In January, a University Park man decided to do what no computer geek had done before: For one year, he would live his life online, his every movement--sleeping, eating, goofing off mostly--would be Webcast to a global audience 24-7. He would abstain from sex and travel (traveling was the hard part), never leaving his home, which was quickly labeled the dotcompound, and only venturing into his backyard for an occasional breath of fresh air. The Internet would satisfy all his needs. He would order food, furniture, and frivolity online in an attempt to prove that man can live by e-commerce alone. What seemed like an interesting social experiment quickly revealed itself as little more than a publicity stunt. Hordes of media types hungry for some millennial meaning stormed the dotcompound, interviewing the cyberbore 10 to 15 times a day. The mass exposure became its own phenomenon, driving hundreds of thousands to his Web site and turning him into one of the first global cyber-personalities, famous for nothing save a good gimmick. Which actually proves something after all: The virtual world isn't much different from the physical world.