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The Blues for LEDs
Corey Burger writes "Seems somebody rolled out of bed on the wrong side today. The Globe and Mail's Ian Johnson delivers up a rant about the ubiquity of the new blue LEDs."
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Sounds like this guy has too many new expensive gadgets that he should send to someone who appreciates it more.
But do they run linux?
Jay | http://oldos.org
Why doesn't he just buy toys that don't have blue LEDs then. Manufacturers will respond quickly if toys with green LEDs sell better than blue ones.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
So there.
simple solution: don't buy things with annoyingly bright blue leds on them.
or cover them with insulation tape.
next
In any event, isn't unification what we're looking for now in computing? Isn't it a nice thing (that has spun an entire cottage-industry of mods and such) that we can get our computer "look and feel" to match our decor? To match itself, for that matter? Looking around my desk, I see some green, red, yellow, and orange LEDs. I would be tickled if they could all be more unified. With, of course, the exception of my HDD LEDs, which I like to be able to notice out of the corner of my eye.
Sounds to me like someone's got a case of the (pre-)Mondays. ;)
I'm a fan of blue LED's, but I'm kinda getting sick of them, they're everywhere. Companies need to realise that there are other colours too... why don't we see more purple ones (I did have a burner that had a purple one, but that's the only device I've seen that came with one)? Or maybe a light green rather than the regular boring green?
Looking around, I can't see any blue LEDs. There is one blue light on my Bluetooth docking station, which might be an LED, but it's covered by a clouded plastic button, so I can't tell, and it certainly isn't bright. Does anyone else have as many blue LEDs around them as thing guy says he does?
I've got an HP with a blue power button. I put tape over it. How hard is that? Lazy bastard can't self-modify his self-purchases?
First I don't believe his list of items. I buy a lot of high tech items and unless I just bought everything new yesterday and hunted around for blue LED versions of products, I don't think I could gather a list of devices so extensive, all with blue LEDs.
That said....unless someone gives him all his devices for free then geesh just buy different devices! If you are getting all your devices for free and then you have the nerve to complain about the color of the LED then shut your friggin pie hole before I give you a punch in the throat.
I think the writer of that article needs to get a life! Of all the things to gripe about geez...
It's those Xenon HID headlights I hate. You know, the ultra-bright, kinda bluish ones that blind you late at night as they come around the curve. Those seem bright enough to be unsafe.
In Zone 3 (laser combat) there was 3 teams (red, yellow and green) but not blue becase the LED's very more expensive. So maybe in the years since it has become much cheaper to make them and people have started using them.
Beings aspergers AND pulling chicks... I enjoy the challenge!
Did no one tell this idiot that he has a choice over what he buys? is it our fault that his dumb-a$$ went out and bought every periferal he could find that had a blue LED? No. So i therefor vote that we write an article about annoying article writers and how we have to read more and more of there articles. :)
-=Hinkey=-
It's a matter of popularity. We've seen red, green, yellow and amber colored LED's since some 30 years now, they're "passe". Blue LED's on the other hand (as well as White and Cyan) are colors that have become possible just 10 years ago, and they where still very expensive and not really efficient. It's in the last 4 or 5 years, that techology has allowed cheap, efficient and bright blue LED's.... maybe that's why they seem to look so.... cool!
I, for one, welcome our new blue LED overlords.
or
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
or
1. blue LEDS
2. ???
4. profit!
I know what he means, and I totally agree with him. I try and fit filters over some of the brighter LEDs around.
For example, my girlfriend's PC has a magnifier in the front that puts out a 4cm-squared window of blue light. We fitted some pink paper to it and it's now a very very muted glow that doesn't keep us awake.
I don't need LEDs screaming out at me all the time - that's why my racks have dark smoked-glass doors.
Feel that power? That's mah MOUSING FINGER
Maybe I need a blue LED that screams, "HEY! YOU! Everything's NOT ok! I'm still on
Stupid Lameness filter...
Just the other day, one of my friends just got a new Nextel and the mobile DC cigarette lighter plug has this annoyingly bright Blue LED on it. He's pissed, says it totally destroys his night vision and it's about 100x brighter than it needs to be to verify the cigarette lighter adapter is bottomed out.
I remember when Blue LED's were first introduced in the April 1 issue of Byte Magazine (sometime around 1987 IIRC) as an April Fool's joke! Finally, two or three years later they were actually invented!
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
If a device has a blue LED in it, it MUST be good.
I got to run out and buy some new stuff so I can be bothered by blue LEDs too.
I side with this guy.
Can you imagine how catastrophic it would be if the public got a hold of these "blue" LEDs?
Those blue guys from the Intel ads would have a field day!
--
The last digit of pi is four.
As for the color, the blue LED does mark the quantum barrier surpassed by nichia a decade or so ago.
Now, roughly 10 years after the introducion of the first practical blue LEDs, we see a whole range of LED products based on the leap made at that time. For example, UV leds are becoming more and more common, and find applications in money checkers, forensics and scientific appliances.
Also, LEDs are becoming very usefull light sources in torches, automotive (brake)lights, traffic signals etc. etc.
Also, keep in mind that many other colors of LED are based on the work by Nichia.. new bright green leds are, white leds are (using a blue led and a phosphor), and also advances in red and yellow leds were achieved.
I think that idicators are just an over the top use of a technology that will bring us more and more interesting light-emitting devices for all kinds of uses.
My mother got a laptop which was literally covered in blue LED's... I understand they have low power consumption but I really wonder if they're not chewing up her processing power as the laptop is seriously slow!
/.'ers out there with some opinions to be shared as to whether green or red is easier to spot?
But seriously, there was a study a long time ago showing that green taffic lights were easier to spot than red, contrary to the article which states that red lights were swapped with green ones due to the fact they were less invasive. Conflict here???
Are there any
Why do I care?
These sort of results matter for a whole range of issues, mainly for grabbing attention --- ala advertising (especially the one at the top right now which seems to use a lot of red in it to grab attention - but I hadn't noticed for quite some time. The default garbage green that slashdot uses seems to work better!).
But honestly those purple lights modders use on their cases stand out a lot more imho. And they look wicked!
I'm sure that blue LEDs will fade in time. They were cool because they were new and rare. But novelty, by defintion, cannot last. Just wait a few years and everyone will think that blue LED are just so so early 2000's.
Of course, by then we'll have some other over-used new display technology. Perhaps consumer electronics makers will use OLEDs to form a glowing full-color brand name logos. Then the space around our desktops and dens will look like a miniture cityscape with tiny glowing neonesque billboards for all the brands that we buy.
