1) I'd like to try IRC, but after reading the short text file from "Entropy" about Hacking IRC, I wonder if there are any benefits. Nukes, Flooding, Cloaking, etc. I've been in other "chat" enviroments and I eventually left because the amount of defensive software I had running just to stay online was ridiculous.


2) I've read somewhere that IRC is a "pay to use" service. Is this true?