Most ISP terms of service allow them to do this already. If they actually tried to enforce it, they wouldn't have any customers left.
That's a fair comment, but I don't think it's true. Given the near-monopoloy position of ISPs, the customer either can't leave, or would think long and hard before doing so.
The real issue I think is that it will cost the ISP real money (in terms of added call volume to their support weenies). If they allow their infected customers to pollute the internet, then the cost is passed down the line to those who are forced to deal with the problem. That makes it someone else's problem.
Perfectly reasonable strategy, of course, and one that's based in human nature. Good samaritans aren't frightened of "getting involved", but rather prefer someone else to do what needs to be done so that "someone else" shoulders any and all burdens or costs.
The comments system is HTML-based, so unless you have "plain text" set for your comments, any matching set of angle brackets are going to get interpreted as HTML.
Not true.
Slashdot will interpet HTML markup correctly when "Plain Old Text" is set. I guess that's a secret given the relatively frequent appearance of email-style delimiters used for quoted text and similarly nutty things people do.
While there may be exceptions to the above (bullets, maybe), I don't see any reason why anyone should use anything else. Most all badly formed posts are from people using the "HTML Formatted" setting. And given the sheer number, I'd guess the HTML option must be some default that people use without thinking.
Patient is an incorrigible troll. Recommend medevac to an appropriate jurisdiction and performance of lobotomy.
I watched a documentary some time back on the problems associated with the dire shortage of primary care physicians in the US. One of the more interesting conclusions it offered was that patients who see a primary care physician on a regular basis are both healthier (frequent visits encourage healthy lifestyles), and cheaper (preventative measures are invariably cheapier than after-the-fact treatments). The doctors, for their part, noted that often their patients just wanted to talk with someone about their problems and felt better after having done so.
If you're a doctor, be kind to the trolls. If there's no obvious or measurable benefit for the patient, the placebo effect should more than make up for things.
Thankfully, due to timezones... possibly (although I'm not sure) tomorrow can also be yesterday.
I believe that phenomenon is often expressed as "same shit, different day".
This is also the case when abusing drugs, which is not surprising, considering that the guy who invented timezones was probably doing said abuse.
Is that the guy who invented longitude, or the guy who made the earth into a sphere and decided it should rotate around the sun? Either way, I wouldn't get too worked about it. Just do what I do and rely on your sundial. The young whippersnappers among us can opt for the new digital versions.
Clicking Torpedo and then the enemy's battleship on a screen is much more efficient than typing "attack --weapon torpedo --count 2 --coords 42394799879x3179478912" and then waiting for the result in "tail -f/var/log/messages"
More likely it was done using a wizard invoked as Start > Programs > Ministry of Defense > Utilities > Torpedo Enterprise Edition 1.37 > Torpedo Launch. MoD Power Users would, of course, just do Start > Run > TLaunch.EXE to open the graphical window before holding the mouse on the spin box to increment the coordinate numbers to the correct values, and then selecting File > Actions > Torpedo > Launch and clicking "Yes" on the "Are You Sure?" dialog boxes. SuperKeen Techsavy Power Users will shun the above methods and opt for something more Unix-like:
Windows Powershell Copyright (C) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reservered.
$ C:\Documents and Settings\Midshipman R. Kelly>Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_PingStatus -Filter "Address='42394799879x3179478912'" -SubmarineName '*' | Select-Object -Property Address,ResponseTime,StatusCode 64 bytes from Russian_Sub: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=109 ms 64 bytes from Russian_Sub: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=38 ms 64 bytes from Russian_Sub: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0 ms ^C $ C:\Documents and Settings\Midshipman R. Kelly>(Get-WmiObject -List -Foes . | Where-Object -FilterScript {$_.Name -eq "Russian_Sub"}).InvokeMethod("Torpedo",("attack","weapon torpedo",2,"42394799879","3179478912")) The requested service has not started is not running. More help is by typing NET HELPMSG 38000357699. $ C:\Documents and Settings\Midshipman R. Kelly>Restart-Service -displayname "Ministry of Defense Torpedo Service" Ministry of Defense Torpedo Service is starting. $ C:\Documents and Settings\Midshipman R. Kelly>(Get-WmiObject -List -Foes . | Where-Object -FilterScript {$_.Name -eq "Russian_Sub"}).InvokeMethod("Torpedo",("attack","weapon torpedo",2,"42394799879","3179478912")) System Error 1058 has occured. The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled, it has no enabled devices associated with it, or you lack sufficient administrative rights. $ C:\Documents and Settings\Midshipman R. Kelly>get-eventlog application -newest 10 | format-list | more
That was my first thought, although that may not be entirely accurate. As for dshield, noticed the other day there's what appears to be a new link on the Spamhaus page that reads
Consumer Alerts Is your PC infected or part of a "botnet"? Check it Here
Humorous aspects aside, it links to some sort of dshield copy-cat setup run by mynetwachman.com. Never heard of them personally, but the more the merrier. A community-based effort to solve a community-wide problem is sound in principle, and doubtless better than clamoring for new laws or regulations which typically brings unanticipated consequences to the mix.
That's from someone who subscribes to multiple newspapers, and whose idea of a fun afternoon is re-reading articles in The New Yorker and Harper's Magazine. Assuming there's nothing on CSPAN, of course.
I have a novel idea: supervise your kids when they are watching TV or using the internet.
I don't think you can lump TV and the intarwebs into a single category. TV (and TV stations) has to have rules that enforce some sort of community standards. I don't think even the most idealogical Slashdotter would agree that allowing sexual or violent programming during prime-time is a wise idea for family households. You can argue what those standard should be, of course, but that's a different matter.
The internet, on the other hand, is a different beast, so different rules have to apply.
I'd agree that parental supervision is the best approach. However, here we have another problem. Most families need 2 wage earners just to get by. That has been a fact of life for some time. So without the time to do what the stay-at-home mom did in past generations, and a combination of over-worked and over-stressed lifestyles, parents find it anywhere between difficult and impossible to supervise a child properly. It shouldn't be any surprise that out of this is the tendency to pass those responsibilities to the rest of society. That means more laws and more government involvement.
I'm sympathetic with advocating parental responsibility, and society might be better off with frequent clue-bat reminders, but offering up that admonition as The Solution isn't helpful. At least no more helpful than telling women to leave the workforce to stay at home to make sure the kids are being raised properly.
Sony got arrogant and assumed what ever they'd make, people would eat up.
It's just as true that Samsung got better.
Years ago, I worked at a Korean company (I was the token Caucasian). Samsung for me was just some Korean manufacturer of cheap knock-offs of high quality (a redundant characterisation at the time) Japanese consumer electronics. The company I worked for was making cheap knock-offs of American products so you could say I had a unique perspective on the subject. What was surprising (or not) was that my co-workers preferred Japanese brands, and Sony in particular.
Either way, it was an interesting place to work for a number of reasons. Every Friday the entire company would sit down together for a communal 2-hour lunch. Plenty of fish heads and kimchi, of course, but everything else was first-rate. Hard to imagine that being done in an American corporation.
The US government regards everybody except Canadians as potential illegal immigrants.
Err, I think you mean the general population of the US (and possibly Lou Dobbs), not the US government.
Take that from a Canadian who has been refused entry numerous times (on foot, by car, taxi, plane, etc.), and who has spent a shitload of money in lawyer fees and years of wait time trying to finalise a fairly ordinary green card application. Hell, I know people who went back to Canada for a visit and had their green cards temporarily "revoked" at the border based on vague and unfounded suspicions of irregularities.
a fifty-year-old is either (a) still in love with the same stuff she saw when she was five, or (b) watching on a much more complicated level, and requires far more meaning and technical skill in their content.
Dear Sir,
I wish to complain in the strongest possible terms about your use of the feminine pronoun "she". Some of my best male friends are 50, and only a few of them are transvestites.
Yours faithfully, Brigadier Sir Charles Arthur Strong (Mrs.) P.S. That my mother made me wear ribbons in my hair when I was five is nobody's business.
There's a reason why colonizing land you occupy is forbidden by the 4th Geneva convention, it's because it amounts to ethnic cleansing.
Ethnic cleansing is only one of three choices, and the least attractive. The other two are establishing a single state (and giving the Palestinians the right to vote), and apartheid (or, if your prefer gentler language, establishing permanent ghettos).
The first won't happen because the Israelis know full well that in a democracy, the majority Palestians would vote them all out of power. That leaves the second, which is just as good given that the settlement activity accelerating since the end of 1967 war has already created de facto ghettos. The irony with the ghetto strategy, of course, is that the Palestinians' economic condition is nearly the same as black Africa, and their daily hardships are not unlike those suffered by South Africans once upon a time not too long ago. For those who don't remember, the South African "terrorists" eventually took power.
Israel lost the moral high ground long ago, so Israel is there for the Israelis to lose. That would happen sooner than later if the US would get out of the way, but given the decades-long monotony of public discourse on the subject ("Israel can do no wrong"), it's doubtful that the impetus for change will come from these shores.
LOL. Re-reading those transcripts was like hearing a good joke being re-told. The only thing that could have made that situation funnier would have been a city named Buttle.
You put the algea in large tubes (10 ft tall, 2 ft around) and continuously churn the water until the density of algea reaches your target harvest point. Then drain the water and process the agea.
Not dissimilar to how commercial farms raise the chickens we eat.;-)
While there's been no Disney movies produced to date that feature algae in starring or even cute supporting roles, it's not unthinkable that some group will incorporate the wildly-creative reasoning of the Life Begins in The Womb types, or those ideas advocated by the more extreme environmental groups, to raise objections to harvesting our single-cellular friends on a mass scale.
If that sounds absurd, consider PETA's new campaign to Save the Sea Kittens. Note that the site is neither a joke, nor a kids entertainment page.
Hrmph. No doubt you're old enough to be cognisant of this thing called history, but not old enough to grasp that your own view of it may be narrow. Modulo WTF "modern pop music" means, if anything.
In volatile market, only stable investment is porn!
A member of my family is a big name Hollywood director/producer. I asked him the other day how the economic downturn is affecting his industry. During the Depression the entertainment industry did fairly well, so I expected to hear things were fine.
Turns out I was wrong. Hollywood is hit as hard as everyone else. I'd expect the porn industry to be the same.
The lack of unabated growth in everything we do is not necessarily a sign of some impending doom.
It often is for publically traded companies.
If a company announces a 10% drop in earnings, you think the investors won't expect that to be made up by cost cutting (i.e., layoffs)? Management can't afford their share price to drop, so they're only too happy to accommodate.
What's more problematic is that investors demand ever-increasing numbers. If a company's performance is flat, investors are only too happy to take their money elsewhere.
That last point, incidentally, is one of the fundamental problems in the newspaper industry. Most newspapers have had (and continue to have) regular and respectable earnings. That's fine if the company is privately held, or owned and run by an enlightened and wealthy family, but it isn't good enough for Wall Street. Those newspapers that decided to go public have since discovered that painful truth.
So while you see no impending doom, others may. And if you don't think a drop of just a few points is no cause for worry, consider how you'd react if your boss decided to meet his budget by cutting your paycheck a few points every quarter and said, "No worries, mate. You're still employed and making money."
Yes, that would be entertaining -- but most unlikely. The sad truth is, Big Content is to Democrats as Big Oil is to Republicans.
Actually, the pertinent truth is that she is being sued, and if her lawyers are doing their jobs, they've advised her not to say anything publically that would jeapordise her case.
A jungle or other wild forest does. It is living in cultivated land (farmland or even managed forests) that requires an unnatural low amount of cognitive effort.
Excellent point.
I'd also add that humans, undoubtedly like all creatures, have the capacity to decide how much cognitive effort is required in a given context, and how that effort should be focused. It's possible, for example, (but hardly advisable) for a student to study while listening to music, and a dog, while gifted with a superiour sense of hearing, is perfectly capable of tuning out blaring music while being sensitive for the sounds of a cat's meow, another's dog bark, or someone saying dinner's ready.
The general point that unwanted or excessive stumuli is "tiring" is perfectly valid but that said, it sounds like the researchers have been reading too much Thoreau.
Slashdot Mirror
Most ISP terms of service allow them to do this already. If they actually tried to enforce it, they wouldn't have any customers left.
That's a fair comment, but I don't think it's true. Given the near-monopoloy position of ISPs, the customer either can't leave, or would think long and hard before doing so.
The real issue I think is that it will cost the ISP real money (in terms of added call volume to their support weenies). If they allow their infected customers to pollute the internet, then the cost is passed down the line to those who are forced to deal with the problem. That makes it someone else's problem.