Oh, and wait 20-40 years and blue LEDs will be back as a retro fad. The aging youth of today will look back to this time and will revel in the glory days when devices only had a single simple little blue light.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
this
I'm just annoyed with every idiot sticking the blue LEDs to their freaking washer nozzles on the hoods of their cars. It's annoying, pointless, and just plain stupid.
Of course, then you have the morons that stick them on the valve stems on their tires too. Ugh.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
It really pisses me off.
The Blue sky has a piercing clarity that draws the eye immediately, and which can mesmerize. And at night, the stars shimmer, they twinkle, and they can be incredibly intense for such tiny points of light -- they're really quite beautiful. The problem is they're suddenly everywhere.
Sorry...I must've rolled out of bed the wrong side too.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I tend to agree with the guy, personally. Blue LEDs, because they're usually stupidly bright, get really irritating, really fast.
;-)
There are great uses for them - for example, my new keyring light is one, and I can not only see to open doors etc but could probably blind a mugger permanantly as well
I think the use of super-bright blue LEDs for indicator lights is rather silly, though. I've replaced a couple in hardware I own, and put electrical tape over a couple of others I can't easily replace, because they were really god dammn annoying.
My PC sits in the living room (connected to the TV), and I used to have to put something in front of it if we were going to watch a film to avoid blinding anyone on the opposite side of the room. The power LED produces almost as much light as my 19" monitor. This is stupid.
As for posters who say "don't buy things with blue LEDs then" - (a) often you don't know until you've installed it, and (b) it's downright stupid to have to select devices based on whether or not the power light will drill a hole through your skull, instead of minor things like reliability or required features.
I recently bought a whole bunch of blue LEDs for $0.45 each from LSDiodes.com. This was a whole lot cheaper than ANY other place I could find. They shipped promptly, too. I got my diodes about 4 days later. They are on the west coast, I am in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, so thats pretty good. Equals the fastest shipping I have gotten from Amazon.com. Other places wanted like $2.75 for a blue LED. LSDiodes has 3mm, 5mm and two different sizes of surface mount: Tiny and miniscule.
/usr/games/fortune
I look around my desk, and don't see any blue LEDs, got green and red. Think the only blue LED I own is in my car radio.
Also, it's not the color of the LED that effects it's viewing angle, it's the design of it. Look at the EverLED
Its the cycle of technologie. Invent/expenisve/affordable/plaster it everywhere/anoyance/praticality.
My bluetooth usb hub just got some electical tape to cover its flashing blue light. For a long time I was wishing I didn't have usb port in the frount of my case.
War isn't about who's right. It's about who's left.
damn Black light LEDs
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
He doesn't like the colour blue? Here's a hint: hit Jameco, buy LEDs and a soldering iron. Open the hardware and void the warrantees. Clip. Solder. Done. Sheeesh...
His rant doesn't fall on deaf ears here. Went to buy a case fan a couple weeks ago from a major electronics retailer (B.B.). (normally i buy parts online, but i had a gift card...) Anyhow, all I wanted was a decent black 80mm fan. They had 3 different brands/kinds of suitable 80mm fans. All of them were clear plastic with blue LEDs... no variety of colors, no black...
I love it how the store figures that since blue LEDs are all the rage, that it's all they should sell. *rolleyes*
(oh well, at least it goes well with the bright blue LED on the front of my Chieftec case...)
I'm not to sure what is worse ... the Globe publishing this guy's rant, or it making the "front page" of /. /. was "Stuff that matters"? This is just one huge rant all about nothing. ...
I thought
But I'm sure that anyone who has RTFA, did notice the poll that is on the same page
"Would you seriously consider adopting Linux for your desktop PC?"
I've worked at Fitch and NPI, and all of the industrial designers love them. A major client wants them on every consumer appliances that we've designed. They're different, it's a fad. Anybody know about the eye's response to blue, as opposed to red/green/orange? Is that the attraction?
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
Almost all of the bluetooth enabled gizmos I've seen have that blue LED. I had a Sony Ericsson T68i that has that flashing blue LED, but I think SE stopped using it in their newer models. My SE T610 doesn't have it. Maybe they found out that it's annoying? The Logitech Z680 speakers that I have also has a small blue LED (it's not bluetooth though). Here in Canada the flashing bright blue lights are reserved for snow-plowing vehicles and you can't pass these slow movers.
In Soviet Russia, blue LED lights YOU!!!
Ian Johnson, I feel your pain. Why, just the other day, my butler Jeeves remarked to me, "Sir, I find myself incapable of sleeping ever since you installed your 100" plasma computer monitor. The blue LED keeps me up all night."
And I'm regretting giving the cleaning staff new blue-LED-equipped brooms last week. Those hundreds of dancing broom-handles put me in such a dreadful mood. How can I concentrate on exploiting those massively regressive tax-cuts when all those lights keep dancing in my brain?
Indeed.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
I'm "outdated" it seems because I don't suffer from the "too many blue LEDs" syndrome, but how hard would it be to i.e. apply a drop of white paint (or even whiteout) or at least rubbing it with sandpaper, as result simultaneously decreasing brightness and solving the "low visible angle" problem by scattering the light? And if you think that's not ellegant solution, just solder a resistor in the device in line with the LED, decreasing the brightness to pleasant level.
Yeah, the only blue LED I have on my desk (in mouse) is lined with a potentiometer so only pleasant dim blue glow is visible in darkness.
One of characteristic properties of hackers seems to be that while they solve hard problems at once, they tend to complain about the simple ones indefinitely.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
ever
Red Leader Standing By!
The only one I have is on the front of my computer speaker and it's currently covered with black hockey tape because the thing used to annoy the hell out of me at night. At any rate, I don't know where this guy goes shopping, but I hardly see blue LEDs anywhere.
As far as expensive gadgets go, the Shuttle SB75G2 has a blue power LED that lights up my ENTIRE LIVING ROOM when pitch black. The room is lit with a ghastly blue hue just enough to where you can navigate after shutting out all the rest of the light.
:(
This guy is right on target with this new "blue" craze because it's starting to take the coolness out of all the things I've custom modded with blue LEDs
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
Things from today:
Care to add?
The comfort you demanded is now mandatory - Jello Biafra
Red LEDs are this year's colour to be seen with.
