In the office kitchen, the filtered water tap throbs with blue light.
You're perfectly welcome to comment why a business located in Santa Clara county of California even needs a complex multi-phase filtration system in addition to the federal, state and municipally inspected and licensed one that treats all the water in the county, but that's beside the point right now.
The faucet throbs blue.
While it took me a bit to notice this behavior amidst the flood of fluorescent and halogen lights, i couldn't help but wonder just how annoying that would be if i had it at home. That got me thinking about all the various idiot LEDs that we seem to deal with. My monitor has one. A little green LED to let me know that the reason the huge screen is glowing and full of animated text and graphics is because it's powered on. Thank you little 3V LED, i doubt i could have figured that out for myself. My laptop has several including a large blue one to let me know the battery state (Ok, i can kinda understand that one), but does it really need to have another LED indicating that the power is on? One can presume that the blinking wireless status indicator or disk activity lights would probably suffice. That or the green LED indicating that i'm running in "Power Saver" mode. i'll let the irony of that settle in for a second.
There's a small constellation of LEDs in my home indicating that the GPF outlets haven't tripped, my UPS's are turned on, and i swear at least one to indicate that the power LED indicator is working.
Do we really need all these damn lights?
Yes, i know i could solve my problems with a roll of black electrical tape, but it'd be nicer to just have the option to not display that information. Chances are, you're only really going to need to know once or twice, probably within minutes of first plugging the device in. LEDs aren't providing you information, they're being Blinkenlites trying to convince you that "Yes, see how modern and high tech i am? i am covered in Blinkenlites!! i am the most modern and high tech doorstop you've ever seen!"
Oh, and that UPS with the lights to indicate it's on? It also has a way to let you know when it's off. It beeps, loudly, because that's the state you want to pay more attention to.