Perfectly reasonable strategy, of course, and one that's based in human nature. Good samaritans aren't frightened of "getting involved", but rather prefer someone else to do what needs to be done so that "someone else" shoulders any and all burdens or costs.
The comments system is HTML-based, so unless you have "plain text" set for your comments, any matching set of angle brackets are going to get interpreted as HTML.
Not true.
Slashdot will interpet HTML markup correctly when "Plain Old Text" is set. I guess that's a secret given the relatively frequent appearance of email-style delimiters used for quoted text and similarly nutty things people do.
While there may be exceptions to the above (bullets, maybe), I don't see any reason why anyone should use anything else. Most all badly formed posts are from people using the "HTML Formatted" setting. And given the sheer number, I'd guess the HTML option must be some default that people use without thinking.
Patient is an incorrigible troll. Recommend medevac to an appropriate jurisdiction and performance of lobotomy.
I watched a documentary some time back on the problems associated with the dire shortage of primary care physicians in the US. One of the more interesting conclusions it offered was that patients who see a primary care physician on a regular basis are both healthier (frequent visits encourage healthy lifestyles), and cheaper (preventative measures are invariably cheapier than after-the-fact treatments). The doctors, for their part, noted that often their patients just wanted to talk with someone about their problems and felt better after having done so.
If you're a doctor, be kind to the trolls. If there's no obvious or measurable benefit for the patient, the placebo effect should more than make up for things.
Or perhaps it's buying nVidia cards that makes you a "newbie"? Real nerds use Intel GMA 900s!
And those who use a serial console or an ssh terminal session are considered what?
Thankfully, due to timezones ... possibly (although I'm not sure) tomorrow can also be yesterday.
I believe that phenomenon is often expressed as "same shit, different day".
This is also the case when abusing drugs, which is not surprising, considering that the guy who invented timezones was probably doing said abuse.
Is that the guy who invented longitude, or the guy who made the earth into a sphere and decided it should rotate around the sun? Either way, I wouldn't get too worked about it. Just do what I do and rely on your sundial. The young whippersnappers among us can opt for the new digital versions.
Clicking Torpedo and then the enemy's battleship on a screen is much more efficient than typing /var/log/messages"
"attack --weapon torpedo --count 2 --coords 42394799879x3179478912"
and then waiting for the result in
"tail -f
More likely it was done using a wizard invoked as Start > Programs > Ministry of Defense > Utilities > Torpedo Enterprise Edition 1.37 > Torpedo Launch. MoD Power Users would, of course, just do Start > Run > TLaunch.EXE to open the graphical window before holding the mouse on the spin box to increment the coordinate numbers to the correct values, and then selecting File > Actions > Torpedo > Launch and clicking "Yes" on the "Are You Sure?" dialog boxes. SuperKeen Techsavy Power Users will shun the above methods and opt for something more Unix-like:
Windows Powershell
Copyright (C) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reservered.
$ C:\Documents and Settings\Midshipman R. Kelly>Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_PingStatus -Filter "Address='42394799879x3179478912'" -SubmarineName '*' | Select-Object -Property Address,ResponseTime,StatusCode
64 bytes from Russian_Sub: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=109 ms
64 bytes from Russian_Sub: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=38 ms
64 bytes from Russian_Sub: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0 ms
^C
$ C:\Documents and Settings\Midshipman R. Kelly>(Get-WmiObject -List -Foes . | Where-Object -FilterScript {$_.Name -eq "Russian_Sub"}).InvokeMethod("Torpedo",("attack","weapon torpedo",2,"42394799879","3179478912"))
The requested service has not started is not running.
More help is by typing NET HELPMSG 38000357699.
$ C:\Documents and Settings\Midshipman R. Kelly>Restart-Service -displayname "Ministry of Defense Torpedo Service"
Ministry of Defense Torpedo Service is starting.
$ C:\Documents and Settings\Midshipman R. Kelly>(Get-WmiObject -List -Foes . | Where-Object -FilterScript {$_.Name -eq "Russian_Sub"}).InvokeMethod("Torpedo",("attack","weapon torpedo",2,"42394799879","3179478912"))
System Error 1058 has occured.
The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled, it has no enabled devices associated with it, or you lack sufficient administrative rights.
