                                                Author: Jeff Trim
                                                        jtrim@orion.cair.du.edu
                                                  Date: 04 Apr 1989
                                     Last modification: 04 Apr 1989

                 The Internet Relay Chat Program  -  IRC

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 over much of the United States, Finland, Sweden and very
soon I think it's going to appear in the United Kingdom.  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 will
tell you that the program can be very addictive once you begin to make
friends and contacts on IRC ;)  .. and the Finnish people are as curious
about Amercians as we are about them - so the topics can become very 
interesting sometimes.  I think I have talked about everything from Politics
to Living expenses in the United States - in return they have told me about
life in Finnland (which is quite interesting!) - I even know a few Finnish
curse words - but we won't go into those ;)

The first step to beginning to getting aquinted to IRC is to throw off the
fear of embarrising yourself -- the fact of the matter is that the people
on the other end of the terminal are as scared as you are.  The Finnish
people speak VERY GOOD english, so you can feel comfortable speaking to
them in english.  (I will add, however, that it's also interesting to see
how they communicate in Finnish - some of their words can be 25 characters
long - and I am talking just one word!)  When you /join a conference and 
they recognize that you are an english speaking person they always nicely
switch immediately into english - they are very cordial about that.  But
be aware that finnish is their native language so they might stumble a bit
on some of our english counter parts  (especially english SLANG words).
Also you might need to give them a second or too to make the switch into
english because there might be a heated argument going on when you /join 
the conference and they need time to finish what they are saying.

Beyond the Finnish there are users from Oregon State University, Ohio State
University, MIT, Northwestern State University and we even picked up a
site from NASA about a week ago.  At my last count there were 22 servers
running 24 hours aday all over the US/Finland - so you can loggin just
about any time of day and find people talking on IRC (as a side note - the
Finnish are 9 Hours ahead of us -- meaning when it's 11:00pm at night in Denver
it's 8:00am THE NEXT DAY in Finland!)  You should note that late afternoon
in Denver is EARLY in the morning for the Finnish ;)  But the US users
should keep the same time schedual you have (keeping in mind Mountain Time,
Central Time, Pacific Time, ...etc).  

WHAT DO I TALK ABOUT?

That is the most common question I get so I will answer it now.  Sometimes
you'll notice that all conversation STOPS and you know everyone is waiting
on everyone else to say something - so this is a good time to talk about
News, weather or whatever -- best thing is to ask a question - like "How's
the weather in finland?", "What's TV like in Finland?", "Did you know that
an Oil Tanker just spilt oil all over the Alaskan sea-shore?".  If things
get real desperate say something like "well why don't we choose a topic?"
..then you should also try to think up something, maybe a good topic over
your favoite beer, Broncos mainia (I haven't explained that to the Finnish
yet (I still don't get it) ;), Denver, skiing, computers, people, vacation
spots, travel, cars, housing, whatever you can think of.  ..but be assertive.


A finally note is about IRC protocol.  Try not to CUSS out the other users
(meaning use your best english - keep your laungauge printable ;), and
when you are going to LEAVE IRC - say "goodbye" and give the other users
about 30 seconds to in turn say their goodbye's.  Never just /signoff 
because it makes the other users think you didn't like what they were
saying - so try to leave on a good note.  A finally you should be aware
that the program does allow <CTRL>G's (The ASCII BELL character).  They
are used only when absolutely necessary - and usually in PRIVATE messages
only - so please restrict them to that.  If you need to wake up a sleeping
user (IE one that's away from his terminal for awhile) then send him a few
^G's (like 2) and wake him up in private message.  Don't post ^G's in
public messages.


RUNNING THE PROGRAM:

I have it set up currently on the 3 academic UNIXES - on EOS/TYCHE/ORION
type: "irc".  I am Posting the IRC User Manual in the next posting so 
please read that to get familiar with IRC and the various commands.  if
you want help in the program type "/help".  If you see a topic you want to
read about then type "/help <topic>", like "/help who".  But anyway to
run the program type:

      irc

If you have any questions at all feel free to write me a note.  I am the
current IRC Adminestrator for The University of Denver so I can answer 
all of your questions.  I am "jtrim@orion.cair.du.edu".

The program was written by "Jarkko Oikarinen" - and in IRC you can usually
find him as NICKNAME "Wiz".
