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The Mind of an Inventor
kipb writes to tell us that Newsweek has an interesting article about Danny Hillis and the company he co-founded called Applied Minds. One of the featured devices that Hillis talks about is a device designed to increase the amount of privacy one has working in the average corporate cubicle. "Babble" is about the size of a paperback book and plugs into the phone with two external speakers that you place on the top of your cube. While holding a normal conversation on the phone Babble plays back random meaningless snipits of your own voice which makes your conversation practically unintelligible to people as close as 4 feet away.
It would also make calls unintelligible within 4 feet.
Meanwhile Johnson in the next cube has been interpreting the voices as instructions to bring an AK-47 to work and begin the Day of Reckoning.
So the two morons I am forced to sit next to at work who never get off the phone can broadcast MORE OF THEIR VOICE TO ME.
I'd break down crying if I weren't already burnt out inside.
How is this a good invention?
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
I wonder how much user testing they have tried with this product. It sounds like the helpful MS Office paperclip, or automatic spell checking as you go along - great ideas in theory but intrinsically flawed in practice.
Privacy or not, I cannot think of anything more irritating, to myself, colleagues and the person I'm talking to on the phone, than meaningless drivel coming out of my speakers in my voice.
I can hear it now:
Me: Can you confirm that order please?
Stationers: Two printer cartridges, twelve reams of paper, and one partridge in a pear tree.
How about buying a few thousand and hiding them at strategic locations in the meeting places of the US Congress and other world parliaments? Of course it is always possible that nobody would notice since most of what comes out of those places is practically unintelligible anyway.....
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
My cubicle neighbor's nonsense is annoying enough, and now this device will make me suffer his inate monologues full-time?
How about a device that will play "sh!" everytime his voice is recognized (think Austin Powers 2).
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I can do this already after a fifth of gin
=)
While holding a normal conversation on the phone Babble plays back random meaningless snipits of your own voice which makes your conversation practically unintelligible to people as close as 4 feet away.
Yes, I believe this device could be a change catalyst which would allow us to re-engineer our business case and leverage best-practice synergies to proactively actualise our bottom-line.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Does anyone else think it'd be fun to hide this in the conference room hooked up to the speakerphone?
And coincidently you wouldn't show up at work the next morning... ... which is why you make the call from your boss' phone. :)
Yes, I believe this device could be a change catalyst which would allow us to re-engineer our business case and leverage best-practice synergies to proactively actualise our bottom-line.
Sounds like ozmanjusri got a Babble plugin for Slashdot.
"and looking to work on really interesting problems. ... Bonus points if you're a hacker (in the traditional sense). "
Do you have any projects involving boring problems? That's what I'm looking for. Also, I have a non-traditional hacker friend who wonders if you are flexible?
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
layoff the harrasement fire, a pregnant terror is a bankruptcy of ammunition
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I have one better. VNC to a coworker's machine, and start a Rap/Hip Hop/Death Metal play list on his/her workstation with the volume cranked all the way up. Pick a different victim for each phone call, and people will too busy playing "whack-a-mole" with whatever is blasting the din to listen in on your conversation.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming