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Originally Posted by rawb
you suck at the internet
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Fuck, beat me to it.
IRC = Internet Relay Chat. It's a chat protocol that involves remote chat servers.
Basically, you need an IRC client. Once you have an IRC client (I recommend mIRC for windows and XChat for *nix (or Bitchx if you're a hax0r and wanna ssh into your chat box), look up on google for information). Once you have an IRC client you can connect to an IRC server. There are many public servers available, and usually the client comes complete with a list of commonly used public servers (Undernet, Efnet, etc.). You can also connect to a friend's server if they have an IRC server set up. Once connected to a server, you can browse to various channels. Usually they come in the format "#[topic] where [topic] is something like mp3z, warez, help or whatever the basis of discussion in the room is. You can make up your own and invite your friends to come on it. There's a whole bunch more to it, but those are the basics.
Usenet is an e-mail-like net protocol. Basically, there are various newsgroups available, stuff like alt.parenting, alt.movies, alt.cult-movies.rocky-horror, alt.wesley-crusher.die.die.die, etc.
What you can do is you can read all the posts put on a newsgroup (by connecting to a usenet server, usually provided by your ISP) with a newsgroup client, usually the same as your e-mail client (I recommend Mozilla Thunderbird for both myself).
You can browse them much the same as you would browse e-mails in a folder on your computer. If you reply, you don't reply to the person who posted it, rather you reply directly to the newsgroup. It's kind of like these forums but rather than being centralized to a single web page, everybody in the world gets the same sites.
Hope that helped.
Jun 22, 05
