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