[jdowner]

I had a similar hope. Not long into the article, it was apparent that the author was not using the term 'noise' in a particularly well-defined way. For me, 'noise' is unstructured sound. People talking is structured, which is why it is a problem. I used to block out people in the office by listening to heavy metal, but in the end I found listening to actual noise was more effective for me to get my work done. So I was hoping the article was going to dig more into that side of things.