Speaker 1: on their separate pathways, which is actually exactly what happens,
Speaker 1: which we will talk about. Yeah, so that's the basic
Speaker 1: way that these things work. So so let's talk about
Speaker 1: how this actually came to happen. It all started way
Speaker 1: in eight y'all when when we mentioned that you are
Speaker 1: a ten or twenty years too late, we were not
Speaker 1: really kidding. Um and and for the record, on all
Speaker 1: of this history stuff that we're about to talk about,
Speaker 1: there are a bunch of vaguely conflicting reports about all
Speaker 1: of it because no one was really documenting it at
Speaker 1: the time. No one was expecting this to be something
Speaker 1: that someone would be sitting in a podcast room talking about.
Speaker 1: It's It's the way a lot of things unfold eventually
Speaker 1: is that unless there was someone who was officially a chronicler, uh,
Speaker 1: you just get you know, kind of time estimations. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the birth of I. R. C Is often
Speaker 1: said to be sometime around the end of August nine,
Speaker 1: but we don't remember what the day was because the
Speaker 1: operative person um one yarco A k A whiz. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go I think it's I I think it's okay.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing, guys, he's finish. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of Finnish people involved in the development of r C,
Speaker 1: and we are Americans who have a vast ignorance on
Speaker 1: the way to pronounce Finnish names. Lauren has done her
Speaker 1: best to to decipher this. I have not, and hilarity
Speaker 1: shall ensue. Now. I want to extend all my apologies
Speaker 1: to my Finnish friends who are going to cringe every
Speaker 1: time I mangle a name. But just no, it's not
Speaker 1: out of malice, it's just from ignorance. Yea um. But
Speaker 1: so at any rate, he was working at the University
Speaker 1: of Aulu in Finland, and he was working specifically in
Speaker 1: the Department of Information Processing Science, and he thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to include some sort of chat functionality in
Speaker 1: this BBS service software that I am installing BBS bulletin
Speaker 1: board system. So this is sort of the predecessor to
Speaker 1: you know, these were like those those local networks that
Speaker 1: you could log into. It wasn't an Internet. It was
Speaker 1: something that you could dial directly into a BBS and
Speaker 1: get Internet like uh services, including things like messaging and email.
Speaker 1: But it was usually restricted just to that BBS. So
Speaker 1: in other words, again it was there like little islands
Speaker 1: as opposed to a global internet. Yeah, that there was usenet,
Speaker 1: which was a little bit more expansive and had more
Speaker 1: group discussion kind of functions. But but one of the
Speaker 1: ideas that Yorko had was that he really wanted to
Speaker 1: to integrate that into a real time chat capacity, right,
Speaker 1: and he started looking around for inspiration U and one
Speaker 1: of them was a bit chat client that was developed
Speaker 1: by a friend of his. He actually started borrowing parts
Speaker 1: of multi user chat programs that were written by other people,
Speaker 1: including and tell me if I get this one wrong,
Speaker 1: or key yes, or I don't know, I know I
Speaker 1: got that one wrong and Yoka Peel and uh. So
Speaker 1: his friends had been working on similar ideas for other implementations,
Speaker 1: and at the end of August, I r C was
Speaker 1: switched on and it lived on a single computer, so
Speaker 1: just one computer in the world running the server software
Speaker 1: for I r C. So then you had this group
Speaker 1: of friends campaigned the university to eventually allow them to
Speaker 1: release this code to a wider audience because technically the
Speaker 1: code belonged to the university itself. And I love the
Speaker 1: way that the that Yarko talks about the the development.
Speaker 1: He says, once it got up to ten users, I
Speaker 1: knew that I wanted to let other people have a
Speaker 1: crack at this, and I thought ten the Internet was
Speaker 1: very I mean, it wasn't really Internet yet. The Internet
Speaker 1: was a yeah, the Internet was was just the realm
Speaker 1: of research organizations and universe these no one outside of
Speaker 1: that really had much access to it. Besides it was
Speaker 1: some government agencies as well, but you know, we plebeians
Speaker 1: out in the real world didn't have any access to it.
Speaker 1: The Worldwide Web was more than a decade away, so
Speaker 1: this was you know, this was early early days. So
Speaker 1: ten was actually a significant number. And just I just
Speaker 1: joke about it because I think of our discussion about
Speaker 1: Twitter from a few weeks ago about how the five
Speaker 1: thousand number was so small. But yeah, ten people. So
Speaker 1: he just he convinces the university to allow them to
Speaker 1: release this code to some other people, and they started
Speaker 1: getting it installed in other universities in Finland first and
Speaker 1: they joined on and then looked at other countries as well.
Speaker 1: But there were some issues there right there. There were
Speaker 1: a few like inter country connectivity issues apparently U. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean at this point, again, internet is not
Speaker 1: a real thing, right right, Yeah yeah, yrk will remembers
Speaker 1: there being specific problems connecting his his networks in Finland
Speaker 1: with US networks, but this wouldn't go on for very long. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were improvements in the infrastructure going on at the
Speaker 1: same time as I r C starting to catch on
Speaker 1: in popularity. In fact, by November of that year, of
Speaker 1: universities in Colorado and Oregon would become connected to the
Speaker 1: I r C network. Um they would set up their
Speaker 1: own servers and and hook everything up together, so it
Speaker 1: was no longer solely finished and what it was just
Speaker 1: getting started. I couldn't help myself. UM and uh Jorco
Speaker 1: had connected with some people through m I T S
Speaker 1: network and distributed a couple of copies and it basically
Speaker 1: just went wild. I mean like he didn't he didn't
Speaker 1: distribute it physically to all of these people that ended
Speaker 1: up setting up their their their own versions. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's actually kind of funny, like the story about the
Speaker 1: Colorado coming online. As I understand it, one of the
Speaker 1: other UH universities and finn Land, there was a user
Speaker 1: who was very interested in it, who then passed it
Speaker 1: on to someone who was at in Colorado who then uh,
Speaker 1: you know, so it was it was growing organically. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like a planned out this is how we're rolling
Speaker 1: this out. It was it was a viral. Yeah. He
Speaker 1: was just like, hey, check out the school thing that
Speaker 1: I made, and and all of a sudden he would
Speaker 1: see it pop up in other places. So that was
Speaker 1: August to November. It took very little time at all.
Speaker 1: By midine, there were forty servers worldwide. Uh and by
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety the average number of active servers so forty
Speaker 1: servers worldwide that not all of them are necessarily active
Speaker 1: all the time. So by the number of active servers
Speaker 1: and the number of active users at any particular given
Speaker 1: time was still pretty modest. We're talking twelve users and
Speaker 1: thirty eight servers. Granted, the original code for I r
Speaker 1: C really only accounted for some hundred users to be
Speaker 1: connected all at the same time. And uh. Furthermore, according
Speaker 1: to some numbers around that same time, there were only
Speaker 1: three million people worldwide who even had access to the
Speaker 1: Internet right and and doing something like if you've ever
Speaker 1: connected to a BBS in the old days, a lot
Speaker 1: of those original BBS has only had capacity for a
Speaker 1: couple of people to connect at a time, So for
Speaker 1: something to have the capacity to allow a hundred people
Speaker 1: to communicate simultaneously was a huge deal. It was it
Speaker 1: would turn out to not be scalable really at all,
Speaker 1: which created many problems down the line. Yes. In fact,
Speaker 1: so in August that's when one of these problems starts
Speaker 1: to rear its head, and that the ir C community
Speaker 1: suffers its first schism, but not the last one, certainly not.
Speaker 1: So in this corner you have the traditional lass community
Speaker 1: and on the other corner you had a group that
Speaker 1: just they you know, they didn't want people to tell
Speaker 1: him what to do. They wanted they wanted freedom from rules,
Speaker 1: rules for squares. Man, I don't know if they actually
Speaker 1: used that voices. That's exactly the how people talk to
Speaker 1: I'm old enough to remember, I see. Um. So, so
Speaker 1: these two groups split, and the the kind of anarchists,
Speaker 1: the anarchists sort of side uh founded a net which
Speaker 1: stood in fact for anarchist net. Yes, and the rest
Speaker 1: of it became known as e f net, which stands
Speaker 1: for arist Free Network e r I s Aris Free Network.
Speaker 1: And why because the server that a net was founded
Speaker 1: on was named Aris dot Berkeley dot E d U. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, you had one group of people who
Speaker 1: are like, we kind of want the freedom to do
Speaker 1: whatever we like because we don't like these rules where
Speaker 1: you say we can't do things like take over someone's
Speaker 1: channel just because they weren't smart enough to block us
Speaker 1: from and since they're not smart enough, they should not
Speaker 1: be allowed to run that channel. I should be allowed
Speaker 1: to run it and do whatever I want. I'm being
Speaker 1: I'm certainly adding a little more motivation here than it
Speaker 1: was probably in the literature. But that's kind of how
Speaker 1: I do things. Well, I mean, you are you are
Speaker 1: being snarky, but first of all, snark is what you do.
