Unix command used to intensely annoy someone at the other end. It should be outlawed.
You're innocently hacking away, and what do you see?

Message from Talk_Daemon@straylight.eu.org at 20:16 ...
talk: connection requested by marksie@straylight.eu.org.
talk: respond with:  talk marksie@straylight.eu.org

Then it happens again...

Message from Talk_Daemon@straylight.eu.org at 20:16 ...
talk: connection requested by marksie@straylight.eu.org.
talk: respond with:  talk marksie@straylight.eu.org

So that's it! Everything is now ruined! And why did they choose to bother you in the first place? Probably because of some 37337 thing they just did, or because they happen to be drunk, or anything!

Put 'mesg n' in your .bash_profile to stop this sort of thing ever happening to you! (or .bash_profile equivalent if you aren't a bash user)

Don't these people know what IRC is for?