Gavin Andresen - 2010-11-03 20:26:28

Yes you can, but in my undestanding, that offline wallet needs to have been online at least once, otherwise its public key(s) are not known to the bitcoin network.

That's not right-- the person paying you doesn't know your public key, they just know your bitcoin address (which is a 160-bit hash of your public key).

You can (and I have) send bitcoins to ANY 160-bit bitcoin address, whether or not there actually is a public/private keypair corresponding to that address.