Not that mac makes everything But apple does not festoon their products with leds or other distractions. even the look and feel uses color to atrract your eye to points it needs to go. That's one reason the brushed metal look is good despite it's detractors. Compare it to MS fisher price or many of the linux polka dot themes.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
... I saw this story accompanied by a ThinkGeek add for a "cool new LED clock" - blue, naturally :)
Have you ever stood in front of a SUN Fire 6800 cabinet? They have a big sucker of a SUN logo illuminated by those blue LEDs...
:-)
So shiny... Happy happy happy... Must drool and watch... can't resist...
I'm still waiting for the Octalus-like big mouth with needle-sharp fangs coming out of the cabinet snatching for my head
Yalla.
You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
I don't need a bright blue blast visually screaming "HEY! YOU! EVERYTHING'S OK! I'M STILL ON!" all day long.
The article was worth it because this line reminded me of Homer's Everything's OK Alarm:
BEEEEEEEP, BEEEEEEP, IT WILL KEEP GOING, BEEEEEEP, BEEEEEEEP, EVERY 5 SECONDS, BEEEEEEEP, BEEEEEEEP, UNLESS EVERYTHING'S NOT OK, BEEEEEEEP.
Now I'm going to spend all day searching through Simpsons tapes trying to find that episode.
At any rate, hasn't this guy heard of duct tape?
"None of us are as dumb as all of us." - meeting mantra
I built a set-top box to play dvd's and record TV out of a shuttle box - it has a bright blue power-on led which leads the eye while I'm watching a DVD ...
I'm going to cover it, but it does seem a pity 'cuz it's so bling!
Go color over it with permanent marker or something. Or stick tape over it. C'mon, this isn't rocket science!
How do people like him get a paycheck for writing a rant on blue LEDs? Hell, even if he didn't get a paycheck, who the hell gave his article the ok to get published? I'm sure there are better things to rant about than how Blue LEDs annoy someone...get a life.
Yeeesh, this has to be the most blatant advertisement i've ever seen posted as a comment.
Blue LEDs vary anywhere from 23 cents to $2.45 depending upon brightness, lifetime, wavelength, and so on. Quoting a price without any of those specifications is worthless.
Digikey and any of a number of other electronics suppliers will always beat the guy-who-thought-he-could-live-off-selling-LEDs places, especially if you order more than 10 units, because you get a nice quantity discount. They don't nail you on shipping, either.
For the same reasons, bragging about how fast you(oops! Them, I mean, sorry!) ship things without specifying methods is pretty silly too. Oh, and Digikey stocked, when I looked...7 sizes and 10 voltages of radials in various combinations. At least that many SMD types, and still more panel-mount types...
Please help metamoderate.
OK, so now that there are red, green, and blue LEDs...where's the LED TV?
1. sell prodcts with blue LEDS
2. piss off some retard
3. sell other colors
4. ???
5. profit!
yap
... or just a slow day on the newsfront??
Apple built a platform for their ideas, Google built one for everyone's.
Blue LEDs aren't the only ones that can be irritatingly bright - I was in Prague a couple of weeks ago, and the LEDs on the thermostat were so bright that they lit up the hotel room at night! I had to put a sticker over them so that they would stop burning my retinas so that I could sleep. He's right - why do they need such bright lights for something that I don't normally care about, e.g. the mood of the heating system at the time?
My theory is that it's a selling point on the sales floor - I imagine that a lot of customers, like me, gravitate towards the shiniest and/or brightest option.
~Ben
I own lots of electronics, but the only things I have with a blue LED is my RePlay TV 5060 and my Playstation 2. My monitor, printer, speakers, audio compnents, tv, router, switch, network card, zip drive, ect all have the standard red, orange, or green. My Apple Powerbook has the apple white blinking "snore" indicator when it's asleep.
Granted, my iPod does have a blue backlight, as does my Nextel, but neither is an LED
I have blog like everyone else
...and there's one on a USB keychain drive attached to my car keys.
ding, ding, ding! We have the answer: Geek.
I propose that we all agree on a simple system, whereby each color of LED has a specific meaning.
For example:
Green - power on
Red - Something's wrong, or something you need to notice (e.g. hard drive light)
Blue - User has done something really stupid and deserves to have his eyeballs burned out
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
it would violate the DMCA
Paint works well too...
Even a sharpie marker..
Choose a blue color and you can still have your light, at a reduced amount of luminosity..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This guy has a good point, because blue is essentially the most useless color for an LED. Why? Because the way our eyes work, they provide the least amount of contrast possible. That's why you shoule NEVER EVER make a blue backlight. Am I the only one who has noticed that green and amber backlights are wonderful, while blue ones are crap?
My girlfriend just got a blue LED clock, and the damn thing makes the room glow at night even on the DIM setting. I really hope this fad ends soon.
aQazaQa
What color would be better than a blue one? How do you think?
The attraction is that for many years blue LEDs were nearly impossible to fabricate. Next, they were expensive and inefficient. Next, just expensive. Now, the old problems are gone and they have the highest light output per watt of all LEDs, and they're filling a pent-up demand dating back three decades.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
...wenn zu viel watchen der blinkenlights
One of the best waste of money I have found in a long time. Its even a feature of the watch that blue LEDs are the second most expensive LEDs you can get.
Pimpin aint easy watch by PIMP
A note that came with the watch said the battery only lasts 6-9 months if I need to know the time 15 times a day but who cares when you have such a rockin wrist peice.
I had a ericson T68i. When you turned the bluetooth on it had this beautiful brilliant blue led. The led was great. You could see it from a hundred feet away. Which is fine until you try to go to sleep or a movie. It would light through a bluejean pants pocket and uncovered, provide a strong enough strobe to illuminte a small room brightly (every 7 seconds).
It was neat. I'm not so sure it was good that I was advertising that my phone was spewing bluetooth. The newer 616 has no flashing indicator for power or bt and I can't say that I've ever had a problem telling if it was on.
I think we all know what really motivated this editorial. It's so obvious as to be as blinding as the blue LEDs he pretends are so bad. He is clearly afraid of tackling the true evil in the world. I'm talking, of course, about the two truly evil consumer products. Products so vile and twisted that one barely should speak their name. I'm speaking, of course, of Saran Wrap and packing tape.
There. I've said it. We all know about it, but we all blithely wander through our days pretending these products weren't spawned from a twisted and sociopathic mind. Have you ever tried to use one of these products? The instant a section of either of these clear plastic "miracles of modern technology" comes away from it's little cardboard spool and tiny metal teeth (don't get me started on those sweater-eating life-ruiners), it becomes a slithering cellophane serpent, bent on destruction; maliciously bent on one brief instant of contact with itself. One tiny touch and it bonds to itself with a monomaniacal intensity rivalled only by Madonna's attempts to remain relevant to teenagers.
