LOL -- long, long ago - in a world far away (or so it seems)... when I had dialup (and Compuserve), and the worldwide web had not yet come into existence... I belonged to a "working from home" discussion group and had a program called "Tapcis" that would dial up, log in, retrieve current messages, and log off. Then I could read the messages off line, add any responses, and again let Tapcis do its thing and post my messages.
We've come a long, LONG way in not that long of time!