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."

Fat cat

[baseinfinity]

Sounds like this guy has too many new expensive gadgets that he should send to someone who appreciates it more.

Well... blue LEDs are okay...

[oldosadmin]

But do they run linux?

Best X-Box mod ever...

[Anonymous Coward]

So there.

Has to be said

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our new blue LED overlords.

or

Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!

or

1. blue LEDS
2. ???
4. profit!

He hasn't seen

[_mt99]

this [demon.co.uk]

I concur. Same problem with the sky

[GillBates0]

Blue LEDs have a piercing clarity that draws the eye immediately, and which can mesmerize. They 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.

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.

Re:Why

[fireman sam]

The Blue LED howto:

Part 1 - dimming.

1. Go to the hardware shop and pick up some masking tape.
2. Cut a piece sufficiently large to cover the offending LED
3. Place the tape over the LED
4. Repeat from step 2 until the LED is sufficiently dim.

Part 2 - Blocking

1. Go to the hardware shop and pick up a nice hammer drill and a drill bit of similar diameter as the LED

2. Turn the device with the LED off.
3. Drill the shit out of the LED*

*Or, drill the shit out of your eyes. Therefore, removing the need to block any other blue LEDS that you may have on your "look at me I am a techy" gadgets.

Re:Fat cat

[Xugumad]

In particular, if he bought cheaper gadgets, maybe they'd have green or red LEDs...

I wholeheartedly agree

[otter42]

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.

good to see /. delivering well targetted ads...

[soliptic]

... I saw this story accompanied by a ThinkGeek add for a "cool new LED clock" - blue, naturally :)

Blue light... so shiny...

[yalla]

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 [dvdcheck.de] big mouth with needle-sharp fangs coming out of the cabinet snatching for my head :-)

Yalla.

This line got me...

[DissidentHere]

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?

Re:I'm with him

[robotoverflow]

It's one thing to be able to cover up your own LEDs but try going to a LAN Party where no-one else thinks that blue HDD activity floodlights are a stupid idea.

Now that the damn things are all the rage the only game I ever get to play is Disk Activity 3: Arena

Re:the LEDs are ok...

[mog007]

but I swear nothing could make those things less blinding in most of these huge, high-sitting SUVs.

I have a hammer that disagrees with that statement.

Re:Shuttle SB75G2

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, have you lost your coolness because of a colour? That sucks dude, I mean forget AIDS and wars and shit, you don't have a blue LED coolness thing now, that is hella worse man.....

Re:I'm with him

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I'm with you. I bought a computer case which nowhere did I get an indication that the LED was blue. I would have probably bought it anyway unless I knew how tight the beam focus was. The damn thing was bright enough to shine through a layer of diffuse celophane tape AND two layers of masking tape. It would still project a visible beam onto the opposite wall.

Re:They're so cool.

[TheRaven64]

Apple kit comes with white LEDs. The worst one is the one on the front which indicates the machine is in standby mode by gently pulsating. The problem with this is that it's really hypnotic. First the machine goes into standby mode, then my brain does...

Re:I wholeheartedly agree

[Have Blue]

Try chopping up all the brooms with an axe. Just be sure to never, ever tell them to fetch water.

3 years ago, it was the opposite..

[Anonymous Coward]

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..

Re:Well... blue LEDs are okay...

[kasperd]

I'm sure I could imagine a beowulf cluster of those

Actually when I'm sitting next to our beowulf cluster I can see sixteen blue leds on the raid box connected to our fileserver running Linux. And can you imagine how distracting that can be? But hey, it looks cool.

Re:What a wiener.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds to me like someone's got a case of the (pre-)Mondays. ;)

"When you really don't feel like starting the week, does anyone ever say, "sounds like a case of the mondays"?"

"Naw man, shit, naw i believe you'd get your ass kicked sayin somethin like that..."

Re:Why

[jandrese]

6. Throw it away when you realize you broke it.

Ok, most of this time this isn't a problem, but have you see how small some of those LEDs are these days? Most people are inexperianced with their iron and are not willing to drop molten metal inside of their several thousand dollar home theature equipment.

Re:Well... blue LEDs are okay...

[A_Non_Moose]

But do they run linux?

Technically, Yes...or is it the other way around? [pogolinux.com]

I've got one of pogolinux's Storageware devices, running RH AS3 (versus the RH9 it came "with"...got the disks 3 days after the device. No matter, now).

Anyway, this thing has 32 of those *BRIGHT* blue led's...16 are constatntly lit when the drives are powered, and the other 16 during access. With the drives all in raid 5, you can imagine the flashing.

Also imagine the noise of 4 (guess on my part so far) 5K to 7.2Krpm fans going off. Yikes.

The only other colors are a green led for network access, and IIRC amber for power.

What still amuses me about this box is that the power and reset buttons are the size of #2 pencil leads. I suppose it reduces accidental resets/power offs, but the buttons being smaller then all the led's is quite funny/amusing.

Re:Why

[Lehk228]

ever hook up a stock LED to the power pack taken out of a polaroid camera.... LED went bright, then dim, then exploded hitting me above the eye with a chunk of plastic...

Thanks, now I'm depressed

[John Jorsett]

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.

Re:Why

[irokitt]

6. ....
7. Profit!

Silly Blue LEDs on Rusted Out Honda Accords

[BigBlockMopar]

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 [sae.org], 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.)

Re:Why

[npsimons]

Blue LEDs typically have a forward voltage greater than standard red/green/yellow ones. If you don't use a correctly-calculated series resistor, a lower voltage LED will receive more current and become a super-high-tech Black LED shortly after powerup.

Ah, yes, the old "all diodes are light emitting . . . once" rule of electronics.

Solution

[Cynikal]

This product [duct-tape.com] might be the solution you need

Re:Fat cat

[acariquara]

I agree. He's just a whiner. If it bothers him that much he could fix it with electrical tape.

Then again, what can't be fixed with all-powerful duct/gaffer/electrical tape?

Re:the LEDs are ok...

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

but I swear nothing could make those things less blinding in most of these huge, high-sitting SUVs.

I have a hammer that disagrees with that statement.

It's OK if your tools are talking to you, just please remember that you don't HAVE TO do everything that they say.

Blue LED almost blinded me :P

[krumms]

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.