[plg]

I remember the old days when one person on a unix machine could chat with another person on a unix machine using the unix talk command, (piped over ssh for security)

I had many a conversation with my thesis supervisor this way, once when I was in France and he was in Japan.

PS no third party server involved, obviously. Just my box and the recipient box. I suppose one could do a man in the middle attack but we would always start the conversation with some pleasant banter anyway so it's unlikely that a third party masquerading as one of us could last long before detection.

<sarcasm>Too bad this technology no longer works, it was so simple and useful</sarcasm>

[StavrosK]

A MITM would relay your chats, MITM isn't impersonation.

[XorNot]

Not a day goes by when I'm working on an IT related problem that I don't hit a moment of "if we had IPv6 this would simple"

[dmd]

You may enjoy using http://typeto.me/ (when it's behaving, which it doesn't seem to be right now)