Speaker 1: Snark is what both of us do. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: guess what tech stuff does? We embrace it? We do. Um,
Speaker 1: but uh, the folks who are on that that a
Speaker 1: net did really enjoy exploiting um what was called nick
Speaker 1: colliding and this is um. Yeah, So here's the thing, Like,
Speaker 1: you would choose a nickname when you log into a
Speaker 1: channel or or a server to to chat with other people,
Speaker 1: and this nickname represents who you are. You can choose
Speaker 1: any nickname you want given the character limit of that
Speaker 1: that's supported by that particular client and server. So one
Speaker 1: thing that could happen is that if you try to choose,
Speaker 1: what you know, another person's nickname, the system would generally
Speaker 1: prevent you from doing that, saying that that name is
Speaker 1: already taken. But if you were able to orchestrate an
Speaker 1: event or take advantage of an event where everyone is
Speaker 1: kicked out of a room and then you rejoin that
Speaker 1: room or channel I should say, everyone's kicked out of
Speaker 1: a channel, you rejoin that channel before the operator or
Speaker 1: OP can join that channel, and you name yourself the
Speaker 1: OPS name. You could end up giving yourself OP powers
Speaker 1: for that channel, and you prevent the rightful OP from
Speaker 1: being able to take hold. And so that's nick colliding.
Speaker 1: It's when these nicknames collide. In One way that would
Speaker 1: happen is you would have what what's called a net split.
Speaker 1: A net split is when, uh, you have two servers
Speaker 1: that are connected to a network that are running the
Speaker 1: same sort of channel, and some people are on one server,
Speaker 1: some people are on the other server, but they're all
Speaker 1: in the same chat room. But then somehow a connection
Speaker 1: between those servers breaks and then you end up having
Speaker 1: two instances of that same channel, so you've got half
Speaker 1: the people in one and half the people in the other.
Speaker 1: So let's say that I'm a jerk. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: easy to say, right, So I'm a jerk. I've logged
Speaker 1: into the hold on. It's gonna take me a second. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, it's okay. There's you're in a forest. There's
Speaker 1: a tree, all right. So Lauren, you're an OP and
Speaker 1: I'm a jerk, and I've logged into the channel, and
Speaker 1: right now I'm not being too jerky, So you haven't
Speaker 1: booted me or anything like that. But there's a net
Speaker 1: split and you and your group are in one server.
Speaker 1: I'm on another server, so we're on separate ones. I say,
Speaker 1: ah ha, there's been a net split. I shall change
Speaker 1: my name, yes exactly, I'll change my name to Lauren's name.
Speaker 1: And so I change my nickname. And then when the
Speaker 1: servers are reunited and it tries to reconcile these two
Speaker 1: worlds into one. Because you have two people with the
Speaker 1: same nickname, the nicknames collide, thus nick colliding, and it
Speaker 1: boots both people out of the channel. Now, because I'm
Speaker 1: a jerk, and because I've planned for this, I've already
Speaker 1: got another window open, so i can log right back
Speaker 1: in using Lauren's nickname again. And Lauren, because she wasn't
Speaker 1: expecting this because she was being decent, is locked out
Speaker 1: of her own channel. That's kind of nick colliding in
Speaker 1: a you know, in a nutshell, and that's the sort
Speaker 1: of stuff these guys like to do. So they started
Speaker 1: up their own party. They say, well, you know, the
Speaker 1: e f net people for some reason don't find this
Speaker 1: nearly as entertaining as we do, so we're gonna make
Speaker 1: our own party. Um. However, a net would not last
Speaker 1: very long, and in fact, most users chose to go
Speaker 1: with e f net instead, saying this anarchy thing doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like it's a lot of fun or very you
Speaker 1: know productive. Everyone being nice seems to make a lot
Speaker 1: more sense, right, So then we have a unified network
Speaker 1: e f net again. So it started off as a
Speaker 1: unified network, had that one schism. A net did not
Speaker 1: last very long. We're back to unified. However, then you
Speaker 1: have a second splintering, which is when some users left
Speaker 1: e f net to form tub net, which was mostly
Speaker 1: kind of a The tub net folks were saying, look,
Speaker 1: you need to fix things so that net splits happen
Speaker 1: less frequently. They are, they're disruptive, you it's it's ruining
Speaker 1: the experience. Right. The way that people react to net
Speaker 1: splits is not the problem. The fact that we are
Speaker 1: having net splits at all is something that really needs
Speaker 1: to be worked on more exactly. And so it wasn't
Speaker 1: so much a disagreement with policy as it was we
Speaker 1: need to improve this platform. So they left and uh
Speaker 1: toughnet had about five servers and around a hundred users,
Speaker 1: But it didn't stay around very long either. People kind
Speaker 1: of might um and and again, basically all of these
Speaker 1: were really scalability issues um which which Arco himself actually
Speaker 1: listed as being just about the only thing that he
Speaker 1: would go back and change if he had it to
Speaker 1: all do over again. Right. But you know, again, hindsight
Speaker 1: being twenty, it was a lot harder to imagine this
Speaker 1: back when you were doing something where you had ten
Speaker 1: people on. So an event, a world event happens that
Speaker 1: ends up making I r C a very useful utility
Speaker 1: for a certain population. That was when the Gulf War
Speaker 1: broke out and you started seeing lots of people using
Speaker 1: I r C to communicate about the war, sharing news stories,
Speaker 1: sharing information as they got it, because different parts of
Speaker 1: the world we're getting reports earlier than other parts, and
Speaker 1: everyone wanted to know what was going on, and this
Speaker 1: when they were seeing the height of their popularity in
Speaker 1: their early days. And keep in mind, again we're talking
Speaker 1: modest numbers, so when we tell you how many users
Speaker 1: at the high their popularity, don't snicker, right, because for
Speaker 1: the first time in history, it was it was about
Speaker 1: three concurrent users at any given moment, and that that
Speaker 1: was a big deal. Uh, you know, kind of similar
Speaker 1: to how we were saying in the Twitter episode about
Speaker 1: how how people were so impressed by the ability that
Speaker 1: this that this software gave them to tune into live
Speaker 1: reporting about an issue, same same thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So it was, you know, really, to me, what this
Speaker 1: says is it's it's it's a premonition about what the
Speaker 1: Internet will be and how it will be important and
Speaker 1: how people will use it to communicate these important ideas
Speaker 1: in real time across the entire globe. And even though
Speaker 1: it was very tiny, particularly compared to something as enormous
Speaker 1: as the Internet, it was kind of a proof of
Speaker 1: concept in many ways. So then another blit happens, but
Speaker 1: this one was not. It was an amicable split. It
Speaker 1: wasn't something where a bunch of people were really upset.
Speaker 1: A user who used the nickname wild Thang and yes,
Speaker 1: that is how it's spelled, created a test network to
Speaker 1: develop bots. So these are automated accounts. Often they will
Speaker 1: create admins that are bots, and the admin bots really
Speaker 1: are just there to scan for anything that would be
Speaker 1: objectionable and react to it so that if someone's typing
Speaker 1: in all caps, the bot can step in and say, please,
Speaker 1: don't type in all caps. People were much more sensitive
Speaker 1: about that in these early days of internet. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: because it was considered shouting. And no, no, I mean
Speaker 1: it's still considered shouting. But it's kind of funny these days.
Speaker 1: I think back back then, if you're if your handle
Speaker 1: is drunk hulk, it's hilarious. Well but at any rate, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: that's fair. It's not not always hilarious, but frequently so
Speaker 1: the this this approach, this uh, this split to create
Speaker 1: this area where they could test out bots. It was
Speaker 1: really just men as a testing ground, but more and
Speaker 1: more people wanted to join it to kind of play
Speaker 1: around with things and test things out and see what
Speaker 1: else was possible, and that is how the undernet was born.
Speaker 1: And uh, it actually had some really useful goals. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just about playing with bots and seeing what you
Speaker 1: could program to to do. It also involved ways of
Speaker 1: registering channels to users so that nick colliding was less
Speaker 1: of a problem. The idea being that if you register
Speaker 1: the channel to a user and you had some form
Speaker 1: of verification, like a password, that would really cut down
Speaker 1: on people being able to take over a channel without authorization.
Speaker 1: So it actually exists in parallel with the f net.
Speaker 1: It's not trying to compete or anything. It's just it's
Speaker 1: just kind of a like almost like a sandbox where
Speaker 1: people can test out things. And uh, that's where i
Speaker 1: r C really stopped being a united network and becomes
Speaker 1: a platform that runs on different networks. This is the
Speaker 1: time we start seeing something that can survive on its
Speaker 1: own and doesn't it's not just a flash in the pan,
Speaker 1: you know, splinter group. So by May the i r
Speaker 1: C protocol is made available to the general public. It's
Speaker 1: no longer just something that's being spread from uh, you know,
Speaker 1: one one enthusiast to another. Now it's available for anyone.
Speaker 1: And the summer of nineteen uh, we get a fork
Speaker 1: in under net. So we've talked about splintering with e
Speaker 1: f net. Now undernet itself forks and another group called
Speaker 1: down net d a l a et is born and
Speaker 1: it was really trying to bring more stability and security
Speaker 1: to the I r C platform exactly. And a lot
Speaker 1: of their their improvements were made by a guy named
Speaker 1: Brian morpher Smith, so again looking to improve the platform. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think these splits are looked upon with much more
Speaker 1: fondness by people. Everyone was trying to make it better
Speaker 1: as opposed to having having like deep philosophical disagreements within
Speaker 1: the community. Uh. And then in undernet would split again,
Speaker 1: but this time it was it was one of those
Speaker 1: UM system problems, infrastructure problems. UH. You see there was
Speaker 1: a server in Australia that was part of the undernet,
Speaker 1: but connecting from Australia to the rest of the world
Speaker 1: there was a lot of lag, so huge delays. You
Speaker 1: would type something in, you'd hit enter, it would take
Speaker 1: you know, several seconds for it to to transfer over
Speaker 1: By then whatever, the topic of conversation has changed dramatically.
