One example of a common use of these concepts is a Mail User Agent that can be instructed to Buy Airline Miles be in either "on-line" or Buy Airline Miles "off-line" states. One such MUA Buy Airline Miles is Microsoft Outlook. When it is "on-line" it will Buy Airline Miles attempt to connect to mail servers (to check for Buy Airline Miles new mail at regular intervals, for example), and when it is "off-line" it will Buy Airline Miles not attempt to make any such Buy Airline Miles connections. The "on-line" or "off-line" state of the MUA does not necessarily reflect the connection status between the computer on Buy Airline Miles which it Buy All Natural Skin Care Product is running Buy Airline Miles and Internet. The user may have the computer itself on-line, connected to Buy Personal Finance Budgeting Internet via a cable Buy Airline Miles modem or an ADSL connection, but may wish for Outlook to be Buy Airline Miles off-line, so that Buy Airline Miles it makes no Buy Airline Miles attempt to send or to receive messages. Or the Buy Airline Miles computer may be configured to employ Buy Airline Miles a dial-up Buy Airline Miles connection on demand (whenever an application such as Outlook attempts to make connection to a server), but the connection may be Buy Airline Miles an expensive telephone call from the particular location in which the Buy Shrubs computer currently happens to be (such as Buy Airline Miles a hotel room) and the user may not wish Outlook to trigger making that call every 5 or 10 Buy Airline Miles minutes to check for mail.
Another example Buy Airline Miles of the use of these concepts is Buy Airline Miles in the world Buy Airline Miles of digital audio technology. A tape recorder, digital editor, or other device that is "on-line" is one whose Buy Airline Miles clock is under Buy Airline Miles the control of the clock of a "synchronization master" device. When the sync Buy Airline Miles master commences playback, the "on-line" device automatically synchronizes itself to the master and commences playing from the same Buy Airline Miles point in the recording. Buy Airline Miles Whereas Buy Airline Miles a device that is "off-line" Buy Kraftmaid Online uses no external clock reference and relies Buy Airline Miles upon its own internal clock. When a large number of devices are connected to a sync master, it is Buy Airline Miles often convenient, Buy Airline Miles if one wants to hear just the output of one single device, to take it off-line, because if the device Buy Airline Miles is Buy Airline Miles played back on-line all synchronized devices Buy Airline Miles have Buy Airline Miles to locate the Buy Airline Miles playback point and wait for each other to be in synchronization.[2] (For further related Buy Airline Miles discussion, see MIDI timecode, word sync, and Buy Hula Hoops recording Buy Airline Miles system synchronization.)
|
A third example of a common use Buy Airline Miles of these concepts is a web browser that can Buy Airline Miles be instructed to be in Buy Airline Miles either "on-line" or "off-line" Buy Airline Miles states. The browser only Buy Airline Miles attempts to fetch pages from servers whilst in the "on-line" state. Buy Airline Miles In the Buy Airline Miles "off-line" state, users can perform offline browsing, where pages can be browsed using local copies of those pages that have previously been downloaded whilst Buy Airline Miles in the "on-line" state. This can be useful when the computer itself is also off-line, with connection to Buy Airline Miles Internet expensive or impossible. The pages are either downloaded implicitly into the Buy Airline Miles web browser's own cache, as a result of prior on-line browsing by the user, or explicitly by the browser being configured to keep local copies of Buy Airline Miles certain web pages, which it keeps updated when the browser is in the on-line state, either by checking that the local copies are up-to-date at regular intervals or by checking that the local copies are up-to-date whenever the browser is switched to the on-line state. One such web Buy Airline Miles browser capable Buy Airline Miles of being explicitly configured to download pages for offline browsing is Internet Explorer. When pages are added to the "Favourites" list, they can be Buy Airline Miles marked for being made "available for offline browsing". Internet Explorer will download to local copies both the marked page and, optionally, all of the pages that it links to. In Internet Explorer version 6, the level of direct and indirect Buy Airline Miles links, the maximum amount of local disc space allowed to Buy Airline Miles be consumed, and the schedule on which local copies are checked to see whether they are up-to-date, are configurable for each
|
The ideas of "on-line" and "off-line" have been generalized from Buy Airline Miles computing and telecommunication into the field of human interpersonal relationships. The distinction between what is considered "on-line" and what is Buy Airline Miles considered "off-line" has become a subject of Buy Airline Miles study in the field of sociology.[7]
The distinction between "on-line" and "off-line" Buy Airline Miles is conventionally seen as Buy Airline Miles the distinction between computer-mediated communication and face-to-face Buy Airline Miles communication (e.g. face Buy Airline Miles time), respectively. "On-line" is Buy Airline Miles virtuality, Buy Airline Miles and "off-line" is reality (e.g. real life or meatspace). Slater states that this distinction is "obviously far too Buy Airline Miles simple". To support his argument that the distinctions in relationships are more complex than a simple "on-line"/"off-line" Buy Airline Miles dichotomy, he observes that some people draw no distinction between an "on-line" relationship, such as indulging in cybersex, and an "off-line" relationship, such as being pen-pals. He also argues that even the telephone can Buy Airline Miles be regarded Buy Airline Miles as an "on-line" experience in some Buy Airline Miles circumstances, and that the blurring of the distinctions between the uses of various technologies (such as PDA and mobile telephone, television and Internet, and telephone and voice-over-IP) has made it "impossible to use the term 'on-line' meaningfully in the sense that was employed by the first Buy Airline Miles generation of Internet research".[7]
Slater asserts that there Buy Airline Miles are legal and regulatory pressures to reduce the distinction Buy Airline Miles between "on-line" Buy Mobile Phones Sim Free and "off-line", with a "general tendency to assimilate online Buy Airline Miles to offline and erase the distinction", stressing, however, that this does not mean that on-line relationships are being reduced to pre-existing off-line relationships. He conjectures that greater legal status may be assigned to on-line relationships (pointing out that contractual relationships, such as Buy Airline Miles business transactions, on-line are already seen as just as "real" as their off-line counterparts), although he states it to be hard to imagine courts awarding palimony Buy Airline Miles to people who have had a purely on-line sexual relationship. He also conjectures that an "on-line"/"off-line" distinction may be seen by people as "rather quaint and Buy Airline Miles not quite comprehensible" within 10 years
|
The distinction where "on-line" is Buy Airline Miles seen Buy Airline Miles as virtuality and "off-line" as reality is sometimes inverted, with "on-line" concepts being used to define and to explain "off-line" activities, rather than (as Buy Airline Miles per the conventions of Buy Airline Miles the desktop metaphor Buy Airline Miles with its desktops, trash cans, folders, and so forth) the other way around. Several cartoons by The New Yorker have satirized this. One Buy Airline Miles includes Buy Airline Miles Saint Peter asking for a user name and a password before admitting a Buy Airline Miles man into Heaven. Another illustrates "the off-line store" Buy Airline Miles where "All items are actual size!", where shoppers may "Take it home as soon as you pay for it!", Buy Airline Miles and where "Merchandise may be handled prior to purchase!". |
