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