Speaker 1: Everyone thinks that you're being either obtuse or just really slow.
Speaker 1: But it turns out just because there's lag. So there
Speaker 1: was a conscious decision to split from the undernet UH
Speaker 1: and to create a new Australian based network called ozorg.
Speaker 1: So so this was again another one of those beneficial
Speaker 1: splits that that was really done for the good of
Speaker 1: the community rather than due to h intric community arguments. Exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really, I mean it was. It was sad in
Speaker 1: a way because it meant that the Australians became kind
Speaker 1: of you know, insulated from everybody else and everyone else
Speaker 1: was denied the pleasure of Australian company. But it was
Speaker 1: due specifically to technological you know, shortcomings, had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with philosophical disagreements. Our next item on the list, however,
Speaker 1: is very much one of those angry philosophical disagreements. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is what is called the Great Split, which you know,
Speaker 1: I've had a few of those in bowling and they
Speaker 1: are really a pain. But this happened in July of
Speaker 1: nine six I r c net splits off from e
Speaker 1: f net and UH I are seen that and e
Speaker 1: f net are are still kind of like these Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's it was over generally, it was over a disagreement
Speaker 1: on how to handle operational issues, right. It was basically
Speaker 1: a culmination of all of those old arguments over how
Speaker 1: NICK collisions should be handled and over exactly how much
Speaker 1: power ops and admins should have in their in their channels.
Speaker 1: It was really to try and define these roles in
Speaker 1: different ways, because, as it turns out, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: a little bit a little bit later about how the
Speaker 1: definitions of operators versus admins it's a little money depending
Speaker 1: upon which service you're using UM and also the capabilities
Speaker 1: that ops and admins have are different depending upon you know,
Speaker 1: the actual servers and clients that are being used. So
Speaker 1: there were some disagreements and we ended up having the
Speaker 1: split I r C NET actually more out of uh
Speaker 1: coincidence than planning. It wound up being I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean cultural and geographical and and both of those. I mean,
Speaker 1: there there are a few servers that the jump ship
Speaker 1: one way or another, but yeah, most of the ones
Speaker 1: in I r C net are in Europe and Australia
Speaker 1: and Japan, and most of the e f net ones
Speaker 1: are in the US. So it ended up kind of
Speaker 1: just being on that dividing line it wasn't. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like us versus everybody else. It just kind of that's
Speaker 1: just kind of how it shook out. And since then,
Speaker 1: multiple networks have appeared running on i r C. So
Speaker 1: you had this unified network, although it was very very
Speaker 1: tiny comparatively speaking. Uh, and now that you have a
Speaker 1: bunch of separate networks. At its height of popularity, which
Speaker 1: was a long time ago in two thousand three, i
Speaker 1: r C had one million users. As of January, that
Speaker 1: had dropped to about food but it's still not terribly
Speaker 1: shabby and it's still used quite a bit by a
Speaker 1: lot of I mean, there are a lot of communities
Speaker 1: I go to where I r C chat rooms are
Speaker 1: incorporated into the experience, like like sites that do streaming
Speaker 1: video where they'll do some forum a broadcast if they
Speaker 1: don't have a native chat client, that's part of that service.
Speaker 1: I r C is the way that almost all of
Speaker 1: them go, and that includes big names like big companies
Speaker 1: all the way down to little independent operators because it's
Speaker 1: an open source approach. Now we've got more to say
Speaker 1: about i r C, but before where we get into that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're back, and now I'd kind of like to
Speaker 1: talk about the hierarchy of things that you know, like
Speaker 1: the people who are on I r C. Because before
Speaker 1: the break we mentioned that there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a confusion in the ranks of what an ops versus
Speaker 1: an ADMIN is and how much control they have over
Speaker 1: what's going on. Right. So, for one thing, operator is
Speaker 1: used by some services for two different things. An operator
Speaker 1: might be a person who has complete control of the
Speaker 1: server which has all the stuff running on it, or
Speaker 1: just complete control over the channel like a specific UH
Speaker 1: chat room exactly, so you could have multiple channels on
Speaker 1: a single server. Uh. And then the operator is the
Speaker 1: person who could either be in charge of everything or
Speaker 1: in charge of justice specific channel. Another frequent term is
Speaker 1: admin that tends to be someone who's in charge of
Speaker 1: a channel. So these are people who have extra commands
Speaker 1: at their disposal beyond the ones that any user has.