What a weight off my mind. I simply couldn't stand the way we all ignore this problem any longer. I've kept this bottled up inside me for so long, I had forgotten what it feels like to think about anything else. I feel... so... free! You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go to the supermarket, get the biggest bag of Kett'l Kook'd potato chips they have, and continue my hunt for the elusive potato chip that looks like Vincent Price.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I couldn't agree more with the idea. My new laptop is festooned with blue lights and it looks like a toy. The thing would look much more sharp without blue glows every couple of inches.
I like music
This problem can be solved the same way I fixed the check engine light on my car... Duct Tape!
I swapped plain ol' leds for premium-priced blue ones not so long ago.. Now the reverse?
Why the hell do humans always take a good things way to damned far? Huh?!
Soda pop, sex, religion, blue leds, and on and on..
If the power went out unexpectedly, I'd probably realize it since the screen would go black -- the "on" LED isn't telling me a whole lot I don't already know.
But if the display is sleeping or in low power mode and/or the computer is hung...?
A link in another story mentioned the use of colour filters, and that gave me a brilliant idea.
How about if we have a whip-round, get every Slashdot reader to send in a few coppers, then and maybe we could afford to buy Ian Johnson some brown- or yellow-tinted sunglasses. These will admit less blue light than red or green, so Johnson's poor eyes will be spared.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
On the front of my case there's one small blue LED that's lit whenever my comp is on. It doesn't seem like much, but when I turn off the lights in my basement, this one LED just about lights up one of the walls. Yeah, they may get overused, but they are neat. I'm planning on getting my entire basement lit with LEDs (various colors, mostly white though), as I like their light quality, and as they are extremely efficient.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
I think some of you people need to take this article a little less seriously/literally. It was a hyperbolic rant intended mainly for the amusment of newspaper readers and the venting of a minor annoyance, not some sort of manifesto on How Things Should Be.
Is there any way to turn off the sexy flashing white lights on the Airport base station?
I realize there must not be many people in a studio apartment with Airport (it's a long story) but I have to cover the thing up with a plastic bucket to get any sleep...
The "sleep" light on the iMac has the same problem.
Masking tape 1) is most un-Applish and 2) won't really work because these lights are recessed in translucent plastic casing.
mt
This article seems more like a chance for him to brag about all his fancy new toys than a true rant...
Note to the LCD manufacturer: If the power went out unexpectedly, I'd probably realize it since the screen would go black - the "on" LED isn't telling me a whole lot I don't already know.
But if the screen is black, is it because something broke or because the power was cut? A power led tells you without the need for a voltmeter.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
"I even got a pen the other day, one of those giveaways with a company logo, and it has a blue LED on the top that lights up as you write."
Begs the question, could the light be sensed from a distance to determine what is being written?
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
I suppose one who calls himself a "Chiq Geek" would need to find something totally useless to complain about. Up here in Cannuk land, the Glob and Mule is revered by the pseudo-intelligencia and otherwise tolerated as the typical news rag it is. With so much going on in our TechWorld of great importance, one would think a 'journalist' could find a subject not quite so silly to write about. Or maybe it's just me: I got the Easter Bunny Blues... today.
They look real pretty and put out long wave UV, so you won't have to worry about your cornea being burnt up. www.hosfelt.com
My roommate at college has a G4 and the blue glowing LED light on the front on the monitor is bright enough to light up the room at night. Problem is that you can't easily cover it up because these Macs have a clear plaster layer on top of the LED which spreads the light even farther. We had to use a half-roll of black tape to try and get some of the light covered. You'd think that someone at the Mac R&D would realize that there are people that use these things in their bedroom.
Although I agree with other posters that say that this sounds like the rant of a spoiled little boy with too many toys, I do have one exception.
My car stereo came with a big triangular blue LED on the power button. It stays on whether the power is on or off. Although I have gotten used to it, everyone who gets in the car remarks on how distracting it is.
Worse is that the light reflects of the windshield exactly where the mirror is. So if I am looking the mirror just right, one eye is seeing a blue reflection, and the other eye is seeing the image in the mirror. More than once I've done a double take, thinking I've got a cop on my tail. Really annoying.
Long live the Speaker Bracelet
Rolo D. Monkey
Mainly for the same reasons as already mentioned, they just stand out too much. Novelty at first, an annoyance later. My Cell Phone has a blue LED backlight for the display, and sometimes at night it is a little hard to read, because it is so bright, it really does kill your night vision. I am a bigger fan of the white LEDs, they look cleaner, and don't hurt your eyes as much. At least for me they don't.
Like the guy says, having a bright blue LED power-on indicator on your monitor is incredibly annoying, especially since it's so obvious when the monitor is powered off.
It's kind of like having a smoke alarm that beeps _unless_ it smells smoke, isn't it?
BTW - a bunch of people have suggested putting several layers of masking tape over LEDs. It's easier (and tidier) to just put a little dot of tinfoil and a piece of transparent tape.
If you watch TV news, you know less about the world than if you just drank gin straight from the bottle.
Nice!
.. I love blue leds-in my flashlights, I have several now with these, and I hope much cheaper replacement home lighting is to follow with them. I prefer the other colors for data indicators. Blue IS too intense for the background indicators.
Of course, he forgot his early geek training, his monitor annoyance is easily fixed with duct tape....
Now will all the Democrats just shut the fuck up?
I got an M-Audio Firewire 410 soundcard and the blue LED was beyond obnoxious. It was MUCH brighter than the red and green LEDs on the thing, by several times. Since it is the power LED, it was ALWAYS on. Also, if you powered the unit down, but left it connected to Firewire, it would proceed to blink at you, very frequently. I had put a peice of masking tape over it to dampen the light (and I could still see it through that). Finally, however, it just broke, and I'm not sending it in for service.
It's not the use of blue LEDs that bothers me, it's how damn bright most of them are. An indicator that my gear is turned on is nice. An indicator that my gear is turned on that I can see from outside at night (makes the room glow blue) is more than just a bit of overkill.
*cough*
[1] Which means that averted viewing will pick up blue better than direct viewing... which means that blue will tend to distract you if you look away from it.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Giant LED-based video walls no longer look like plates of hurl. I remember seeing these things on television years ago and they all had this orangey tint because the entire blue end of the spectrum was essentially verboten. Nowadays we have vibrant full-color ads on our blimps and in our stadiums.
