What's that?

When I am in cybercafes I see the local people typing in a telnet-like screen…
It is not videogame chat… it is something like a telnet screen.
But it is all in Chinese so I can’t read it.

Does anyone know what is it all about??

I asked, but they feigned ignorance… is it something illegal?

BBS ennit?

Chinese/Taiwanese BBS, i.e. a chat forum without graphical user interface (GUI).

Something similar to FIDO or Usenet in the good old days (before internet/www became popular).

IRC maybe

Definitely not. Try a search on IRC for taiwanese email addresses - zero, at least most time. People here prefer(red) to flock to BBS’ where they have chatrooms (their equivalent to IRC) and discussion boards (“equivalent” to UsenetNews and actually part of it).
Though these days, outside schools and universities (where the good old BBS’ are still running) people seem to prefer a nice web based board with all those cute emoticons - like on Segue…

it’s BBS… many students here use it cos they can chat with their friends via the schools BBS.

nothing illegal

if they “feigned ignorance” it is possibly because they’re thinking “What? you don’t know what BBS is??? what country are you from???” :stuck_out_tongue:

How do you go on IRC chat from Taiwan using Hinet?

get an irc client. most irc clients have some servers already available. If you are interested in specific channels, you might have to find out what the server address is and login to it. I used to use irc for company chats. We ran an irc server at work and everyone who works at home or office can login to that server remotely and be able to chat without using aim or yahoo. you should be able to find irc clients at download.com or tucows.com

Mark