Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!vaxine!wjh12!genrad!decvax!cca!ima!inmet!james From: james@inmet.UUCP Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Subject: Re: Orphaned Response - (nf) Message-ID: <1485@inmet.UUCP> Date: Tue, 5-Jun-84 00:17:30 EDT Article-I.D.: inmet.1485 Posted: Tue Jun 5 00:17:30 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 7-Jun-84 00:45:54 EDT Lines: 25 #R:sri-arpa:-69600:inmet:10300019:177600:1062 inmet!james Jun 3 23:09:00 1984 Re: flashing lights. This is one of my pet peeves. It seems someone somewhere high in the computer marketing cartel subscribed to by all manufacturers decided that flashing lights are bad for us. Why????? The only reason I can think of to eliminate them is cost, but how much would it add to the cost of our IBM 3083 or VAX 780 to add a panel of lights- it would be trivial. With LED's nowadays you don't even incure any maintenance cost. Balance this with three important benefits: 1- It gives us techies the usually illusory feeling we know what the computer is doing. 2- It gives the corporate types who actually pay the bills something to show visiting firemen and relatives on the obligatory tour of the computer room. I always feel a little embarassed when I show the President a large grey freezer chest, and say: "Yup, that's what we just spent X million dollars on." 3- Occasionly they actually really help debug flaky systems. james triplett (...ima!inmet!james)