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Cubicle Privacy

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-was-told-i-could-listen-to-my-radio-at-a-reasonable-volume dept.

DarthDilbert writes "The NYTimes has a story about a noise canceling box for nosy cubicle neighbors. " Still no protection from mind readers. They know stuff.

11 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Linky by MoonBuggy · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/30/technology/30hil lis.html?ex=1275105600&en=4a1c68b85a47519f&ei=5090 &partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

    Reg free link.

  2. If they're anything like bose headphones... by heatdeath · · Score: 2, Informative

    They won't help at all. I've never really been able to tell much of a difference between the headphones being on and off. It just sounds like there's an extra humming sound when they're on.

    --
    I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
    1. Re:If they're anything like bose headphones... by 0WaitState · · Score: 2, Informative

      I've had good luck with the Philips brand noise attenuation headphones--not perfect, but they take the edge off. Last time I was on a plane overnight I actually got deep sleep using them.

      --

      Remain calm! All is well!
  3. Re:Shame on you, editors by name773 · · Score: 3, Informative

    try improvising a duct system to reduce the necessary number of fans but still keep a good airflow pattern. it worked for me

  4. mind readers by flyingsquid · · Score: 2, Informative
    Still no protection from mind readers. They know stuff.

    In Philip K. Dick's _Ubik_ there's a company that sells the talents- or rather antitalents- of people who can block telepaths. The idea is that if a telepath or precog has been hired to monitor you or interfere with you, you hire the company to bring in an "inertial" who will negate the psi, and so eventually that person leaves.

    A good introduction to Philip K. Dick in my opinion. It's well written and plotted (unlike a lot of his stuff) and a mind-fuck, but not the complete and total mindfuck of _The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch_- which is great, but starting with that one would be really starting at the deep end of the pool.

  5. Fan noise by umofomia · · Score: 2, Informative
    On another note, can I get one that fits in my PC and shuts up the godawful fan noise?
    Indeed there is... another NYTimes article for you:
    http://tech2.nytimes.com/mem/technology/techreview .html?res=9506EFDA123EF934A15756C0A9629C8B63
  6. Not Noise Canceling! by Reverberant · · Score: 5, Informative

    The "Babble" technology that is discussed in this article is not noise canceling technology! Noise canceling technology uses soundwaves that are 180 degrees out of phase with the original waveform to cancel out the original soundwave.

    From the article description, Babble simply 'scrambles' sound waves so that speech is unintelligible, but it doesn't actually make anything quieter (in fact, based on the description it probably increases the ambient noise, just like masking systems). This device is used for speech privacy (which can be useful for meeting HIPAA regs for example), not sound cancellation.

    If you want to make things quieter, you'll have to resort to earplugs, sound-canceling headphones, or floor-ceiling partitions (ie walls).

  7. Silence or more noise? by ericandrade · · Score: 3, Informative

    Is it noise cancelling? It seems that it just adds sampled sound to mask conversations.

    "sound processor and several speakers that multiply and scramble voices that come within its range"

    Horrible article. No details on how the product works or what it does.

    And for the map thingy... It's been done some time ago (2002).
    Here's a movie (25 MB) from Sony research (Jun Rekimoto, SmartSkin: An Infrastructure for Freehand Manipulation on Interactive Surfaces):

    http://www.csl.sony.co.jp/person/rekimoto/movies/c hi02-2-mp2.mpg

    Use VLC to view the movie.
    http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

    Movie taken from
    http://www.csl.sony.co.jp/person/rekimoto/smartski n/

  8. Re:Shame on you, editors by Txiasaeia · · Score: 3, Informative
    Last week I bought the following components:

    -Athlon 64 3200+ Venice
    -2x512 Corsair PC3200 2.5 CAS DDR
    -Leadtek 6600GT Extreme
    -Seasonic SS-380 power supply
    -MSI RS480R2-IL mATX motherboard
    -Pioneer DVR-109 Dual Layer DVD Burner
    -Thermalright XP-90 w/Nexus 92mm fan (CPU)

    ...and kept my Western Digital Caviar 80GB IDE HD. Guess what? The hard drive is incredibly noisy, while the rest of the system is virtually silent. My point is that it's very easy to assemble an x86 system that's virtually quiet; all you need to do is a bit of research. My other point is not to go all out on a gaming system and cheap out on the hard drive, or you'll be kicking yourself for months.

    --
    Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
  9. Re:Shame on you, editors by dohcvtec · · Score: 2, Informative

    No fans

    Yes fans - there is a variable speed fan that slowly spins up under heavy processor utilization and slowly spins down when processor utilization goes down. However, even at full speed the fan isn't too intrusive.

    --
    -- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
  10. Re:Cubicle doors for privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Try steelcase:

    http://www.steelcase.com/na/products.aspx?f=12247#