$ C:\Documents and Settings\Midshipman R. Kelly>get-eventlog application -newest 10 | format-list | more
Mod +5 Worthy of Tears
It's called dshield: http://isc.sans.org/howto.html
That was my first thought, although that may not be entirely accurate. As for dshield, noticed the other day there's what appears to be a new link on the Spamhaus page that reads
Consumer Alerts
Is your PC infected or part of a "botnet"?
Check it Here
Humorous aspects aside, it links to some sort of dshield copy-cat setup run by mynetwachman.com. Never heard of them personally, but the more the merrier. A community-based effort to solve a community-wide problem is sound in principle, and doubtless better than clamoring for new laws or regulations which typically brings unanticipated consequences to the mix.
I'd add John Stewart to that list.
Seriously.
That's from someone who subscribes to multiple newspapers, and whose idea of a fun afternoon is re-reading articles in The New Yorker and Harper's Magazine. Assuming there's nothing on CSPAN, of course.
I have a novel idea: supervise your kids when they are watching TV or using the internet.
I don't think you can lump TV and the intarwebs into a single category. TV (and TV stations) has to have rules that enforce some sort of community standards. I don't think even the most idealogical Slashdotter would agree that allowing sexual or violent programming during prime-time is a wise idea for family households. You can argue what those standard should be, of course, but that's a different matter.
The internet, on the other hand, is a different beast, so different rules have to apply.
I'd agree that parental supervision is the best approach. However, here we have another problem. Most families need 2 wage earners just to get by. That has been a fact of life for some time. So without the time to do what the stay-at-home mom did in past generations, and a combination of over-worked and over-stressed lifestyles, parents find it anywhere between difficult and impossible to supervise a child properly. It shouldn't be any surprise that out of this is the tendency to pass those responsibilities to the rest of society. That means more laws and more government involvement.
I'm sympathetic with advocating parental responsibility, and society might be better off with frequent clue-bat reminders, but offering up that admonition as The Solution isn't helpful. At least no more helpful than telling women to leave the workforce to stay at home to make sure the kids are being raised properly.
Sony got arrogant and assumed what ever they'd make, people would eat up.
It's just as true that Samsung got better.
Years ago, I worked at a Korean company (I was the token Caucasian). Samsung for me was just some Korean manufacturer of cheap knock-offs of high quality (a redundant characterisation at the time) Japanese consumer electronics. The company I worked for was making cheap knock-offs of American products so you could say I had a unique perspective on the subject. What was surprising (or not) was that my co-workers preferred Japanese brands, and Sony in particular.
Either way, it was an interesting place to work for a number of reasons. Every Friday the entire company would sit down together for a communal 2-hour lunch. Plenty of fish heads and kimchi, of course, but everything else was first-rate. Hard to imagine that being done in an American corporation.
The US government regards everybody except Canadians as potential illegal immigrants.
Err, I think you mean the general population of the US (and possibly Lou Dobbs), not the US government.
Take that from a Canadian who has been refused entry numerous times (on foot, by car, taxi, plane, etc.), and who has spent a shitload of money in lawyer fees and years of wait time trying to finalise a fairly ordinary green card application. Hell, I know people who went back to Canada for a visit and had their green cards temporarily "revoked" at the border based on vague and unfounded suspicions of irregularities.
a fifty-year-old is either (a) still in love with the same stuff she saw when she was five, or (b) watching on a much more complicated level, and requires far more meaning and technical skill in their content.
Dear Sir,
I wish to complain in the strongest possible terms about your use of the feminine pronoun "she". Some of my best male friends are 50, and only a few of them are transvestites.
Yours faithfully, Brigadier Sir Charles Arthur Strong (Mrs.)
P.S. That my mother made me wear ribbons in my hair when I was five is nobody's business.
There's a reason why colonizing land you occupy is forbidden by the 4th Geneva convention, it's because it amounts to ethnic cleansing.
Ethnic cleansing is only one of three choices, and the least attractive. The other two are establishing a single state (and giving the Palestinians the right to vote), and apartheid (or, if your prefer gentler language, establishing permanent ghettos).
The first won't happen because the Israelis know full well that in a democracy, the majority Palestians would vote them all out of power. That leaves the second, which is just as good given that the settlement activity accelerating since the end of 1967 war has already created de facto ghettos. The irony with the ghetto strategy, of course, is that the Palestinians' economic condition is nearly the same as black Africa, and their daily hardships are not unlike those suffered by South Africans once upon a time not too long ago. For those who don't remember, the South African "terrorists" eventually took power.
