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The Mind of an Inventor

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the computer-scrapyard-was-my-preschool dept.

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.

7 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Distracting for yourself by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It would be really bad to start hearing yourself LCD Display with your spewing random comments out whilst your trying to speak.
    It could mean the difference Also, in 2020, everyone on between winning a contract or losing a customer.

    I really couldn't put up with it for long sci-fi show that was from the creator of Buffy before I smashed it up.

    --
    liqbase :: faster than paper
  2. What good is this? by __aalnoi707 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why Is this Useful. Where at work, its noisy enough as it Is, why add more to it. Plus when did Privicay become an Issue at the job. I can see this to twart coorproate espinoge but really. I have headaches enough at work listening to stupid people I dont need any more of It

  3. Inventor? Or Mad Scientist? by aussie_a · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This guy seems like more of a Mad Scientist than an inventor to me.

  4. Meaningless Snipits by Goody · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What if the "meaningless snipits" just happen to have the words "fire", "bankruptcy", "layoffs", "harassment", "pregnant" or "terror" in them?

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    Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
    1. Re:Meaningless Snipits by menkhaura · · Score: 1, Insightful

      And coincidently you wouldn't show up at work the next morning...

      --
      Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
      Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
  5. Active noise cancellation anyone?? by Plammox · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Instead of contributing to the overall noise level, why not research an effective noise cancellation solution? I realize that they're not completely effective, but they ought to be able to muffle the noise somewhat to the point that your noise blends in with the background noise of a thousands mouse clicks and Windows ding sounds.

  6. It wouldn't have worked. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The Russians had so may bugging devices in the US embassy they could have used the difference in mike locations to filter by position of sound source.