A "Bill of Lights" to Restrict LEDs on Gadgets?

PetManimal writes "Mike Elgan has had it with useless lights on gadgets and computers. He singles out the Palm Treo and the Dell XPS gaming laptops as being particularly bad with the use of unnecessary lights, and also cites the plethora of LEDs on desktop PCs and peripherals. 'My PC and other computing equipment make my office look like a jet cockpit. I have two LCD monitors, each of which has two indicator lights that flash even when the PC is turned off. The attached sound control has a light on it. My keyboard has multiple lights. The power cord has lights, the printer has lights, and the power button is illuminated. My cable modem and Linksys router flash like crazy all the time. Together, these useless lights create a visual cacophony of blinking, multicolored lights that make me feel like I'm taking part in a NASA stress test for astronaut candidates.' Elgan calls on manufacturers to respect his 'Gadget Bill of Lights' to restrict the use of nag lights and allow users to turn them off. He also says the industry should pay more attention to industrial design when creating new products."

Re:And I love it!

[Anonymous Coward]

try this out: http://www.nullsoft.com/free/nbeep/ [nullsoft.com]

Re:Wow...

[$RANDOMLUSER]

That's so you can find the power switch in the dark, and so it doesn't distract you while watching TV.

Re:I kinda like the lights

[EggyToast]

ah, very true! I do like just glancing at the router to see that everything is going well (and to quickly figure out if it's not).

Re:Wow...

[OrangeTide]

You wasted more electricity for that remark (the routers and servers along the way had to use electricity for that message) than all the LEDs in your home. a bright LED is like 50mW. You'd need 20 bright ones, or 50 normal ones on all at the same time to make a Watt.

Treo Solution

[blackmonday]

If you have a treo, download LedOff [treoware.com]. It's donationware, and solves the LED annoyance.

Useless?

[UnknowingFool]

My cable modem and Linksys router flash like crazy all the time. Together, these useless lights create a visual cacophony of blinking, multicolored lights that make me feel like I'm taking part in a NASA stress test for astronaut candidates.

While some LEDs might be superfluous, the lights on my cable modem and router mean something. If they were to go off, it means something is seriously wrong with the network and not my computer.

Re:Oh, cut the bleeding heart crap, will ya?

[fondacio]

Looks like nobody caught the reference, even though I would've posted if it wasn't already there - it was the first thing that came to mind when reading this. Anyway, it's a quote from Airplane II [imdb.com], uttered by, yes, William Shatner. Kind of gives away your age...

Re:Someone enlighten this man

[d3ac0n]

Or in another room in his house. I'm always amazed by people that INSIST on having these devices sitting out on top of a desk. Don't they have more important things they could be doing with their desk space than clogging it with devices they almost never interact directly with? I keep my cable-modem and router in my basement next to my server. There is just no good reason (other than a physical handicap) to keep these things out in plain view. Lock 'em in the closet and have done with it!

As far as his Dell XPS PC goes, like many in his comments section pointed out, the guy just needs to go get a Mac. No irritating blinking lights and the keyboard is backlit with a light sensor. What a maroon!

Re:Sharpie

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Apple only has one light per device though. The fade-in-out is a lot better than the strobe beacon that I have on my Windows computers.

Modern cockpits don't have many lights.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the "black cockpit" concept - lights only come on when there is a need to draw the pilot's attention to a specific button/switch/lever. It's much easier to spot a single light on a dark panel than a missing light on a panel full of lights.

Except on the really bright ones.

[Kadin2048]

I've found out by experience though, that electrical tape isn't 100% opaque; put a bright enough LED under it, and stretch the tape a bit (as you might if you're putting it tightly over an protruding LED), and it'll shine through.

For really bright lights, a small square of aluminum foil works well, and is absolutely opaque.

Re:Useless?

[KlomDark]

They are stupid. How about the reverse - "If this light is on, then something is broken. If all lights are off, then everything's fine."

Worse is the damn blue power light on my computer that is brighter than hell and blinks incessantly when in Standby mode. Right next to my bed. Made it worthless. I changed the operation of the sleep button to make it hibernate instead of stand by. Hibernate fully shuts off the dam blinkenlight.

Re:Wow...

[mobby_6kl]

Now, while all the routers would probably remain turned on had Turn-X Alphonse decided not to post, I'm sure the routers use more energy when there's more traffic they need to take care of. Not to mention all the electrons his network card and/or modem had to send across the wires to get to those routers.

Re:How to dim the led instead of block it complete

[Lorkki]

My personal remedy is black electric tape, which masks enough that you just see a faint spot of colour while the light is on. Works wonders for those really bright and distracting blue LEDs that seem to be all the rage these days.

Re:Except on the really bright ones.

[PriceIke]

I'm less concerned with all the LEDs they're putting in stuff than I am about all the fucking cameras they're putting in stuff. Personally, I like the little lights .. they're cool. But I've got a nice little black square taped over the camera that's built into my new MacBook Pro.

Re:Except on the really bright ones.

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Why? If the little green light's not on, the camera's not on. It's in the firmware, and would require your entire computer to be pwnt 10 times over for anyone to be able to disable the little green light (if it's even possible). I have a MBP and used to be the kind of guy who turned Webcams around when I wasn't using them, but as long as the green light's not on, I can fap in privacy.

Re:I, for one, enjoy them

[Archiviste]

So relaxen, und vatchen das blinkenlights.

Ah yes, the blinkenlights [catb.org]...

Re:Except on the really bright ones.

[Falladir]

I know you didn't mean that seriously, but I think you might be surprised how thin the foil has to be for light to pass through it. The quantity of interest is "skin depth". You can calculate it with the formula here [harvard.edu], which uses several constants that are pretty easy to find:

frequency of visible light: 600 THz (source) [wikipedia.org]
conductivity of aluminum: 3.8 x 10^7 siemens per meter (source) [wikipedia.org]
permeability of free space: 1.3 x 10^(-7) weber per ampere meter (source) [wolfram.com]

I calculated that the skin depth of aluminum is 8 nanometers. This means that the thickness of aluminum needed to stop 99.9% of the light is one 400,000th of an inch. For comparison, this is 10,000 times thinner than the thinnest aluminum foil available from McMaster-Carr [mcmaster.com] (it's a company that sells materials for scientific research, among other things). Since the atomic radius of aluminum is 125 pm, this foil would be only 250 atoms thick, and would still block 99.9% of the light.

By the way, if you've never used it, you should check out Google's calculator. It handles units for you, so it makes calculations like this really fast.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mike Elgan, I'm going to put this as nicely as I can.

Shut the fuck up.

That was the stupidest thing I have read all day, and it has been a long day.

Real computer guys appreciate ... no, we love LEDs on our electronic gizmos. Before you go off on a second rate rant suggesting you know what 'We The People' want, you might want to consult some real people first. The lights are there for a reason, and I'm sure that any one of the 'real people' that deal with this hardware on a fairly regular basis would be happy to explain it to you. Remind them that you are a professional journalist, and they will explain it using little words talking very slowly.

For what it is worth, within arms reach at my desk there are 92 different LEDs, some blinking, some on, some off - and every one of them has a very, very important role in indicating system status.

You need to shut the hell up before someone in the industry takes you seriously and does something incredibly stupid, like reduce the number of LEDs in my hardware.

Sincerely,
We The People

Re:Except on the really bright ones.

[stephanruby]

"Why? If the little green light's not on, the camera's not on. "

Yeah, that's what the GM onstar customers thought too -- with their emergency in-car Microphones. If the onstar microphone is off, it should be off. Right? It turns out that the manufacturer and the FBI had very different off-label usage ideas for that device.

The bottom line is that the government thinks it has the right to spy on you, and it thinks it can demand that your ISP and the other companies doing business with you that they spy on you as well (without informing you). The ultimate wet dream for politicians and police enforcement is to have a google-like tool that would give them up-to-date information on all its citizens, coupled with video-feeds into all the bedrooms.

Right now, lowly police peons can already run background checks, credit checks, medical/medication checks, on any women they're dating (without supervision and without permission whatsoever). It won't be long before they take it to the next level, and have access to the same tools the FBI and Homeland Security have.

Re:Wow...

[stonedcat]

Ahhh.... that's what it would have been like had I invented the Fing-Longer. A man can dream can't he?