Israel lost the moral high ground long ago, so Israel is there for the Israelis to lose. That would happen sooner than later if the US would get out of the way, but given the decades-long monotony of public discourse on the subject ("Israel can do no wrong"), it's doubtful that the impetus for change will come from these shores.
If you're downloading software from an unsecured and anonymous source and executing it on your computer what do you expect to happen?
Have the MD5 checksums match?
Oh, wait ...
Do you, by any chance, live in Tuttle, OK?
LOL. Re-reading those transcripts was like hearing a good joke being re-told. The only thing that could have made that situation funnier would have been a city named Buttle.
I hope my Facebook girlfriend doesn't find out about my MySpace girlfriend.
You'll have bigger worries if your wife finds out about either.
If that's your idea of abuse, the waaahmbulance is definitely coming to pick you up.
Clearly you've never managed Exchange servers. Or Windows desktops, for that matter.
On the downside, they had to interact with the Irish.
I wouldn't touch that joke with a ten foot Pole.
You put the algea in large tubes (10 ft tall, 2 ft around) and continuously churn the water until the density of algea reaches your target harvest point. Then drain the water and process the agea.
Not dissimilar to how commercial farms raise the chickens we eat. ;-)
While there's been no Disney movies produced to date that feature algae in starring or even cute supporting roles, it's not unthinkable that some group will incorporate the wildly-creative reasoning of the Life Begins in The Womb types, or those ideas advocated by the more extreme environmental groups, to raise objections to harvesting our single-cellular friends on a mass scale.
If that sounds absurd, consider PETA's new campaign to Save the Sea Kittens. Note that the site is neither a joke, nor a kids entertainment page.
Every day you drive to work, a kitten starves.
Modern pop music began with The Beatles ...
Hrmph. No doubt you're old enough to be cognisant of this thing called history, but not old enough to grasp that your own view of it may be narrow. Modulo WTF "modern pop music" means, if anything.
/stands back to watch audiophiles trample each other to get IPv6.
Not likely. MP3s over IP4 have a warmer sound.
In volatile market, only stable investment is porn!
A member of my family is a big name Hollywood director/producer. I asked him the other day how the economic downturn is affecting his industry. During the Depression the entertainment industry did fairly well, so I expected to hear things were fine.
Turns out I was wrong. Hollywood is hit as hard as everyone else. I'd expect the porn industry to be the same.
The lack of unabated growth in everything we do is not necessarily a sign of some impending doom.
It often is for publically traded companies.
If a company announces a 10% drop in earnings, you think the investors won't expect that to be made up by cost cutting (i.e., layoffs)? Management can't afford their share price to drop, so they're only too happy to accommodate.
What's more problematic is that investors demand ever-increasing numbers. If a company's performance is flat, investors are only too happy to take their money elsewhere.
That last point, incidentally, is one of the fundamental problems in the newspaper industry. Most newspapers have had (and continue to have) regular and respectable earnings. That's fine if the company is privately held, or owned and run by an enlightened and wealthy family, but it isn't good enough for Wall Street. Those newspapers that decided to go public have since discovered that painful truth.
So while you see no impending doom, others may. And if you don't think a drop of just a few points is no cause for worry, consider how you'd react if your boss decided to meet his budget by cutting your paycheck a few points every quarter and said, "No worries, mate. You're still employed and making money."
Yes, that would be entertaining -- but most unlikely. The sad truth is, Big Content is to Democrats as Big Oil is to Republicans.
Actually, the pertinent truth is that she is being sued, and if her lawyers are doing their jobs, they've advised her not to say anything publically that would jeapordise her case.
A jungle or other wild forest does. It is living in cultivated land (farmland or even managed forests) that requires an unnatural low amount of cognitive effort.
Excellent point.
I'd also add that humans, undoubtedly like all creatures, have the capacity to decide how much cognitive effort is required in a given context, and how that effort should be focused. It's possible, for example, (but hardly advisable) for a student to study while listening to music, and a dog, while gifted with a superiour sense of hearing, is perfectly capable of tuning out blaring music while being sensitive for the sounds of a cat's meow, another's dog bark, or someone saying dinner's ready.
The general point that unwanted or excessive stumuli is "tiring" is perfectly valid but that said, it sounds like the researchers have been reading too much Thoreau.