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Cubicle Privacy
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.
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The article is more of a 2-page description of the company, with a one-paragraph sidenote about the product.
On another note, can I get one that fits in my PC and shuts up the godawful fan noise?
My other Sig is
And here comes lip-reading tech to bypass the noise-canceling box: http://www.intel.com/research/mrl/research/avcsr.h tm
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/30/technology/30hil lis.html?ex=1275105600&en=4a1c68b85a47519f&ei=5090 &partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Reg free link.
I call them right cross and uppercut
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven, I told bill that if Sandra is going to listen to her headphones while she's filing then I should be able to listen to the radio while I'm collating so I don't see why I should have to turn down the radio because I enjoy listening at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven.
This is the last straw, I'm going to burn down the building!
Cubicle farms suck. There's no avoiding it--they are soul and productivity killers.
Attention corporate masters! What employees want are OFFICES with DOORS THAT CLOSE and WINDOWS THAT OPEN. Yes, on a nice spring/fall day I wouldn't mind being able to open the window.
Full disclosure; I got an office when I threatened my employer with working from home four days a week due to the clueless fuckwits who think everyone in a 50 foot radius needs to hear their cell phone ring.
Remain calm! All is well!
"Can you hear me Chief?"
"What did you say?"
"Chief, do you hear me?!"
"What are you saying, Smart?!"
There. I feel better gettin that out of my system.
My cubicle is my own little world and I feel free to do whatever in it. If someone asks me to be a little less loud, I judge their request on how often they are similarly noisy. The more noisy and more often, the less attention I pay to their complaints. If I have to hear them screaming at technicians in the field, they have to hear me every so often getting a call on my cellphone.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
A few weeks ago, some consultants come up and sit with the guy across the asle from me. One of the guys kept peering over at my screen, reading what I was typing. Not only is it rude, but its also a security violation.
So i start up our internal IM client, and start chatting with a friend of mine. I start describing in great detail how this guy is peeing over my shoulder, how rude it is, and then I start going into how much this man weighs, how his beard looks like a birds nest, how ugly he is, whatnot.
The guy starts giving me REALLY mean looks.
To which I type out "Hi Mr Nosey, don't like what I am typing? Don't READ MY SCREEN!"
He turned around in a huff, and would not say a civil word to me that day.
Actually, I was wondering if I could get one those unscramble thingies so that I could figure out what my PHB was saying. Or do I really want to know?
Actually, mind-reading protection has been around for quite a while now.
I wad visiting a friend at his office once and I saw that his cube farm had actual sliding doors on their cubes, that can be closed to give people some privacy. The doors clamped onto the side of the walls and looked like the beveled, frosted glass you see on a shower door. You could still see the silhouette of someone in the cube, but it gave the occupant some sense of privacy. You could have the doors open when you don't mind people coming into your office to ask questions and slide it closed when you're busy and don't want to be disturbed. Ever since I saw that I've been looking around in google trying to find them so I can tell my boss that's what we need. So far I haven't been able to find them. All I've ever turned up in my searches are cheesy things like these which aren't nearly as nice. Has anyone else seen those nice sliding doors for cubicles and know who makes them?
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).
Musings I had this last Friday afternoon, stuck in Yet Another Traffic Jam:
I have 95-99% of what I need to be productive with my Thinkpad and my PKI token.
Yet I haul my ass out of bed every day, put on office togs and get in the car. I drive 60 miles (that's about 2.5 gallons of gasoline) and walk into a cubicle farm, sit down, and plug my laptop into a docking station.
60 miles away, in my home office (which has a door and a view, mind you) sits another docking station which can do exactly the same thing.
After 8 hours, I get up, pack up the laptop, and drive 60 miles back home.
Now THAT's insanity.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow