Cone of Silence 2.0 91
Village Idiot sends word of a patent granted to MIT researchers for a cone of silence a la Maxwell Smart. This one doesn't use plastic, but rather active and networked sensors and speakers embedded in a (probably indoor) space such as an open-plan office. "In 'Get Smart,' secret agents wanting a private conversation would deploy the 'cone of silence,' a clear plastic contraption lowered over the agents' heads. It never worked — they couldn't hear each other, while eavesdroppers could pick up every word. Now a modern cone of silence that we are assured will work is being patented by engineers Joe Paradiso and Yasuhiro Ono of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ... Instead of plastic domes, they use a sensor network to work out where potential eavesdroppers are, and speakers to generate a subtle masking sound at just the right level. ... The array of speakers... aims a mix of white noise and randomized office hubbub at the eavesdroppers. The subtle, confusing sound makes the conversation unintelligible." One comment thread on the article wonders about the propriety of tracking people around an office in order to preserve privacy.
Solution looking for a problem. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Solution looking for a problem. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Solution looking for a problem. (Score:4, Funny)
I raise your hidden mic by 1 masturbating gorilla.
Re:Solution looking for a problem. (Score:5, Funny)
That is about the last and final indicator that you should find another job - when a masturbating gorilla gets a raise but you are skipped over.
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happens all the time where I work. Typically they get a promotion, too.
Re:Solution looking for a problem. (Score:5, Funny)
I dunno, I'd feel kinda bad for the gorilla if he couldn't get a raise.
Wait... what are we talking about?
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Well, seems technically difficult in any case.
Re:Solution looking for a problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
I raise your closed office door by 1 hidden mic.
From the summary:
they use a sensor network to work out where potential eavesdroppers are
And from the article:
Knowing the position of the computer, the sensors identify the person and map out the locations of people around them. Software assesses who is so close that they must be participants in the conversation, and who might be a potential eavesdropper.
Good luck using this to defeat hidden microphones. And if you can identify the location of hidden microphones, you don't need a cone of silence to defeat them.
This is more like a surrogate closed office door for offices without doors. Whether that makes much sense as a whole remains another matter.
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This is more like a surrogate closed office door for offices without doors. Whether that makes much sense as a whole remains another matter.
What if you could place a number of small devices [amazon.com] in a public space and gain the freedom to speak there without being overheard?
I agree that the issue of needing to locate listeners is a big issue. But there are, I suppose, potential uses still.
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Or perhaps activate the cone for your talking, and sending out a pre-recorded signal of innocuous things to mask your real activity.
Asimov had a similar device in one of the Foundation books whereby when one of his characters wanted privacy, he'd activate a screen that generated small office-y noises and quiet inane conversation. Much more effective than dead silence, leading to awkward "what are you hiding?" type questions.
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Re:Solution looking for a problem. (Score:5, Funny)
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I wouldn't say that learning ASL exactly counts as simple. (Fun though... I took a semester of it in college just for the hell of it and it was pretty neat.)
But you could easily substitute "write what you want to say on paper, then shred it".
Re:Solution looking for a problem. (Score:5, Informative)
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The best thing about learning ASL is that most of the students are female.
No, they are only saying that. They are actually old, overweight bald men who use the internet to live out their fantasies.
a/s/l?
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The best thing about learning ASL is that most of the students are female.
And 13, and live in California?
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What is the chance of them giving you a phone number?
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What is that in metric?
Re:Solution looking for a problem. (Score:4, Informative)
That won't help you against one of these.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parabolic_microphone [wikipedia.org]
I happen to live in a small town, which doesn't have a lot of noise polution. One of my Uncles was a cop, and showed me a Parabolic Mic when I was younger. The thing lets you hear conversations inside a house an entire block away!
Whenever I see TV shows where _EvilCorporation_ goes to the effort to bug a house with tiny mics, and there's a black van(or icecream truck!) sitting outside all the time, I can't help but laugh.
If they want to know what you're saying, they don't have to get close to you or your house to do so!
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Regarding the parabolic mic: What if there is a lot of noise pollution? Wouldn't be a big problem? Any noises bouncing off the house in question can easily mask what's going on inside.
Though bugging the house wouldn't have to mean having to be nearby if you have good receivers.
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That won't help you against one of these.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parabolic_microphone [wikipedia.org]
I happen to live in a small town, which doesn't have a lot of noise polution. One of my Uncles was a cop, and showed me a Parabolic Mic when I was younger. The thing lets you hear conversations inside a house an entire block away!
I guess if you did see someone pointing one at your house, the solution would be to get a another parabolic dish, aim it back at them, position yourself at the focal point and then SCREAM!!. That should make them take their earphones off in a hurry :-)
Obligatory XKCD (Score:2)
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Hardly helpful when (laser, I think) beam focused on your office window can effectively turn it into a remote speaker. However, something that negates the sound waves generated by your words might just solve that. Probably not -- probably, if you can a monitor a laser beam, you can monitor it fast enough to detect the difference between sounds as said, and sounds after negation. But it's a start.
I'd be much more interested in something like this around the engi
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Leaning an electric toothbrush against the window may work well enough to defeat it ofc.
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Office? Door? What a curious world you do live in.
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I'd imagine... (Score:5, Funny)
Eavesdroppers: "...... No.."
Fly on the wall.. (Score:2)
a sensor network to work out where potential eavesdroppers are...the array of speakers... aims a mix of white noise and randomized office hubbub at the eavesdroppers
How do you point your white noise at a hidden mic or two? Or three...
I have a feeling that if this device ever sees the light of day, that it will stay true to the legacy of the device it was named after.
Re:Fly on the wall.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely!
What's worst is the device works by surrounding your secret meeting with an array of discreet sensors (aka, microphones). So if two or three extra microphones were to appear in the room, no one would suspect a thing.
I guess it would work for the random passerby...
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And the data used to generate the white noise, recorded or broadcast via bluetooth or other technology, is an excellent source of wiretapping data.
This idea is like curbing teenage violence by giving them all shotguns.
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This idea is like curbing teenage violence by giving them all shotguns.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, as the majority of the USA seems to follow this logic, and the rest of the West think that they're idiots for it.
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POB (Score:1)
Yasuhiro Ono and the plastic domes are no more?
Lovely (Score:2)
The Baron Harkonnen will be quite pleased.
So, basicly... (Score:1)
It's an expensive version of turning the radio up.
Fricken Laser Beams (Score:4, Informative)
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Or if your running low on lasers, lip reading will do just fine.
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Except for the people who put vibration inducers on the windows.....
I know some of these people.
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Wow! Could submarines use this . . . ? (Score:4, Funny)
. . . you can bet your hairy ass they do! They generate sound to exactly cancel out the sound of their propellers.
. . . so that sound cancellation technology on your ear buds was pioneered/sponsored by the DoD back in the early '60s. It even used some of that newfangled "transistor" technology.
Maybe the "Get Smart" gag was just misinformation to convince the Russians that the idea was asinine and would never work?
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The CIA actually investigated Get Smart a couple of times, since some of their stuff was disturbingly close to things used in real intelligence operations. (Including, ironically enough, the shoe phone, although the US didn't know about it at that point)
If I recall correctly, the original cone of silence prop was purchased by the CIA at the conclusion of the show's run.
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haha, you're a regular urban legend factory.
what IS true is that some of the gadgets from spy shows including "Get Smart" were shown along side of real spy gear an exhibit in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
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Shit... (Score:3, Funny)
The array of speakers... aims a mix of white noise and randomized office hubbub at the eavesdroppers.
And what if they use brown note?
If a tree falls in a forest... (Score:2)
There was a old sci-fi story about a similar device, that did something like echoes the sound with a delay to make the sound waves cancel and make silence. That wouldnt work in real world, but if is the same basic idea could the patent be challenged?
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Just creates a new vector for eavesdropping (Score:2)
This just means that instead of overhearing by ear, you can now plant a listening device in the machine generating the interference signals and rather easily infer what's being said from the interference generated. After all, they're basically doing Bose-like noise-cancellation, which means the generation of an inverse-wavelength signals-- which can easily be reversed into intelligible signals. That means the machine is constantly sampling what they're saying in order to cancel it out, which means a bug in
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Less "Get Smart," more Dune... (Score:3, Informative)
It's been a ridiculously long time since I read Frank Herbert's Dune (or any of its sequels), but I remember at least one of the books had a couple of scenes with a "cone of silence" much along these lines.
Anyone inside the field could communicate with each other; anyone outside the field couldn't hear them. For added security, the conversants would face the inner wall (iirc the "cone of silence" was walled on three sides) to prevent lip-reading - something that this approach to the idea doesn't cover.
Of course, there's nothing preventing you from simply holding your hand over your mouth...
I wonder about the quality of the workplace. (Score:5, Insightful)
Judging by the descripton this device apparently operates by beaming additional sound at the people who are not supposed to be in a conversation, rather than attempting to cancel the conversation at their ears. So this is a selective noise generator.
It's equivalent to creating enough background noise to drown out the conversations, but doing it selectively at the ears of the victims. Of course this means increasing, rather than decreasing, the noise level of the environment, and doing so with snippets of conversation that can ALMOST be understood - resulting in increased stress both from the high level of noise and the failed processing in the victims' brains.
Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Village Idiot sounds about right (Score:2)
Village Idiot sends word of a patent granted to MIT researchers
The patent application published. It was not granted. It hasn't even been examined yet. Patent applications usually haven't by this point - examination happens 2-3 years after application. It is a simple procedure Slashdot; why can't you seem to wrap your head around it? I'll write it very BASICally so you can understand:
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I think there are some problems with your code - there is a compile error on line 35 with an open bracket, and line 40 can never be executed with the conditional as specified in line 35. :)
Point taken though, a patent application is NOT a patent. There must be so much prior art on this concept, I can't see how it could be patentable.
Consultant speak... (Score:2)
...is the ultimate cone of silence. Everyone can hear you but no one can understand you, and you can always claim you've been misinterpreted. Best of all it doesn't require any technology and it doesn't ever break down.
useful technology (Score:2)
This tech would kick ass in the studio, or perhaps the theatre or practice room
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Maybe if you wanted a recording with a deliberately high noise floor (a.k.a. "crappy recording"), or a very distracting performance/rehearsal. I would say to RTFA, but it's not worth it anyways.
Herman Miller's "Babble" (Score:1)
Home noise cancelling (Score:2)
I want something that cancels street noise inside my home. Is such a device available?
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Yes...earplugs.
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mix of white noise and randomized office hubbub? (Score:1)
Why not an inverse wave form of the actual conversation?
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Shower Spray (Score:2)
2. turn on the Shower spray,
3. then you can have your private conversation,
4. Profit . . .
Old news... kinda (Score:1)
Saw a demo (Score:1)
Close (Score:1)
And I was 'That' close to inventing this myself.