                 The Internet Relay Chat Program  -  IRC

                      Author: Jeff Trim, April '89
              Revised: Greg Lindahl, Oct '90 (gl8f@virginia.edu)

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.
This program is a substitution for talk(1), chat(1), vco(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
the irc server from tolsun.oulu.fi, and the most popular client from
rvw2.hhs.ri.cmu.edu. If you have any questions about IRC installation,
write to the address given in the "networking" document in the IRC
server distribution.




