Speaking of IRC and the Gulf War, I remember reading somewhere that the US Army was using IRC and at one point it was used to coordinate airstrikes. I don't have a source for this, and it certainly sounds fantastical, but maybe someone here could corroborate it (or refute it decisively).
IRC was used quite extensively among NATO militaries (to the point that I've seen mIRC referred to as "Military Internet Relay Chat", lol) but they've begun migrating away from it towards XMPP solutions such as JCHAT[0] which IMHO has a very poor UX but unfortunately IRC stagnated and doesn't work on mobile devices very well.
You have this backwards. It's mobile phone computers that have become less capable than even 30 year old normal computers in terms of UI and networking capabilities. This is understandable since a mobile phone is so small in volume and wireless, but it's true regardless.
No, I don't. Mobile phones are immensely more capable than computers 30 years ago, but IRC doesn't handle transient connections well. When your phone goes to sleep the connection drops. Sometimes when you change cell towers the connection drops. Modern users expect a slack-/discord-like "always in the channel" experience, with push notifications, which IRC does not provide.
Sure, or you can run a bnc like we used to in the old days. If the only way to use IRC in an ergonomic fashion these days is to sign up for a third party service like the lounge or a shell account, it's not really a good look for IRC.
Or you could just leave your IRC client open. But phones are not capable of doing that simple task. Unlike computers phone computers have to rely on third party services because of their deficiencies.
Modern users expect multi-device sync. If I'm signed into discord or slack on my PC and on my phone, I get push notifications in both places, even if my PC is off.
Leaving my IRC client running, even with irssi-relay or similar, is not a solution.
I like IRC too, but it's become obsolete because it failed to adapt to the expectations of modern users.
>> ...less capable than even 30 year old normal computers in terms of UI and networking capabilities.
> ... doesn't handle transient connections ...
Oh, so it's almost like phone computers can't maintain a connection and have bad networking. Specifically they have problems with TCP because it requires maintaining state and that uses the radio frequently and keeps the computer running which drains their tiny energy storage. But also because phone's UIs are so limited both by screen space and input that only one application really runs at once and background ones are gimped and disconnected.
> I was introduced to IRC back in 2002 by a Russian girl called Svetlana (lost contact sadly) a few years my senior at a language school I attended that summer. She introduced me to the channel for the Sub7 trojan horse virus. It was there that I first learnt about IP addresses and ports, and pissing my dad off playing around with his (and others’) PC remotely, printing things like. I remember MoSucker being another trojan horse that was popular on the network.
> We used to share victims and laugh at what we found them doing. I would hang out on other networks on teen channels posing as a girl, sending .scr ‘slideshows’ of my ‘pictures’. Then there were all the warez channels with 0-day releases and the ability to download directly and quickly.
>After quite a few months of script kiddying I was introduced to FreeNode. From there I was introduced to things like Python, FreeBSD, Linux, Emacs, Scheme, SICP, Lisp, Haskell, a free Mathematica subscription, fun mathematics, the idea of going to university abroad, the friend whose house I’m at right now and much more.
Obviously there are other sources for this kind of thing these days, but I do look back on that period quite fondly, and cannot imagine where I would be without the people I came across on IRC. I still go back to FreeNode if I ever need some quick help, but I can’t imagine spending my hours hanging out on IRC anymore. Things have changed.
My experience mimics your own. It’s surprising how “closed” computer science was to British teenagers in 2003-2010, computing was reduced to Microsoft Access/Excel and word.
But the skiddy hacker groups were always so willing to teach to those who wanted to listen, which led me to open source, which is similar but a lot less forgiving than I remember the old hacker groups.
Sub7 ... that brings back fun memories. Endless humor of making each other win a game of tic-tac-toe to get control of their computer. Melting screens. All in good fun of course. We did not use it maliciously.
IRC user for 23 something odd years, no real replacement for real-time chat. I know many substitutes have come along such as discord and whatnot but I’ve never seen the need to use any of them.
At least OFTC and Rizon are also still going strong, in addition to Freenode. There are also many private IRC networks which serve smaller communities and have not seen much in the way of stagnation.
I got my first IT job through IRC. A friend whom I knew only through Internet (and who also got his first job through IRC) invited me for a job interview (I think I was the only one who they interviewed).
