Dragaera

OT "online" (was: computer time, was: MNDungeon)

David Dyer-Bennet dd-b at dd-b.net
Wed Jan 29 13:01:44 PST 2003

"Davis, Iain E." <feaelin at kemenel.org> writes:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Mark A Mandel [mailto:mam at theworld.com] 
> 
> > #Hmm. Define "online".
> > #
> > #If it means "at a computer", It's probably something close to 100
> > #hrs/wk for me.
> > 
> > I certainly wouldn't call it that, any more than being in a 
> > room with a
> > radio -- not necessarily turned on -- counts as listening to 
> > the radio.
> > "Online", to me, means actively using the Internet (including its
> > subset the WWW).
> 
> Upon reflection, it's hard to tell when I am _online_ or not (in
> terms of internet), when using the computer, since I tend to being
> running several things at once, and swap between them.

Yep, me too. 

I'm currently writing a response to an email message via an SSH
connection from my desktop machine to an internet server.  Am I
online?  What if I add the information that the internet server is
physically adjacent to my desktop machine, and by punching one button
and switching to a different keyboard, I could be directly connected
to it instead?

> Additionally, I'm usually IM'able (which may or may not count,
> depending on perspective), and semi-active on a mu*.

> In theory the only time I'm probably not actually doing something on
> the internet is if I happen to be "working away from my computer"
> (e.g. working someone else's computer) or if I happen to be playing
> a computer game (single player...most of my computer game time is
> multiplayer internet play), but even then, I usually have Trillian
> (IM Client) running on another machine. :)

I don't generally have any kind of IM client running.  I do sometimes
work on photos for hours straight, without any other applications
running ("working on photos" being a state with about three
applications running, for me, usually).
-- 
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net  /  http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/
 John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net
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