Last Thursday actually, at my place of work! 
My screensaver is a color changing spring which randomly floats around the screen and is set up to start after 1 minute of my slacking off! 
zombie or no
this makes me want to get all stabby with my stylus.
My mother didn’t stop refering to her monitor as “the computer” until she finally got a laptop.
Not quite irrelevant. If they are set to require your password to get back to your regular work then they serve as more “interesting” security from snoopy people than just a blank screen with a dialog box bouncing around. I will grant that it is a misnomer to call it a “screensaver” under those circumstances, but I don’t think any other buzzword has taken hold.
This has always annoyed me, but I think the psychology of it is pretty forgiveable.
The offenders are usually people who are, at best, mildly computer-literate. They’ve heard the term “screensaver.” Computers pretty rarely use screensavers nowadays (since auto off is simpler and more power efficient).
So they attach the term to the only thing that makes sense.
Still annoys me, but you have to pick your battles. The only unforgiveable cases I’ve seen were a) a coworker who insisted on saying “screensaver” instead of “wallpaper” because she liked saying it more, and b) people trying to sell collections of wallpaper images as “screensavers.” Yes, I’ve seen this.
just last night, I was looking for dual-monitor screensavers. I’m using Aurora now. Could use others. Finding nice screensavers that won’t infect your computer can be a challenge.
I feel so silly … I want a screensaver. I had something called Psychedelic Screensaver or some such. A billion slider combinations to adjust rather trippy patterns. I think it was set up to react to music, but we’re talking 1997 and lots of non-computerized psychedelics here, so my memory may be off. Media Player and Winamp may have something, but certainly not Rhapsody’s player and not CDs. Anyone?
Gosh, I thought I was the only one who this made stabby.
I am not alone in the Universe!
Screen savers are more junk to use up resources.
They are often used in business so that when you are away no one will see that you were browsing the web; er, see the super private important information you were so hard at work on. 
Can’t help you with that one, unfortunately, but it sounds like you would enjoy Electric Sheep. I use it on my media center, and it’s really trippy on a big-screen TV.
There were a few plugins for WinAmp that sound like what you’re describing, but I gave up on WinAmp when they started pushing ads to my desktop while I played music. GEISS was one I used years ago.
Recently, I’ve been using Electric Sheep, and have found it to be pretty damn cool.
I had no idea this thread was resurrected. I can even still remember what inspired me to post it. It was a commercial where a bunch of “Young Hip Cool” kids were running around having too much fun. One of them clicks a picture on his phone of some scenery and off screen some says “Oh Screensaver!”.
It still bugs me
“Internet” for “LAN” bugs me, and I have to fix the damn thing.
Cowboy up.
I recently heard a coworker refer to her computer tower as “the CPU” and “the hard drive”, all in the same sentence.