Speaker 1: And these commands allow you to do lots of different
Speaker 1: things that make it useful, uh in order to have
Speaker 1: things run smoothly on your channel. So, for instance, you
Speaker 1: can mute people, which is often useful if someone is
Speaker 1: being particularly probably yeah, and you don't want to just
Speaker 1: boot them and ban them. Maybe you mute them so
Speaker 1: that they don't even know that, like, they don't know
Speaker 1: that their stuff is not showing up, so they're still
Speaker 1: typing wildly, but none of it's coming through, right, so
Speaker 1: everyone else is blissfully ignorant. I mean sometimes that's easier
Speaker 1: because you know, booting booting someone, which is another thing
Speaker 1: they can do. They can kick people out of a room,
Speaker 1: which generally speaking, booting does not disconnect you from I
Speaker 1: r C, but it will disconnect you from that channel.
Speaker 1: You often will then have either a van on the
Speaker 1: channel so you can't go back into it, or um,
Speaker 1: you know, you can go back in, but then the
Speaker 1: OP will give you a stern warning and say if
Speaker 1: you do this, I will and you from the server,
Speaker 1: which means you don't. Yeah, you don't just get banned
Speaker 1: from the channel, but the server itself. Uh. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: there are ways around that if you're particularly trollish and
Speaker 1: you want to take extra effort to really be a
Speaker 1: pain in the patucas, but you know that's what the
Speaker 1: mute buttons for. Also, you can do moderated discussions. So
Speaker 1: a moderated discussion is where you have an admin who
Speaker 1: picks who gets to talk when this is really useful
Speaker 1: if you wanted to do something like a question answer
Speaker 1: session and you have someone who is addressing a group
Speaker 1: of people and then wants to take in questions, but
Speaker 1: you can't just be flooded by them uh and admin
Speaker 1: may take on the role of moderator who then picks
Speaker 1: the person who will ask the question in text, and
Speaker 1: then the person you know whoever's answering will then address that.
Speaker 1: So that's also very useful. And there are other commands
Speaker 1: as well. There's some UM confusion about what operators exactly
Speaker 1: can cannot do. There are people who essentially ascribe them
Speaker 1: godlike powers and they could do anything they wanted, and
Speaker 1: that's not entirely true. There's great UM resources on i
Speaker 1: RC dot org if you want to go there and
Speaker 1: check it out. There there's frequently ask question guides that
Speaker 1: will answer everything, including one about what exactly cannon op
Speaker 1: and can't and OP do. To try and demystify a
Speaker 1: little bit, it's and entertaining reads. I would recommend it.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about them. What's actually
Speaker 1: under the hood, How is this actually working? This is
Speaker 1: where we get into the tech of the tech stuff.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so it's open protocol. We mentioned that earlier,
Speaker 1: and it relies on TCP, that's transmission controlled protocol, right,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the two biggies that were created
Speaker 1: by the Power Team events SURF and Bob con Y.
Speaker 1: T c P i P are the big ones. You know,
Speaker 1: you probably have heard them before. These are essentially the
Speaker 1: rules that create the the traffic guidelines for data across networks.
Speaker 1: We know. Without these rules, computers wouldn't have a standardized
Speaker 1: approach to sending and receiving data, and you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to have this incredible packet switching network out there
Speaker 1: where you can send stuff across the network and not
Speaker 1: worry if a computer or ten computers or a hundred
Speaker 1: computers go down in the process as long as whichever
Speaker 1: computer is the destination is still active because it can
Speaker 1: reroute so right right, Although this does mean that it's
Speaker 1: not technically part of the Worldwide Web. Of course, there
Speaker 1: are web based clients that let you log into i
Speaker 1: r C. Right, Yeah, you want, you don't necessarily these
Speaker 1: days need to download an i r C client to
Speaker 1: your computer and then run that as a separate program,
Speaker 1: uh for particular websites, not obviously. Uh, you're not necessarily
Speaker 1: going to be able to visit any channel anywhere. But
Speaker 1: you know, I was mentioning the idea of that moderated discussion. Uh,
Speaker 1: So if you're going to say a streaming site, I'll
Speaker 1: use a real example. So, um, there's Uh there's a
Speaker 1: web podcast publication company called the frog Pants Network run
Speaker 1: by a guy named Scott Johnson. He does a lot
Speaker 1: of really funny podcasts. He streams his podcasts live, he
Speaker 1: records somebody streams them live, and he invites people to
Speaker 1: come into this chat room and participate in a discussion.
