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So what's he big deal? Well, looping is easy for artificially created animations butincredibly difficult when looking at a video of something natural, say a waterfallor a beach scene. Making something in nature appear to continuously run without anykind of "jerk" as it begins the process over again is almost impossible. Yet thefolks at TwoSailors.net did it and according to the company, it only took them twoyears to figure out how to do it.
Back in the "old days" when cathode ray tubes reigned supreme and flat screens wereeither nonexistent or so expensive that their existence didn't really matter, thescreensaver was born. The screensaver back then actually did what its name said itdid, namely save screens. It saved them from the destruction that would occur whenany static image was displayed on the screen for too long a time. If that happened,the electron beam that created the image would literally etch the delicate phosphorcoating on the inside of the screen's glass and leave a ghostly burned-in shadowthat would remain there forever, even with the power turned completely off.Basically if that happened, your screen was toast. It may be interesting to notethat one of the most famous of screensavers depicted little flying toasters andpieces of winged toast moving across the screen. Be that as it may, the screensaverwas born out of necessity.
All a screensaver did at first was to detect when your computer wasn't being used,and then blank out whatever you were currently working on with a dark screen. Theproblem there was that one was never sure if the computer was actually turned off orjust running the screensaver. Too many times the former was assumed and computerseverywhere were being left on all night which caused even more damage due to theunintentional extended computer usage. To make sure that didn't happen, the nextgeneration of screensavers displayed some kind of animated graphic image. It had tobe animated otherwise the screensaver itself would cause burn-in which wasself-defeating to say the least.For complete story please goto:http://www.computerameri ca.com/content/columns/craig/2 006/2006-02-20.htm
Craig Crossman is a Knight-Ridder newspaper columnist writing about computers andtechnology. He also hosts the nation's longest running nationally syndicated radiotalk show on computers and technology, Computer America, heard on both the BusinessTalkRadio Network and the Lifestyle TalkRadio NetworkÂ, weeknights at 10PM Easterntime. In South Florida, you can hear a rebroadcast of a selected Computer Americashow each Sunday evening at 8PM on WJNO 1290AM.
