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posted by takyon on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the small-talk dept.

Submitted via IRC for BoyceMagooglyMonkey

Internet Relay Chat turns 30—and we remember how it changed our lives

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) turned 30 this August.

The venerable text-only chat system was first developed in 1988 by a Finnish computer scientist named Jarkko Oikarinen. Oikarinen couldn't have known at the time just how his creation would affect the lives of people around the world, but it became one of the key early tools that kept Ars Technica running as a virtual workplace—it even lead to love and marriage.

To honor IRC's 30th birthday, we're foregoing the cake and flowers in favor of some memories. Three long-time Ars staffers share some of their earliest IRC interactions, which remind us that the Internet has always been simultaneously wonderful and kind of terrible.


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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:33PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:33PM (#749685)

    When men were men, women were men, and little girls were FBI officers.

    hawt9thgrade> Hi, guys! I'm lonely.
    neckbeard42> Good morning, officer!

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:38PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:38PM (#749687)

      Before the censorship, before the normies.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:53PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:53PM (#749690)

        Before the dark web, before the Silk Road.

        I'll take today's internet.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @02:29AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @02:29AM (#749782)

        You speak of the Second Age of the Internet, when the geeks of Númenor were still in charge.

        Then came Eternal September and the Third Age when the twits in Mordor gained power.


        Ash kraun
        *dramatic thunderclap and darkness descends as the vile tongue of Zuckerfuck is spoken* durbatulûk, ash kraun gimbatul,
        ash kraun thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul

      • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday October 17 2018, @06:19PM

        by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday October 17 2018, @06:19PM (#750064) Journal

        Before the censorship...

        Yeah....kicks and bans didn't exist on IRC....

    • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday October 19 2018, @04:20AM

      by darkfeline (1030) on Friday October 19 2018, @04:20AM (#750793) Homepage

      The version I'm familiar with goes: the women are men, the men are boys, and the boys
      are FBI agents.

      --
      Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
  • (Score: 4, Touché) by black6host on Tuesday October 16 2018, @11:13PM

    by black6host (3827) on Tuesday October 16 2018, @11:13PM (#749699) Journal

    I can't tell you how many times I was slapped in the face by a trout. Damn that hurt!

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @11:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @11:14PM (#749700)

    My fondest memories of IRC were noob trolling in the vein of Hunter2.

    True story, back in the year 2001 I worked for a major ISP that will remain nameless, and we had a "support tool", which was a fancy application that had a chat backend based on IRC.
    It allowed us to gather all kinds of stats, including a full rundown ala belarc system advisor from the computer. It even allowed us to take over the computer via DCC if we needed to for instance alter some user setting or another that was troublesome. Keep in mind that most people were running Windows 95, Windows 98 etc.

    Long story short, there were so many users of the tool who just wanted to chat and hang out with support because they were lonely, that I took it upon myself to change the MOTD (greeting message).

    The MOTD already included a long list of things to try in order to resolve potential problems, it presented as a normal "click wrap" license so most people ignored it.
    But you had to scroll to the end before pressing the great big "READY" button to join support chat.

    At the bottom of said list right after "press ready to continue" I added...
    "if you need priority support, please press Alt+F4"

    This caused the queue to drop off immediately, but sadly it prompted numerous calls to our direct support number about our support tool "crashing".
    Thankfully that was someone else's problem :D

    The best ISPs still use IRC for support.

    This is something I have never quite understood, because if you're really in need of support then IRC probably isn't working for you either.
    Nevertheless, I recently switched to XMission.com for my Utopia connection, my experience is that they are the best ISP I have ever had. In addition to an excellent web based chat with highly competent techs, they also offer support via IRC. I switched to them after they helped me solve a problem with my line that my own ISP couldn't resolve. (Utopia is a fiber optic system where the govt owns the fiber and you rent "service" from a plethora of different "providers" who provide service over it, which is why XMission could solve my problem despite me not actually being their customer).
    Not to pimp Xmission here, but to show that IRC still has a place. Everyone seems to be moving now to Slack and whatever comes next, but the reality is, what are you going to do when Slack suddenly has an outage or is hacked? Same thing with Facebook and Twitter which have replaced IRC for most individuals now days. At least with IRC the idea that someone else can suddenly decide to shut you down on a whim is minimized, and with e2e encryption now part of many clients, the attack surface is minimized compared to even a few years ago.

    Personally, I'd like to see a renaissance in IRC, or if not IRC then something similarly powerful but decentralized take over.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @11:58PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @11:58PM (#749709)

    ...the more they stay the same.