Speaker 1: So uh, that would allow you. You go to the
Speaker 1: website where the the video is streaming, and just underneath
Speaker 1: it is this little web based I r C client
Speaker 1: and all you do is type in whatever nickname you
Speaker 1: want to use and hit enter, and then away you go,
Speaker 1: and you can make as many goofy jokes as you like,
Speaker 1: which Scott uh encourages. That's the kind of world he
Speaker 1: lives and I appreciate it. So anyway, that that's an example.
Speaker 1: But yes, it's it itself is not part of the
Speaker 1: World Wide Web. It predates the world Wide Web. So
Speaker 1: that's important to remember. And you know, I know that
Speaker 1: most people these days have a grasp on that. I
Speaker 1: just remember a time when Worldwide Web and Internet were
Speaker 1: synonymous to most people, Like you know, if they thought
Speaker 1: of the Internet, they were thinking Worldwide Web. They weren't.
Speaker 1: They didn't realize that email, FTP, all these other protocols
Speaker 1: are also part of it, right right then they existed
Speaker 1: in layers, yes, exactly. So to log in, like we said,
Speaker 1: you'd launched that client an appy, and you would direct
Speaker 1: it to the appropriate server because there are different ones.
Speaker 1: Like you, if you've got an app, that's just all
Speaker 1: it is is just running this program. It needs to
Speaker 1: know where you're where to point it, like you have
Speaker 1: to tell it. There are many different servers that might
Speaker 1: have access to and then once you got to that server,
Speaker 1: then you would have to try and you know, find
Speaker 1: the right channel. You might look through a list of
Speaker 1: channels and designate the specific one you want to join.
Speaker 1: You could join multiple channels and then switch between them
Speaker 1: so that you're part of multiple conversations all at the
Speaker 1: same time. And some servers, depending on which one you
Speaker 1: have logged into, UM might ask you to create a
Speaker 1: user name and even a password. Yeah, so instead of
Speaker 1: just coming in under a nickname, because some of them
Speaker 1: will just assign you a random string like a nine
Speaker 1: digit number, right, like, like you are web Visitors eight
Speaker 1: seven b Q four. That's a great catchy name. But
Speaker 1: you can also designate your your nickname or user name,
Speaker 1: and like, like Lauren said, some of them will also
Speaker 1: allow you to create a password which will protect your
Speaker 1: nickname so that no one else can have it. From that.
Speaker 1: From that, right that nick duplication, which usually only works
Speaker 1: on some of them are serverwide, but a lot of
Speaker 1: them are just channel specific. So in other words, there
Speaker 1: could be someone in another channel posing as you and
Speaker 1: being a total jerk. Uh. That's my excuse for having
Speaker 1: multiple personalities on an I r C server where one
Speaker 1: of me is really friendly and one of me is not.
Speaker 1: I'm complex. So since it's a client server architecture and
Speaker 1: it's not on this distributed network, that's where you are
Speaker 1: able to, you know, access lots of different stuff, but
Speaker 1: only the stuff that's available on that server. Like we
Speaker 1: were saying earlier, if there are channels that you want
Speaker 1: to visit, but that server doesn't host those channels, you're
Speaker 1: out of luck. I mean, you create a channel maybe
Speaker 1: if you have the permissions to do that, but you
Speaker 1: might not be in with all of your buddies, similar
Speaker 1: to like like World Warcraft or something like that. You
Speaker 1: have to all join up in the same to the
Speaker 1: same game, right, because those servers have a limitation on
Speaker 1: how much they can support and once you reach that,
Speaker 1: that's it. So uh yeah, it's you know, that's also
Speaker 1: where the the net split thing comes into play because
Speaker 1: if you do have multiple servers connected together that are
Speaker 1: running the same channel and they split, that's where you
Speaker 1: get that promised talking about earlier, where the actual audience
Speaker 1: splits up and you end up with talking to just
Speaker 1: a fraction of the room. Right, Although the servers can
Speaker 1: be connected together. Yeah, yeah, you can connect a lot
Speaker 1: of them together. That's where you know, that was the
Speaker 1: whole idea behind the original I r C network. It's
Speaker 1: just it's funny because if you look at I r
Speaker 1: C today, you wouldn't think of it as starting as
Speaker 1: a unified network because there's so many different servers and
Speaker 1: networks out there, so today it just looks like it
Speaker 1: was something that grew into like it started out as
Speaker 1: islands all growing separately. But in fact it was one
Speaker 1: land mass that later broke into separate islands. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: but you can you can connect those islands back to
Speaker 1: one another retroactively these days if you want to. If
Speaker 1: an opp wants to give his or her users access
Speaker 1: to a greater number of channels, sure, yeah yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, as long as you're all running the same
Speaker 1: I r C server software, you're you're good to go.
