Bring Back the 80's!

CPU Killers

There are a class of programs out there called "CPU Killers" whose purpose is to slow down your computer. Sometimes it's to get around exotic bugs when certain apps have too much processing power at their disposal, and more often to play very very old games that depend on the CPU being a specific speed.. they measure time in clock cycles.
The best of the CPU killer at the time (I remember when AT Slow used to be a big deal) appears to be CPU Killer (crayon, kleenex, band-aid, you get it). I've used it and it does it's job well.

Most programs like this operate by keeping your CPU so busy that it has less time available for the applications you are trying to slow down. What I think someone should somehow make (The author of CPU Killer informs me that this idea would require rewriting a very big hunk of Windows) is an app that simply forces the CPU to spend a certain amount of time being idle. If that were possible it would be much cleaner and more efficient than busting the CPU's balls, and it would allow some people with laptops with heat issues to virtually underclock their units to adapt to their thermal woes. I think that'd be rad.

My laptop for instance, overheats and shuts itself down whenever the CPU goes 100% for more than 10 seconds or so. (90% for a minute, 85% for half an hour, etc). It's rather sad. Also, I like to play TurboRisk, which has an unfortunate bug of wasting 100% of your CPU while it has focus waiting for user input. If you aren't on a laptop with heat issues, you'd probably never notice though.