Originally posted by Rico I didn't assert anything remotely to what you stated here. What I did say is the longer a file is held in the buffer the more energy is being used to hold it there.
That is a totally incorrect understanding of queue management. The buffer is simply memory. When something is "removed" from it, the contents are copied, and by some means (*) the space is made available for future use,
but it is still memory containing something - it is still consuming just as much energy as it ever did.
(*) Queue management is a part of a discipline of Computer Science called "Data Structures". There are several different means of implementing queues, so I gave just a general idea of how it is done.