Speaker 1: Once in a while, like we said, you get those
Speaker 1: broken connections, that's a bummer. And also lag is an issue. Um,
Speaker 1: there are times where lag will be a particular problem
Speaker 1: and you find it frustrating to communicate. There's an actual
Speaker 1: command slash ping that will tell you how long the
Speaker 1: delay is between when you type something in and when
Speaker 1: it respond When how long it takes a message to
Speaker 1: go from the server and from the server back to you.
Speaker 1: You can also ping other users to find out how
Speaker 1: long it takes for a message to go from you
Speaker 1: to that person and from the person back to you.
Speaker 1: So that way, if you're doing these little private messages
Speaker 1: off to the side, you know, if someone's not responding
Speaker 1: to you, it may be because they just they're they're lagging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can understand whether you have in fact lost connection
Speaker 1: or if there's right a leg or or if they're
Speaker 1: just ignoring you. Yes, Like if you get the instead
Speaker 1: of a lag message, it just says I'm washing my hair.
Speaker 1: Just take the hint because I don't have hair. Guys,
Speaker 1: I tell you I'm washing my hair, it just means
Speaker 1: I don't want to talk anyway. So if you listen
Speaker 1: to that episode we talked about earlier, we go into
Speaker 1: a lot more detail about the different commands that are
Speaker 1: available to your basic user and explained that why you know,
Speaker 1: the ones that you might find on one version like
Speaker 1: the undernet, are different than e f net, that are
Speaker 1: different than I r C net because like we said,
Speaker 1: these all evolved separately once they split off from each other.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's been all several decades since they
Speaker 1: were first introduced. Yeah, yeah, I find that I find
Speaker 1: it really interesting that it all of this time has
Speaker 1: passed and that it is still in use, perhaps not
Speaker 1: widely in use now that there are many other options
Speaker 1: that are pretty widely pop pulated. But Jarko himself once
Speaker 1: once said, in a talk with the Undernet Public Relations Committee, um,
Speaker 1: what makes I r C special is a sense of anonymity.
Speaker 1: The only things that you often know of the other
Speaker 1: person are those that you can conclude from the discussions. Right, So,
Speaker 1: for example, you may conclude that they have a shared
Speaker 1: interest in a particular topic, assuming that they are being
Speaker 1: genuine when they joined that that channel, because you knows sure.
Speaker 1: But but but other other than that, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's not like this is linked to your Facebook or
Speaker 1: your Twitter or other personally identifiable information. You don't even
Speaker 1: necessarily have to use a user name that you're going
Speaker 1: to put in use anywhere else on the internet. Right,
Speaker 1: you might be able, you might feel more free to
Speaker 1: express thoughts that you otherwise would feel would be uh,
Speaker 1: you'd be judged upon, you know, not not even in
Speaker 1: a troll ish way. I mean just being honest and upfront.
Speaker 1: And maybe maybe you're looking for friends who can support
Speaker 1: you in something that you don't really feel comfortable talking
Speaker 1: to the folks around you. I mean that happens. So
Speaker 1: it certainly has a valuable place. And like I said,
Speaker 1: I still use I r C. I mean, I still
Speaker 1: uh joined these conversations. There are shows that I have
Speaker 1: been a guest on that have used I RC chat rooms.
Speaker 1: I love having that available and seeing what the live
Speaker 1: audience is saying during the show. Usually there's a lag
Speaker 1: of about, you know, ten seconds or so between what
Speaker 1: what we do on the video and when people see
Speaker 1: it and are able to respond to it. So but
Speaker 1: it's still I mean, if a good show that does this,
Speaker 1: they'll actually incorporate user responses and and they call people
Speaker 1: out and and and you know, give them credit or
Speaker 1: or you know, shame them publicly, depending upon the the
Speaker 1: appropriate response. But it's it's one of those things that
Speaker 1: enriches Internet experience absolutely. Yeah. I have very fond memories
Speaker 1: of it from um probably about two thousand four to
Speaker 1: two thousand eight, I think is when I was using
Speaker 1: m I r C, which is the Microsoft client for it. Yeah. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: So anyway, that's kind of our our overview again of
Speaker 1: r C with a deeper look than the previous episode.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for future topics, whether it's brand new technology that's just
Speaker 1: on the cusp of being adopted widely, or something that's
Speaker 1: been around for a really long time, we love talking
Speaker 1: about all of it, So just drop us a line
Speaker 1: and tell us what you would like us to cover.
Speaker 1: Our address is tech stuff at Discovery dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can let us know on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumbler
Speaker 1: or handle it. All three is text stuff hs W
Speaker 1: and Lauren and I will talk to you again really
Speaker 1: soon for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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