Pretend you've got a CB radio, with "handles," 10-codes, many channels to pick from, and then let it use text rather than voice transmission.
IRC is "superior" to genuine CB Radio in that it doesn't provide garbled transmissions (beyond spelling mistakes), is not limited by geographic considerations, and provides something of a record that makes it a little easier to follow conversations that have been going on.
It's really quite valuable when they hold a revolution in Moscow, as you can potentially get play-by-play details of what's going on.
Unfortunately, at least 90% of the time it's a simply stupendous timewaster that seems populated by people who can neither spell nor type correctly, but think that they're k00l d00ds.
It also appears that a wide set of infrastructure has grown up surrounding the issue of how to "control" a particular IRC channel against "opponent hackers," which seems to me to defeat the purpose of having a public channel.
And I get the impression that the primary use of it these days is to allow people to "safely" talk dirty whilst thinking you remain anonymous. There seems to be a whole lot of paranoia around about "Internet chat rooms" being a place where sexual predators seek out targets. That is hopefully mostly "paranoia," with minimal reality to back it up. But who knows...
A programmable IRC client for Unix written in Perl
An X11 based IRC client
An XML messaging system intended as an "open source" alternative to various proprietary "instant messaging" systems.
Gossip is an instant messaging client for GNOME layered on top of the Jabber protocol.
Gaim is a multi-protocol instant messaging client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM (Oscar and TOC protocols), ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, and Zephyr networks.
Kopete - KDE "Instant Messenger"
Silky - SILC Client
The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is a protocol for accessing online directory services. It was initially used as a front-end to X.500, running directly over TCP, but can also be used with stand-alone and other kinds of directory servers.
Novell has set up software whereby one can query Novell Directory Services via LDAP, providing user and host data;
Lots of systems have implemented LDAP servers to export directory information so that one can construct generic LDAP clients to query directory-like information.
LDAP is intended to be useful for things like user authentication.
For instance, see NRG4U - The big qmail picture; a system to get qmail to get user account information from an LDAP server.
Notable LDAP applications include:
Email "address books"
User authentication systems such as PAM
Email routing
Some of the Debian folk would like to use LDAP to "publish" information on what packages and versions thereof are installed on a system. That is quite a different use, but seems to fit reasonably well with the intent of LDAP.
OpenLDAP Faq-O-Matic: Directories vs. Relational Database Management Systems
SAMBA PDC LDAP howto - Using LDAP to manage SAMBA authentication
LDAP HOWTO - Guide to using LDAP for authentication via PAM, NSS, DNS, MTAs
Sendmail and LDAP HOWTO - using LDAP for mail address lookups
Sympa - Mail list manager which extracts email addresses from LDAP queries
This document is about building an LDAP server with a PostgreSQL database as backend instead of the standard Berkeley DB.
OpenLDAP Faq-O-Matic: The SQL backend (How do I setup/configure back-sql?)
If you are suffering from spam problems, or other more sinister problems, you may wish to find more information about who's behind a particular Internet host. Here are some relevant tools:
Search VeriSign whois records in the whois section of netsol.com
PIMMIT - an IRIS implementation
IRIS is an XML-based IETF proposal for a sort of successor to WHOIS. PIMMIT is an implementation of this...
PFIR Statement on VeriSign/NSI "Site Finder" and Domain Abuse
The implementation of an " A Record wildcard" for .COM and .NET domains has been somewhat controversial, as it means that any non-existent .COM/.NET domain resolves to a specific "SiteFinder" site.
Some have felt it necessary to " take measures" against this...
Offers free DNS services as a tertiary DNS server. They support TXT records, which is useful if you're using IPSEC or FreeSWAN.
They offer DNS resolution for dynamic IPs, and mail forwarding to to help deal with those irritating ISPs who block port 25.
ez-ipupdate is a small utility for updating your host name for the any of the dynamic DNS service offered at:
http://gnudip.cheapnet.net (GNUDip)
http://www.dyn.ca (GNUDip)
It is written in C and works on Linux, *BSD and Solaris.
Software for providing a Dynamic IP DNS service; compatible with ez-ipupdate.
There is not universal agreement that ICANN is the ideal body to manage domain names. (That may be putting it mildly!) As a result, there are some folks running an " alternative" namespace resolution scheme.
Where various software including EPP implementation(s) may be found...
Do you know where your ports are?
There are many Unix system services that typically are run as root for the sole reason that they control ports with ID numbers under 1024.
This is a dumb thing. Sendmail has been noted for having security holes due to the complexity of its configuration; the threat is magnified by the fact that it also typically has to run as root. Qmail was specifically written to not run as root, and works very well as a Sendmail replacement.
Moreover, this port requirement is only enforced on Unix systems, which means that it doesn't provide any real authentication e.g. - the fact that a service is provided on port 441 doesn't necessarily mean that the service is "privileged" in any way on its own host and thus even slightly trustable.
In short, services that can be run without root access ought to be.
NEC's Socks Server can be used to set up "secure" data channels between computers. It is most often used to help implement firewalls.
There is a lot of software available for securing communications by cryptographic means.
Quite commonly, really interesting new protocols are released on dates resembling the first of April. Few such protocols are implemented, with RFC 1149 as the one so bizarre that a computer club and a pigeon club got together to make it work...
Sometimes people use wikis...
The Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol Core (BEEP) - RFC 3080
This memo describes a generic application protocol kernel for connection-oriented, asynchronous interactions called BEEP.
DIME: Direct Internet Message Encapsulation
A lightweight binary message format that may encapsulate multiple application-defined payloads of arbitrary type and size into a single message construct.
Payloads are described by a type, length, and possibly an identifier. URIs and MIME media types are supported as type identifiers, and payloads might include nested DIME messages.
DIME is a message format, not a protocol.