Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is to talk what news is to email. When you run the IRC client, you can select one of a range of ongoing discussions. A window is displayed in which you will see the typings of other people around the world. You can type there too. Each thing that you type comes out on a separate line.
Usage: IRC is apparently a very popular Internet
service, but is generally considered a waste of time (at least as far as
getting real work done goes) as it is slow and people have fractured
non-sensical conversations.
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