(Imagine UT2k4 on one of these! Driven by a Beowulf cluster of Power Mac G5s!)
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
>Now will all the Democrats just shut the fuck up?
Americans who accurately understand the meaning of patriotism will continue to speak out until the incompetent Republicans are finally held responsible for their ineptness, hypocrisy, negligence, and general stupidity.
Impeach the dumb fuckers. No one has ever deserved it more than Bush and Cheney. No one has ever deserved jailtime more than they do.
But need to work on spelling before you're really alright.
Kill the damn LEDs, I say. Even a piece of tape nicely blots out the useless and annoying LEDs.
:-P
I usually code late nights in total darkness, except small light from monitor with contrast turned so down it doesn't irritate my eyes. Even monitor power LEDs shine like beacons then, so I just taped them up. No more shining lights.
I've also encountered LEDs in power supplies and motherboards (a flashing trio in a chipset cooling fan was the worst one), but I just cut their power connector. Though cutting wires voids the warranty.
Network card and switch activity LEDs are nice, though. Nothing is quite like having your room throb at the speed of your downloads.
I just went on a walking tour of the house, and I don't have a single thing with a blue LED in it. My crap is ancient. I'm poor. Jesus.
What does this have to do with technology. Yeah, blue LEDs are new. Big deal. You could have just renamed this article "Colors I dislike".
All your base are belong to us!
First off, most devices don't advertise it. It's not like you always have the oppertunity of seeing a device operate before you buy it. Second they are often less annoying in pictures than in real life. My sound card had (it's broke now) a blue power led. In the pictures, it looked the same as the red and green LEDs. When I actually got the thing, it was apparent that the glowing lights were photoshoped in since the blue power light was about a million times brighter than the other lights.
However most importantly, there are plenty of cases where there exists no alternative that has all the features you want, or the alternatives ALSO feature blue lights. Like one of my synthesizers, an Edirol SD-20. It also has a blue power light, though the same brightness as the other lights so it doesn't bug me. I didn't have a choice though, I wanted this synth. I didn't want an "equivilant" Yamaha or Korg or something, I wanted the Roland sound. I'm not going to buy something with a different sound just because this one has a blue LED.
They sell pants under their own brand called Member's Mark. They are nice, plain, dark blue jeans. They are also well made and like $13/pair.
For some reason my 3D card come with a some plastic glass and color leds that blink all the time. I never shutdown my computer and is always open, so in the nighs can see my computer 3D card is still alive ?:/ I dont understand the Ati designer, but hee... the card is good!
Can anyone info why this hellish leds blink all the time inside my 3d card?
-Woof woof woof!
The store looks like a good place to get a couple of LEDs. I loved the little tutorial on circuit design.
Digikey is horribly awkward. Who the heck needs 1000 1.0 Ohm 5% 0.10 Watt resistors? PDF catalog shopping is just so wrong too. Minimum orders, etc... Obviously not meant for the hobbiest.
Personally I'm getting tired of all bright (or super or ultra) LEDs. It's a great idea if they're used for illumination and not a status indicator lamp. My frickin Logitech mouse and Dell keyboard both have annoyingly bright LEDs in them. Why? Color is irrelevant, it's the intensity that bothers people.
I have tons of electronics plastered with LEDs in my house and at work and there's not a single blue LED among them. The article's author is regretting a fad he hopped on or something? I don't know anyone with ANYTHING that contains any blue LEDs (off the top of my head) either. I guess it's kind of like fake gold trim on a car. Some people like it...
I have logitech speakers on my desk and at night, the blue led is nearly blinding. I have to angle it away from me.
Seems somebody rolled out of bed on the wrong side today
Great, let's make him feel better by slashdotting his server...
-- If you can read this, you are too close to my signature.
Wait... wouldn't regressive tax cuts be tax cuts that targetted the poor more than the rich? Like a sales tax supposedly does?
...when I see them along with red LEDs on a Crown Victoria in my rearview mirror.
Seriously though, more and more companies are starting to use LEDs for warning lighting on emergency vehicles. They don't draw huge amounts of power like incandescent systems, sometimes requiring additional batteries and/or heavy duty alternators; they don't require high voltage triggers like like strobe systems; and they've gotten bright enough to handle about any application other than illumination. It's taken a while for the blues to get bright enough to useful for these tasks; some early iterations are barely visible next to their red counterparts in daylight (though they've gotten to the point now where some of these LED systems are so bright they seem to be giving you eye surgery).
One interesting thing if you look at the pricing: blue and white still often cost more than double the price of red, amber, or green.
...that here in Brazil, those bad/mad drivers install these blue leds close to the license plate to blind policemen, avoiding tickets.
And there is no legislation to avoid these lights yet.
The color, though, is correct. The standard NEMA rules for indicator colors, used on industrial gear for decades, are
-
GREEN Normal status.
-
AMBER Abnormal status. Operator should be aware that an amber lamp is lit.
-
RED Trouble status. Operator should take action to make the red light go out.
-
BLUE or WHITE On, or other non-specific meaning.
So blue and white are actually the default colors. Red should be used only for trouble indicators. We're still getting over the cheap red LED glut of the 1980s, when everything had red LEDs.Anything that rackmounts should follow these rules. It's not only annoying, but a headache, to have red lights for non-trouble conditions in a rack of equipment. IBM always has.
http://www.buzzflash.com/buzzscripts/buzz.dll/sub3
Memorandum to 9/11 Commission Members from THE President of America
Here is the letter that we needed to stop 9/11, but Osama, that inconsiderate S.O.B., never sent it to me, even though I once sent him an autographed picture of me sitting in front of that pick-up truck without an engine that Karl has me pose in down on that ranch we bought just before being appointed President.
Dear Mr. Bush,
We are going to hijack four airliners, on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly them into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon.
Oh, I forgot to mention, we would be hijacking them from Boston Logan Airport and another airport to be determined. I'm sorry I can't be more specific. (I know you prefor more specific information, but we have some details to work out yet. We will send you the names of the hijackers when we have reconfirmed our four teams and the flight numbers.)
Hope this helps.
With Sincerest Regards,
Osama
...just in a smaller way. I bought some new speakers for my desktop. The center channel speaker, the one that goes atop the monitor, has all the controls: power, volume, fader, etc. There's also a power light...a blue LED power light. At first I thought it was very cool. My tech budget is low and my only other possession with a blue LED is a freebie keychain/flashlight from a conference.
