Greg Mayman (3:800/449) wrote to Steven Horn at 08:07 on 06 May 2003:

 GM> Yes, once and once only. After that it just sits in memory
 GM> waiting to be accessed. I don't consider that as "stealing
 GM> cycles".

Depending on your PC, stealing memory could as much of a sin as stealing cycles.

 SH> And what do the interceptions do?

 GM> Absolutely nothing until there is a disk read or write or a new ap
 GM> is started up. I don't consider that as "stealing cycles" either.

So why have it installed if it does absolutely nothing?

 GM> To me, "stealing cycles" implies a background task that is
 GM> running continuously. I think most other people consider it that
 GM> way too.

So you load a program which stays in memory and monitors activity.  Is that
not a background task which runs continuously?

 GM> Normally this causes the foreground task to slow down unless it has
 GM> a lot of redundant time waiting for keyboard or other input.

And what value does that have?  Is it intended to be some sort of task balancer? 

 GM> To go back to my previous analogy of the security checks at the
 GM> airport, "stealing cycles" is analogous to the security personel
 GM> stopping you and checking you every step or so. This would cause a
 GM> massive slowdown.

But the analogy does not work, cycles are stolen while the program is
waiting for something.

 GM> OTOH Thunderbyte causes no slowing of the processing, except an
 GM> almost imperceptible delay in disk writes some of the time, or in
 GM> the starting of new apps.

I'd consider that to be the manifestation of resource wastage.

 GM> Although there is sometimes a noticeable delay when a floppy disk
 GM> is accessed for the first time, as in loading or saving from your
 GM> application.

But why does it do this?  What is the ptogram intended to do?

Take care,

Steven Horn (steven_a_horn{at}yahoo.ca)
Moderator, ALASKA_CHAT 
--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+