| IRC, or the Internet Relay Chat, is what enables #p/g! to exist. It is
similar to the talk command available on many systems, except that multiple users
can talk at once (and the number of users on this thing has been growing exponentially for
quite a few years). IRC users can message each other privately or talk in a group called a
channel. Channel names used to begin with a + in the old days, but now they're
prefaced by a #. Hence, the name #p/g!. To connect to IRC, you need to have an IRC client compiled on your machine. Try talking to a sysadmin; there may already be one there. If it's not already available on your system, clients for Unix and VM/CMS are available via FTP from Boston University. (You can anonymously FTP to cs.bu.edu yourself if you want). For those of you using an Inernet Service Provider (ISP) to connect, you'll want a client designed for your machine. A popular and easy-to-use client for Windows is mIRC, a shareware program written by Khaled Mardam-Bey. If you can't get your IRC program to work, don't bother us. Bother whoever wrote the thing. We don't know how to use them either. If you're having trouble finding #p/g! once you connect, make sure you're on an EFNet server (irc-2.mit.edu, for example). If all that fails, you're probably better off anyway. |