:)
After setting up the speakers I quickly discovered why the blue LED is suited for a flashlight - the damn power light was blinding! The angle of the speaker, perfect for directing sound to my ears, was also ideal for shining the blue light into my eyes. I ended up covering the light with electrical tape and making a pinhole in the tape.
Wow, that has to be the most I've written about such a trivial thing. "Hey everyone, come read my blue LED story! Chapter 1 is now online!"
Why can't the manufacturers include an option to turn that shit off? Most of the devices usually have some way to change the settings, either an on-screen menu or a computer control panel applet. It should be rather simple to add a "disable LED indicator" option. I have an ADSL modem and a switch, sitting on the table. Honestly, I don't care about what these devices are doing 99.99% of the time. And in those rare cases when I do care, I can usually afford 30 seconds to enable the LEDs. To think of it, I probably can use the program on the PC they are connected to to find out how they are doing. So the manufacturer can save the cost of those LEDs and make the product less annoying.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I have a simple solution for this man's problem. Perhaps his single digit IQ keeps him from this kind of revolutionary thought...
When shopping for a new device or peripheral, find one that doesn't have a frickin blue LED and buy it instead.
Sheesh...
I personally think blue LEDs are pretty cool, mind you I don't have a ton of fancy electronic gadgets around the house (and I don't own a cell phone).
But what I'm really after are some nice, super bright white LEDs. Does anyone know where I can get them (in small volumes) for cheap? I want to build a lamp for my bicycle.
A very short story
I just bought a Small Form Factor PC.
It has a Blue Power Led button on the front
The PC looks cool, and is usefull ON TOP of my desk
The PC is in my room, no other or better place for it
The power light is VERY VERY bright at night
My fiance hates it, she cant sleep with it on
I agree
the PC is a server, i cannot turn it off at night
A post-it now covers that damn blue light
The light still shines thorugh, though yellow and blue make green
and green is less piercingly obnoxious
Bottom line, those lights which are most notable in key chain flashlights, cellphone number panels, and my PC's powerlight are really really really bright and very annoying. I hate the number panels cell phone lights the most... if youve ever been in a dark bar when someone gets a call on one of those things you know what i mean. And the power light can by itself light my entire room at night.... NO JOKE, it's that bright.
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
I don't see any blue LEDs around my house.
Blue LEDs don't exist because it is still 1988 at my house.
...I don't entirely disagree with what he's saying. The biggest gripe I have about LEDs of any color is their overuse. The one I hate most is on my JVC DVD player. When it's on, there's a green LED. When it's off, that green LED... changes to red? Why in the world do I need an indicator that tells me "alert! This device is now off!" It's rather distracting when I'm trying to watch TV and I've got this glaring red eye below. Other devices with LEDs don't bother me that much; I'm not generally staring in their direction. But LEDs on devices which, by their design or fuction, implicitly stay in your field of vision--or just on the periphary--ought to be toned down a skosh.
But without the blue, the holiday lighting just wouldn't be the same.
.sig
-- this is not a
...his repitoir(sp? m-w.com couldn't figure it out).
BTW, it is repertoire
If he doesn't like blue LEDs, then he didn't really need to buy a new monitor, handheld scanner, webcam, USB hub, Bluetooth access point, WiFi adapter, desktop volume control for his speakers, external hard drive, video editing peripheral, keyboard, home theatre, wireless music gateway, USB keychain drive, and portable MP3 player, all apparently in the "recent months".
Ignoring the quantity of his purchases, it *is* really annoying that so many different devices, presumably from different manufacturers, would all be so-festooned.
But what really irks me is the idiots who put blue lights all over their cars - usually silly little Honda cars with 3" diameter coffee can exhaust tips (despite the 1" diameter pipe coming from the puny little 1.6L engine).
Blue side markers, taillights, parking lights? Non-conformant with SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers, look closely at your taillight lenses) standardized coloring and therefore dangerous. Illegal. Police should be cracking down on these the way they used to crack down on 50's hot-rodders who were putting the blue dots into their red taillights.
LEDs (especially blue) on calipers, brake rotors, rims, windshield washer nozzles - what are you, stupid? It might have looked a little neat the first time someone did it, but now it's every home-boy who doesn't know how to put on a baseball cap who is doing it. Why would you spend your money being a brainless clone, when instead you could save it to put a real motor into your Civic? (Now, if you've got a Civic with a 4-bolt mains Chevy 350 under the hood, *then* I'll be impressed - takes a little more skill to do that than to put silly lights on the car.)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
...and you can probably pick it up at virtually any local hardware store, or even an auto supply store.
:)
It is called black tape. Very unobtrusive, electrically inert, and completely opaque. It does leave a little gummy mark when it eventually falls off, but that's ok. Just cover it with more black tape.
It's not my fault! It was this way when I got here.
"I've got a bone to pick with Shuji Nakamura."
I hate how people keep crediting Nakamura as the sole inventor of the blue LED. Yes, he did make the first working blue LED, but Dr. Theodore Moustakas here at Boston University developed the buffer-layer process for GaN months before Nakamura.
Here's an article.
Dr. Moustakas is an awesome professor too. He loves to teach and does it well. He deserves so much more credit.
My Logitech speakers have blue leds. All I have to say is that I want to shoot the person that put them in the design. Sure the speakers are great, but it is distracting and it actually hurts my eyes. I had to put tape over the blue led just so I could scan around my desk without hurting my eyes. Just like another poster said, the blue led does do a really good job at lighting my bed room. I would have rather not had a led than a piercing blue one.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
.. works every time. :)
10 years from now, the kiddies of tomorrow will be sick of Blue LEDs and they will be a fad long-dead. But what will replace them? I don't suppose that red/amber/green will make a triumphant comeback. I'm waiting for the kiddies to start modding their Blue LED gear with those fiery red-orange neon indicator lamps for that retro look. How they're going to generate 80VAC from a cordless mouse is anyone's guess, but for most plug-in-to-the-wall gear this should not be a problem. Personally, I'm waiting for the triumphant resurgence of the eerie "radioactive" glow of tuning-eye tubes in place of those *lovely* blue LED level meters.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
What is truly saddening here is that this guy is getting paid to deliver such exaggerated rants that could be otherwise be found written for free on sites like Slashdot.
If this guy can get away with earning a living this way, there may be hope for many of you afterall. And if you can't rant, maybe you can found a company that makes snap-on LED covers to block the incredibly blinding glare that these things put off. Or if you have no talent in that area either, you could try to make a living by suing companies that use blue LEDs in their products, claiming permanent loss of sight from these intensely bright devices.