    We had IRC, and IRC was good, and it worked. And IRC continues to be good and continues to work.
    But now we are forced to use Slack because it's 'app' looks better...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @01:08AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @01:08AM (#749740)

      Fun fact: For most of its history, Slack used IRC as the backend protocol. They slowly extended it more and more with kludges for different features. They didn't fully transition from it in a way that broke backward compatibility until 2017.

    • (Score: 2) by Unixnut on Wednesday October 17 2018, @10:12AM (1 child)

      by Unixnut (5779) on Wednesday October 17 2018, @10:12AM (#749889)

      Ugh, don't remind me. At a company I used to work for, they decided to get rid of IRC and replace it with Slack, despite my protections, because "it looked better", and you could send embedded images in it.

      However rather than be able to use any IRC client I wanted (with whatever interface I liked), and being able two write scripts and bots to interface with it, I ended up shoved into Slacks horrible, limited web interface. Sure, it has some kind of horrible kludgy web-hook type API, but I always had to have a browser running with it, which I hated having to do.

      I still prefer IRC, Slack is a bloated, pale facsimile , and less reliable to boot. Just another in a long line of backwards steps that have been happening lately in technology.

      • (Score: 1) by gozar on Wednesday October 17 2018, @05:19PM

        by gozar (5426) on Wednesday October 17 2018, @05:19PM (#750038)

        However rather than be able to use any IRC client I wanted (with whatever interface I liked), and being able two write scripts and bots to interface with it, I ended up shoved into Slacks horrible, limited web interface. Sure, it has some kind of horrible kludgy web-hook type API, but I always had to have a browser running with it, which I hated having to do. I still prefer IRC, Slack is a bloated, pale facsimile , and less reliable to boot. Just another in a long line of backwards steps that have been happening lately in technology.

        Check out Wee-slack, a script for Weechat. It works better than the Slack IRC bridge ever did.

  • (Score: 2) by corey on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:09AM

    by corey (2202) on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:09AM (#749713)

    As above.

  • (Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:49AM (4 children)

    by edIII (791) on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:49AM (#749729)

    I remember a little farther back when we left messages for each other, via phone lines, using ancient devices called modems, on even more ancient platforms called BBS. You knew were someplace fucking hot if it actually had the ability to talk to other people logged into the same BBS at the same time!

    It wasn't like today where just anybody could sign up. You may have been able to connect, after war dialing the board for 3 hours, but being approved on the board was a whole other issue. They debated the coolness of your handle, and what stuff you might provide for the board. In other words, were you a noob or a hooked up courier? First time I experienced IRC, it was like being in some advanced form of heaven for geeks. They were BBS on steroids, that allowed you to talk while downloading files.

    Thing is, IRC is still a very cool and efficient way to communicate, and it can be secure. At least they tried with the SILC protocol, but that fell out of favor to the cooler new kids like Signal, Telegram, and the paste eating Skype.

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @01:13AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @01:13AM (#749741)

      Don't forget the acoustic coupler, UUCP, bang paths, and waiting days for your messages to arrive.

    • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:21PM (2 children)

      by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:21PM (#749932) Journal

      IRC is still a very cool and efficient way to communicate

      I chatted on arbornet.org's "party" chat program (in the 80s when arbornet was a UNIX System III Altos called m-net), and then naturally transitioned to IRC. I've been at this a while, and the biggest change I've noticed between IRC in its more-popular period (during the 90s and early 2000s) and IRC now is that last letter, the C for chat.

      Then, any large channel--whether it was large merely because many people joined or large because it was formed around something popular such as a place or product--had a lot of chat. People talking (or at least typing). Conversation. Active participation. Even small channels were composed of part chatters and part lurkers.

      Now, almost any channel, large or small, is very, very likely to be composed of lurkers and bots. A conversation might spring up here or there between a tiny percentage of those on channel, but it will die back out pretty reliably. Sure, there are channels somewhere that are exceptions to this, but that's the difference--they're now exceptions and not the rule.

      For example, right now, I am one of over a thousand(!) in the #debian channel on freenode. It's been pretty dead. Over a thousand people (+bots) sitting here, not chatting. It's like it's transitioned into "Internet Relay Lurk".

      Do we have less time now? Do we as a society no longer speak unless our contribution will be especially valuable? Or is IRC just not "gee whiz cool" anymore? I dunno. I mean, surely some of us have extra time, as evidenced by posts on sites like this one. There's no shortage of varying opinions. And I, for one, still think IRC is very cool.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @01:12PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @01:12PM (#749944)

        naw, the people running and using IRC from the old times, fighting against "the man" have morphed into "the man".
        IRC is now mostly run by "the man".
        if you are careful to not upset "the man" running the #chan, then sometimes, in cracks or crevices you can discover the old spirit of
        IRC but be very careful not to mention anything remotely connectable to "the man".

        if you are lucky you get slapped with a "off topic" but mostly if that happens you're on the blacklist anyway and with all the MAN-datory registration, chances are slim to non that you'll get to grow roots in any IRC nowadays.
        nothing lost, really, humor, which was the fertilizer of any good IRC chan (humor is never off topic) is in short supply anyways...
         

