I haven't sailed the cyberseas for very long (only since December 1995). But in that short space of time, this ole cap'n has experienced just about every conceivable form of live chat there be.And y'know what? I always come back to IRC for my chat. Invented in Finland during the 1980's, IRC - or "Internet Relay Chat" is in no danger of it going away anytime soon.
Only on IRC are you the true master of your chat environment. You can be as reckless or as secure as you want to be. With minimal effort, your chat can be lag free. Furthermore, anyone - regardless of their operating system or computer - can experience a quality session on IRC.
You might say that IRC does not afford the instant gratification of ICQ, aol-IM, or assorted licensed pagers. Well, it can for you.
See, back when I started, IRC was the chat medium of the Internet. Everybody who was anybody used it, and with its notify feature enabled, you knew when a friend was on (if they wanted to be seen).
The popular chat programmes of today work under the same condition: if your friend uses it and is on - and they want you to see them - then you can. Therefore, if you and your friends used IRC, you would have the ability to message them a quickie.
The tradeoff of course is security and stability. There is an illusory impression that ICQ and the like are more secure. They and webchats are essentially IRC sessions configured to your host's liking (something I call "bad IRC").
They can be hacked into. In fact, they're compromised on a regular basis (I recall once a person who added himself on my access list. My personal config included a requirement to authorise as well as to ignore anyone not on the same list).
I have never known anyone whose IRC application hogged memory or froze their computer. The other chat mediums do. When I installed ICQ on my PC, I had to restart Windoze every day, sometimes more than once. Before that, it was every other week or so. 'nuff said.
IRC doesn't crash your computer, and it has the potential to be more secure and lag-free. Can't beat that with a stick!
Who is this Captain
Blood?
|