And this brings to an end my rant regarding a guy getting paid to rant about something that isn't all that big a deal in the first place
Chris Rock said it best, "Guys don't get flashy cars because guys like flashy cars. They get flashy cars because girls like flashy cars."
In spite of the new bane, blue, xoxide is running this ad on arstechnica.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
it's a f*cking little blue light.
>the mobile DC cigarette lighter plug has this annoyingly bright Blue LED on it.
gewg_
> the use of super-bright blue LEDs for indicator lights is rather silly
Day intensity / night intensity
gewg_
This product might be the solution you need
Imagine a beowulf cluster of those! (well someone had to, honestly)
I couldn't come up with any better sign....
I only have one device that has a blue LED. If you don't like blue LEDs, don't but them; I personally avoid them. I think in one way what struck me about this article is that either this guy has a lot of high end devices bought at some time, or a lot of recently bought gear, and he's showing off all his "my" this and "my" that.
The author needs to rediscover the wonders of applying black electrical tape over the annoyance. Such tape also neatly solves the problem of the flashing 00:00's on VCR clocks.
(mind you, I didn't actually look through that site much, so it might blow too...but I know that Wal*mart drives down wages for millions of people, and use their clout in very...well...bad ways. And low-wage workers are bad for the economy. And shopping there makes you part of the problem.)
-Daniel
Ownyourphone.com. Custom ringtones, cheap and easy
Anything trying to be really ubercool should come with one plus a software or a slider (or 3?) to adjust the fsck of it.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
What is the deal with blue LEDs? People in the ricing scene love them but I don't know why.
Look pretty normal to me, just blue?
Anyone care to elaborate
I thought that reading /. was considered exercising with dumbbells. :-)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Buck Murdock: Oh, cut the bleeding heart crap, will ya? We've all got our switches, lights, and knobs to deal with, Striker. I mean, down here there are literally hundreds and thousands of blinking, beeping, and flashing lights, blinking and beeping and flashing - they're *flashing* and they're *beeping*. I can't stand it anymore! They're *blinking* and *beeping* and *flashing*! Why doesn't somebody pull the plug!
I've only owned two things that had blue LEDs. My Sony Ericcson T68i (it had a green/red LED showing service/charge/battery status and a blue one to indicate bluetooth status. It blinked every 2-3 seconds. Now I have a set of Logitech Z-640 5.1 speakers and on the center speaker is a mass of controls, and in the middle is a blue LED with the intensity of a thousand suns. It can litterally light up my side of the dorm room.
Viva La Revolucion! Buy a Mac!
From the article:- Blue LEDs are much more complicated to design and produce than red, green or orange LEDs, and until recently that made them expensive
Does anyone know WHY blue LED's are more expensive to make? Why are they more difficult to get working? I didnt think the colpour would make much of a difference.
I have no sig yet I must scream.
Note to article author: A small piece of black electrical tape.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Of course, the fact that a modern cell phone does much more in a much smaller space does leave something to be desired.
So does anyone know how to get my cell phone to chirp like a Communicator when I flip it open?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The subject of this post is the title of a book I've wanted to read for some time (you can find it at Powell's), which this "rant" about blue LEDs brought back to mind. Some design decisions are made for the wrong reason and some things are designed very poorly -- this goes for physical products as well as software. [I was tempted to insert "Microsoft" in there, but there are plenty of others to blame for poorly designed software -- not me, of course. ;-)]
No Laughing Allowed!
...how much did you get paid to post that? heh heh...
There's some petty editorials out there, but give me a BREAK. This one has got to be one of the most petty ones I've ever seen.
It looks to me like it was more of a show off of all this guys's stuff, pretending it was an article about blue LED's.
I mean, with all the other more important shit he could be putting his energy into, it's lame to dwell on something so ridiculous.
If the light is too damned bright, put a peice of fucking tape over it and get on with your life.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I tried to count them right now. Oh boy. Yellow specs all over the page. Cannot type. Seizure warninnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn nnnnddj
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
not too bright, unlike the lights he bought
personally i have a blue led on my comptuer tower that used to light up my entire room...naturally i leave my comptuer on all the time so i thought to myself, how can i fix this...i put a piece of duct tape over the led, the led still shines through but at the power of the other led types making it not bright at all but still visible.
I notice that none of my technical gadgets have any blue LEDs. I feel so left out and behind..
My bed is only 8 inches off the ground so when I'm in bed at night my PC and all the stuff that go with it shine directly in my eyes. They're not blue LEDs, but they were still annoying as hell.
So I've used little bits of white electrical tape (match the case colors) to block them all out. Even the drive activity LED got covered over, at nights when it was going on-and-off it was exteremely annoying.
Now all I see are tiny dull green-yellow or orange spots, not a huge spotlight shining across the room. So I can still see the lights even during the daytime, but they are no longer the equivalent of little spotlights in the darkness.
Did the same thing to the LED on the speaker on the fridge in the kitchen, it was annoying at 2am when going for a glug of milk in the pitch black apartment to be blinded by the LED on it.
Here's a question - why do so few other people in the world use the BRAINS (you know, those huge amazing things that only we humans have) to SOLVE their problems instead of bitching about it all the time? Everyone always seems so supprised whenever I trot out some tiny little thing that I've done to solve a problem or make a job easy. It's not rocket science.
I just went to their site.
I get a: [code=CANT_CONNECT] 500 Server Error. The entire display is black and white. This seems to run contrary to their own guidelines. I see absolutely no amber or red to indicate abnormal status or trouble status.
NEMA should dogfood their own 'standard'.
I used electrical tape on the two devices with annoying bright blue leds that I own(braun electric shaver and logitech speaker set). Since they are both black, the little squares of electrical tape I used to cover the leds are barely noticeable.
Has a bright blue LED indicator that blinks when the power cord is connected is turned off. I often pull the cord out when I want to sleep. So annoying. Sorry I just wanted to yell about my VPR Matrix monitor.
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
if you FUCKING drive one around the city YOU ARE A FUCKING TURD.
I think my friend has that case.
And I have a sonata...
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Blue lights really hurt my eyes, and LEDs are even worse because of their intese brightness.
I have similar complaints about those ultra-bright blue headlights so many luxomobiles have these days. They're great if I'm behind them, but put them in front of me and I'm almost completely unable to see (and thus unable to drive).
Bright blue light are incredibly painful for me. My eyes ache just thinking about it. I just hope the fad fades fast.
