There is a subculture of programmers that seem to enjoy creating the most interesting or beautiful display on a computer using the least possible amount of memory. This practice has existed for a very long time, at least by computing standards. What's interesting is that the genre of programming still exists, and that things have come a very long way since the days of DOS programs.
Ante Dominum is a good example of this type of work in the modern day on Windows done by a programmer going by the handle "Traction". It's a very simple graphic display, black on white, with midi trance music backing it. Considering it only takes a moment to download and run a 64kb executable, you can spend far longer just watching the visualizations go by. OS X and Linux ports exist too.
Tags: Ante Dominum, AnteDominum, Fractals, freeware, Graphic Display, GraphicDisplay, Intro, Time Waster, TimeWaster, timewasters