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Another example of the use of these concepts is in the world of Best Rated Home Gym digital audio technology. A tape recorder, digital editor, or other device that is "on-line" is one whose clock is Best Rated Home Gym under the control of the clock of Best Rated Home Gym a "synchronization master" device. When the Best Rated Home Gym sync master commences playback, the "on-line" Best Rated Home Gym device automatically synchronizes itself to Best Rated Home Gym the master and commences playing from the same point in the Best Buy Credit Card Htm recording. Whereas a device that is "off-line" uses no external Best Rated Home Gym Oscars Best Song clock reference and relies upon its own internal clock. When a large number of devices are connected Best Rated Home Gym to a sync master, it Best Rated Home Gym is often Best Rated Home Gym convenient, if one wants to hear just the Best Rated Home Gym output of one single device, to take it off-line, because if the device is played back on-line all synchronized devices have to locate the playback point and Best Rated Home Gym wait for each other to be in synchronization.[2] (For further related discussion, Best Rated Home Gym see MIDI Best Rated Home Gym timecode, word sync, and recording system synchronization.)
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The ideas of "on-line" and "off-line" have been generalized from computing and telecommunication Best Rated Home Gym into the field Best Rated Home Gym of Best Rated Home Gym human interpersonal relationships. The distinction between what is considered "on-line" and what is considered Best Rated Home Gym "off-line" has Best Rated Home Gym become a subject Best Rated Home Gym of study in the field Best Rated Home Gym of sociology.[7]
The distinction between "on-line" Best Rated Home Gym and "off-line" is conventionally Best Rated Home Gym seen as the distinction between computer-mediated communication Best Rated Home Gym and face-to-face communication (e.g. face time), respectively. "On-line" is virtuality, Best Rated Home Gym and "off-line" is reality (e.g. real life or meatspace). Slater states that this distinction is "obviously far too simple". To Best Rated Home Gym support his argument that the distinctions in relationships are Best Rated Home Gym more complex than a Best Rated Home Gym simple Best Rated Home Gym "on-line"/"off-line" Best Rated Home Gym dichotomy, he observes that some people draw no distinction Best Rated Home Gym between an "on-line" relationship, such as indulging in Best Rated Home Gym cybersex, Best Rated Home Gym and an "off-line" relationship, such as being pen-pals. He also argues that even the Best Rated Home Gym telephone Best Rated Home Gym can be regarded as an "on-line" experience in some circumstances, and that the blurring of the distinctions between the uses of various technologies (such as PDA and mobile telephone, Best Rated Home Gym television Best Rated Home Gym and Internet, and telephone and voice-over-IP) has made Best Rated Home Gym it "impossible to use the term 'on-line' meaningfully in the sense that was employed by Manage Of Best Buy the first generation of Internet research".[7]
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Slater asserts that Best Rated Home Gym there are legal and regulatory Best Rated Home Gym pressures to reduce Best Rated Home Gym the distinction between "on-line" and "off-line", with a "general tendency The Best Free Online Games to assimilate online 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 Best Rated Home Gym relationships. He conjectures that greater legal status may be assigned to Best Rated Home Gym on-line Best Rated Home Gym relationships (pointing out that contractual relationships, such as business transactions, on-line are already seen as just as Best Rated Home Gym "real" as their off-line counterparts), Best Rated Home Gym although he states it to be hard to imagine courts awarding palimony 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 not quite comprehensible" within 10 years
The distinction where "on-line" Best Rated Home Gym is seen as virtuality and "off-line" as reality is Best Rated Home Gym sometimes inverted, with "on-line" concepts being used to Best Rated Home Gym define and to All Time Best Rappers explain "off-line" activities, rather than (as per the Best Rated Home Gym conventions of the desktop metaphor with its desktops, trash cans, folders, and so forth) the other way around. Several cartoons by The New Yorker have satirized this. One includes Saint Peter asking for a user name and a password before Best Rated Home Gym admitting Best Rated Home Gym a man into Heaven. Another illustrates "the off-line store" where "All items are actual size!", where shoppers may "Take it home as soon as you pay for it!", and where "Merchandise may be handled prior to purchase!". |