Cars don't get you laid, period.
Confidence gets you laid.
And if you think that some car accessory will give you confidence, you are one pathetic fool.
mod parent up as pete seeger fan. that's an option, right? well it should be
I keep a G4 in my bedroom with an external firewire hardrive attached, and between the annoying pulsing white power button during sleep and the amazingly bright blue LED on the enclosure, I was having trouble falling asleep because of all the light pollution. And I'm not hypersensitive, and can usually sleep fairly well even in half-assed darkness. Even duct tape didn't solve the problem, as the light still seeped out through the clear plastic on the outer shell of the HD enclosure. I ended up having to open it up and disconnect the LED, voiding the hell out of my warranty I'm sure.
Do LED's just have one set brightness? I really don't understand them at all. I'm guessing that soldering a resister or anything in there couldn't tune things down a bit...
I have exactly two blue LEDs, and I had them easily 3 or 4 years ago when they were "expensive". It's a long story, but suffice to say I've been a fan of LEDs and their different colors and uses since childhood. I have a full-tower Antec case and I've never really been a fan of case-modding (I like beige just fine, thankyouverymuch), but I once happened to see some blue LEDs from the same online store that I bought my CPU fan from and bought a pair on a whim.
I soldered them in, replacing the green and amber power and HDD LEDs respectively, and turned it on. Looking, of course, directly into them. BIG MISTAKE. I felt like I was temporarily blinded for several minutes. The HDD one is not a big deal since it only flashes occasionally and never stays continuously lit for more than a second or two, but the power LED is on ALL THE TIME and if I turn off the lights it can illuminate an entire half of the room all by itself.
Fortunately, the LED bezel in the case directs most of the beam straight ahead, so it hasn't been that big a deal, though I've been tempted more than once to figure out the current and voltage and solder a resistor in series just to tone it down a bit.
In reality, the color isn't too much of a problem. The problem is that they are so high powered.
While I will admit, the fact is that certain colors appear more piercing than others (due to how much they scatter), the power is the real issue. He mentions that he is bothered by RED LEDs, but in reality, Red is the most gentle color there is. Back when I was making my own home-made LED flashlights, I quickly discovered that red is an awful color to use, because it scatters so much that there's very little light left where you are pointing it. Blue worked well, but too well. It's soo powerful that you loose your night vision, and since LEDs weren't as bright as regular bulbs, you needed your night vision, otherwise the LED flashlights were useless.
Green/Amber are the best colors. No loss of night vision, but enough light to iluminate.
I have a solution to this problem though. What we need is an indicator that is not self-lit at all. Back before LEDs, most applications used a colored piece of plastic/metal to indicate status. What we need is something like that, but updated so they can be a drop-in replacement for LEDs.
I'm thinking maybe a tiny canister, with 3 tiny, colored, magnetized ball-bearings. A simple electro-magnet could move any of the 3 to the display window.
So, it would be just as simple as the multi-colored LEDs, extremely low power, and almost as small. As an added bonus, you won't see these status indicators when all the building lights are out, and you WILL be able to see them when it is bright out. If you've ever tried to see if your LED is on while it's in direct sunlight, you know what I'm talking about, and certainly see the advantage of this idea.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
If I may borrow some quotes from Dennis Leary...
"Shut the fuck up."
"Life sucks, get a fucking helmet."
He's a reviewer for "Blue LED Lover" magazine.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Recent research in Japan has led to the developement of PINK LED lights (4 red to 1 blue) in growing plants. It seems that the low power, high yield (400% higher growth in some instances) are a savior for some countries of the future. LED use so little power, hook them up to solar/wind and you can grow huge amounts of food in low light, basements, attics, etc without the problems of:Heat, replacing bulbs, power supply, cooling of housing from bulb/halogens. This will lead to great developement for 3rd world countries, cold countries, and home 'weed growers' to grow with impunity. GOOD JOB NAKA!
old and busted: blue leds
new hottness: purple leds
Macs go to sleep, not in to standby mode (let alone hibernate).
Thank you, most sincerely, for your understanding and kind attention to this important detail.
A friend of mine has some form of Shuttle case he uses for his MythTV setup, and, naturally, it came with a piercing, blindingly bright, blue LED to let everyone within half a mile know whether it's on or not. Occasionally, I end up sleeping on the futon ten feet away from it if I'm over there late at night and not heading home until the next day, and I honestly can't sleep in the same room unless I cover the light up with something.
I'm the kind of person whose eyes are sensitive enough to light that I use a single 40W bulb to light my room at home and read by, and in the past, I've used only a 25W bulb at times. This trend for bright, flashy indicator lights on everything these days (including the pulsating white one on my iBook to let me know it's asleep...I have to stick it underneath the bed or put a book in front of it to sleep while it's sleeping) is literally kind of painful sometimes.
As an added bonus, I have Keratoconus, a fairly uncommon cornea problem, so all these excessively bright little lights on everything are wonderfully smeared all over the place in my vision, which makes them even more annoying and drives me absolutely nuts.
I love little blinking lights all over the place on my hardware as much as the next guy, but lately, they've been getting pretty ridiculously obtrusive. There are only so many little lights that are actually necessary, and they don't need to be all that bright to be noticeable or useful.
When I first got my new system, I was looking for the power button on the front of my subwoofer. Noticing the little button, looking directly at it, I pushed it in and was blinded by a furious, burning blue LED right above the fucking power button.
Now I like it, because even when I turn the lights off the blue glow of the subwoofer is good reading light.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I spent some years doing television service. The statistic that really stuck in my head was that blue was only 11% of the picture. The implication is obvious - the eye is a lot more sensitive to blue than either of red or green(don't know who came up with the reverse statistic and posted that the eye is less sensitive to blue - must be a typo). Consequently it makes sense that blue led's emitting the same number of lumens would appear to be brighter. One other factor stuck in my head from that experience(in aligning the picture, anyway) was that it's pretty difficult for the eye focus blue into sharp edges - it wants to scatter and it therefore looks fuzzy no matter how good the focus of the blue gun is.
That said, I've looked around my desk. I have 6+ computers and not one of them has a blue LED. Not even my monitor or keyboard. I didn't do this on purpose, so either I live a charmed life or this guy has bad karma.
The easiest solution to any overbright LED? Black Gaffer's Tape. The adhesive is a lot easier to deal with than duct tape, and it's fully opaque. One layer, and you've effectively converted it into a black emitting diode.
--
I have no sig.