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Thursday October 18 2018, @12:36AM

        by Unixnut (5779) on Thursday October 18 2018, @12:36AM (#750238)

        For me, I just no longer have the time anymore to hang around randomly chatting on IRC. Real life started getting in the way. Before Uni I could hang around all day on IRC, then when I went to uni (and got a part time job to pay my way), IRC time went down, but due to odd lecture hours I could still hang around at 3am on IRC like I used to. Then the biggie, a "proper" job. Suddenly I had to be out the door at 7am to be at work by 9, to finish at 6 and be home by 8, then by the time I made and ate dinner, etc... it would be 10pm and I would be shattered. IRC was banned at work, and after a long day staring at a computer screen, the last thing I wanted to do when I got home was stare at the computer screen some more. Plus could not stay late, because had to wake up early for the daily grind.
        It isn't so much that just IRC suffered, my entire online presence has. My personal website was last updated in 2012, and even that post back then had an apology for it being many years since the last update. I don't hang around my old forums, I don't play games anymore. The only sites I really visit and contribute to are soylent and theregister, and even then, my recent chattiness is due to being bedridden after an injury, with not much else for company but the laptop. Usually I just read the articles/comments, and do the odd mod.

        Also, when I did get on IRC in recent times, in some chatrooms, I actually got told off for "off topic" chats (With a "friendly" reminder of what the channel topic was about). Once upon a time having an off topic conversation (Sometimes at odd hours in the morning) was fine, as long as nobody was doing an on-topic chat at the same time.

        At some point, busybodies took over the chatrooms, and as ops they could ban/kick you, so you kept your mouth shut unless you had something on-topic to say.

        Interestingly, before I left fb, I started seeing the same thing on their groups. I would get told off for not being on topic, or because I replied to a thread that was older than the admin thinks is right for a good "curated" page. Quite frankly I told him to get stuffed, as the thread was of interest to me, even if was "yesterdays thread". I got banned, and shortly after left fb too (and don't regret leaving one bit).

        The best IRC chatrooms (in the sense of the "old IRC" I remember from my youth), were in private IRC servers off the main IRC network. I used to hang out on such IRC servers, which were bustling with all kinds of conversations, including ones completely irrelevant to the channel topic (minus a few strict channels, but there were for support or other important stuff). Which reminds me, Soylent has an IRC server. I think I might pop in when I am next free and see how things are there.

        IMO to help have a chatty channel, (a) for IRC admins/channel creators, don't allow many channels on the IRC server (forces more people together, increasing the likelyhood of a conversation breaking out), and (b) for IRC users, don't be members of too many channels. If you are monitoring 100 different channels, you will be spending more time monitoring them then interacting with whoever is on each channel.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @09:21AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @09:21AM (#749870)

    I miss having the time for IRC.
    And I have seriously considered proposing that we have an IRC channel at work, since it's so much easier than e-mail or gitlab/github issues. I don't know if anyone would take me seriously though...

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Unixnut on Wednesday October 17 2018, @09:58AM

    by Unixnut (5779) on Wednesday October 17 2018, @09:58AM (#749884)

    ... I will correct that :-P

    If you ever feel nostalgic, go visit http://bash.org/, [bash.org] and hit "Random", for the odd IRC gold nuggets.

    I do it quite often, even have a bash alias to load it up for me (along with apod).

    In fact, in recognition of IRC and the effect it has had on me, and internet/geek culture as a whole, I think I will go waste some time on the site :-)

    I never found love over IRC, but I did find a collection of some of the most intelligent people I had ever met on it, and to this day I don't know who they were. There was no real names, no gender, no skin colour, no nationality, no identity at all, only text-referenced avatars that could have everything or nothing in common with the people behind it (assuming it was a person, and not a bot). It was very egalitarian in that sense. Plus the limitations of text-only communication meant a lot of imagination was needed, from odd characters being used to represent emotions or give context, to ASCII art (some of which was very good, and some was the equivalent to a dick-pic).

  • (Score: 3, Touché) by requerdanos on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:01PM (1 child)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:01PM (#749925) Journal

    it even lead to love and marriage. To honor IRC's 30th birthday, we're foregoing the cake and flowers in favor of some memories.

    Why go back 30 years looking for "kind of terrible"? Right now, today, Ars writers and editors don't know the difference between the past tense verb "led" and the noun "lead" (used here) describing element number 82 on the periodic table of elements.

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