Re: Quick, it's the boss!

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>
Back in the day, when every game was a full-screen exclusive
application, they all had a boss key. Hit the appropriate key, the
game would instantly pause and pull up an image of.... well, it
varied. Sometimes it was the DOS prompt; other times it was a DOS-era
spreadsheet. Occasionally it was a page full of text representing a
word processor. Whichever it was, it looked like something PRODUCTIVE
rather than a video game. None of these 'boss screens' were ever
interactive; the most you could do with them is return to the game,
but the aim was to look like you weren't goofin' off at work.
>
    [But not one of them ever faked a programming IDE or a
     'compiling' screen, which might have been more useful ;-]

Actually I think one did, but I cannot for the life of me remember what
it was.   I _think_ it was a c++ IDE.   Hrm and I'm pretty sure I also
saw one that did a Visual Basic screen.

But since most peoples boring jobs where they played games so they
didn't jump out the window didn't involve programming so most went with
something more generic.

Boss screens quickly fell out of favor once multi-tasking windowed
operating systems came into vogue; no need to fake it after that. Just
quickly alt-tab to your productivity program whenever your supervisor
walked into the room.
>
But here's the question: for those of you old enough to remember them,
did you _ever_ use a boss-key the way it was meant to be used? That
is, to hide the evidence of your gaming from somebody who didn't want
you to be playing? Or did you only use them like to many of us did, by
accidentally hitting the wrong button and wondering why you were
suddenly starting at a black screen with naught but "A:\" in the
corner and wondering how to get back to the game?

Never played video games at work, except once in a training program, and
the instructor was the one who had loaded the game.   You played _AFTER_
session.

Xocyll