The Big City

I noticed today that one of our fancy flat screen LCD monitors seems to have the corporate log-in window burned into it. In the good old days we used to have screensaver programs which prevented the icons on our desktops from getting permanently burned into the phosphor of our Cathode Ray Tubes. The programs worked by replacing the desktop with a permanently moving display of eye-candy. Most famous of these programs was After Dark and its flying toasters. Of course the monitor manufacturers introduced new designs which resisted the burning-in of images but the users didn’t really understand and continued to use the unnecessary screensavers for years. How depressing then if the new generation of monitors is going to start getting burned in, sending us right back to the start of the cycle again.