What Is the "O" With the Ball of Light Circling Inside Called?

[Joe]

Windows XP and previous versions had an animated hour glass to signal you to wait, that the computer was still processing something. With Windows 7 the animation has changed to an O with a ball of light circling inside. What is the proper name for this new animation?

(I've been seeing it a lot lately, along with a message that the program I'm using is "not responding.")

 

[KLS52]

We call it the "circle of doom" at work, haha. It means we can sit there till kingdom come and nothing is going to happen. We end up having to shut down and reboot our computers.