That’s why I could never understand people who willingly gave up control of their circumstances to alcohol or drugs. In the movies (the more modern ones, at least), it looks like everyone taking “recreational drugs” is having a great time – at least until the morality aspect of the tale enters, and the happy substance abusers either get killed or carted off to jail.

What does all this have to do with computers? Well, it seems that someone has come up with a way to simulate the effects of mind-bending drugs – using a century and a half old technology that uses sound waves to mess with your brain! According to many of its users, binaural beats, as the sound waves are known, are very effective – and they can be used to wake you up, put you to sleep, unleash your creativity, or even send you on the equivalent of a drug-induced mental trip!

Basically, binuaral beats consist of pulses of two different frequencies being played in each ear at the same time. The pulses, in the 1,000 to 1,500 hertz range, have slight differences between them – less than 30 hertz. Depending on the differences in the pulses, the brain can be “entrained” (i.e. manipulated) to generate specific moods. The technology has been around since the 1830s, but has really come into its own in the past decade, as CD quality recordings and noise-canceling headphones allow users around the world to check out what some say could be an alternative to drugs – giving you the same effects (or close to it) with none of the dependence and legal problems “real” drug use entails.

One site, called i-Doser, has really capitalized on the potential association between binaural beats and mood drugs. For about $5, you can buy a “fix” of binaural cocaine, marijuana, crack, heroin, ecstasy, and all sorts of other chemicals “real” drug users take to get themselves in a mood. For example, check out the i-Doser description of its “Alchohol” dose: “Our alcohol dose is like shot gunning five glasses of gin, in force. The effects come on strong, but mellow fast, and ease into a condition of relaxation flightiness and overexcitement. Some have even experienced pure drunkenness from a single dose. Best of all, no hangover.”

The first question that comes to mind is, “can this be legal?” At least, that’s the first question that came to my uptight, in-control mind, and after an exhaustive internet search, I couldn’t find any law enforcement issues with i-Doser. So, it appears to be on safe legal ground.

The second question is, of course, “does this work?” It’s one thing to use binaural beats in a university lab for research, administered by people who know what they are doing, and another altogether to slap together an “aural drug” for use by thrill-seekers! And since most of the i-Doser doses cost real money, I wasn’t about to plunk down cash to find out. Opinions in the blogosphere appear to be mixed, with some praising i-Doser for changing their lives, and others calling it an outright “fraud and rip-off.”

But for the curious (don’t forget what killed the cat, though!) there are a couple of free alternatives to i-Doser. The closed-source commercial i-Doser program (required to play the tracks you download from the site) is actually based on an open-source program, available for Windows, OS X (PPC), and Linux, called SbaGen (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sbagen). SbaGen comes with several presets (as the binaural beat tracks are called), and there are many free sites where you can download more free tracks. In fact, there are tracks that are apparently very similar – and have similar names – to the ones offered by i-Doser. I don’t know if these are a ripoff of the i-Doser files, but the i-Doser FAQ says that “I-Doser uses a linked DLL based on SBaGen as its binaural beat engine,” and that “until June 2007, I-Doser was distributed in violation of SBaGen’s license,” when an agreement was worked out with the owner of the open-source code. So, maybe those files’ release are part of the settlement with SbaGen.

There is also an on-line site (run by an Israeli fellow) called i-Dose – no relation to i-Doser – that has tracks more in-line with the therapeutic credo of most binaural beat researchers (the SbaGen site says that despite the author’s settlement with i-Doser, this does not mean that he “approves of I-Doser’s use of high amplitude binaural beats to attempt to emulate the effects of recreational drugs — not in any way. There are very many positive benefits that can be gained through subtle use of binaural beats.”) The i-Doser site has on-line tracks with names like Relaxation, Super-Brain, Focus, Mirage (“Helps with art & creative activities”), Coffee Break, and others.

But does it work? Well, of course I tried a few of them. First, some guidelines: You need a good pair of stereo headphones to get any effect at all; the venue should be calm, and you should be ‘open’ to the experience (although I tried a couple of tracks while working); and you need a block of time, like a half hour for the average track, to get the full effect (although a mood shift is possible much sooner). Wanting to maintain control as I do, I decided that the safest tracks to try were the ones relating to extra energy. So, I tried the streaming Coffee Break track on the i-Dose site, and a file in SbaGen equivalent to one on i-Doser called “5HTP,” which “is an amino acid that is used in the brain to make the hormone Serotonin, which is your HAPPY Hormone.”

And – much to my shock – they worked! Yesterday I felt more energetic after a 15 minute Coffee Break, and today, I’m still “happy”- in the sense that I’m feeling “balanced” – an hour after listening to 5HTP. Now, of course, that could just mean I’m really a sucker, ready to feel what any old web site says I should feel after taking the high-tech equivalent of snake oil. Only one way to find out – I guess I’m going to have to so some “experimenting” (is this the first step on what they call the “slippery slope?”).

Note that I said “some” of the class-action suits. Nobody (except lawyers, of course) ever got rich off a class-action lawsuit – the class tends to be too big. But if you join a bunch of such lawsuits, you can get more than one piece of the pie. It’s like getting on the gravy train!

Class-action suits (in Israel, the concept is known as a teviah yitzugit) are generally complaints that a large group of people have in common – usually over a substandard product or service (http://tinyurl.com/2olctv). The idea behind such suits is, among other things, to make the legal process smoother and more efficient, as judges or juries only have to consider and decide on a single complaint.

Attorneys like them too, because, the thinking goes, the bigger the suit, the more of an impression it makes. In addition, the damages done to each individual plaintiff may not be enough of an incentive for a court case, meaning that defendants can continue to get away with whatever it is they are doing wrong. With a class-action case, complainants who feel ripped off are more likely to demand justice.

But not everyone is a fan of class-action suits; the settlements are usually very small and disproportionate (the settlement is spread out equally among those with greater and lesser claims of damage). On the other hand, a class-action suit is often the only way a lowly consumer is going to have a chance to get justice from a business giant like Microsoft.

But if you picked up a “Vista-ready” laptop or PC on a recent trip to the US, you may have a chance to recoup some of your money (and/or other restitution; I wouldn’t expect a check). The firm of Gordon Tilden Thomas & Cordell LLP is at your service, presenting a class-action suit against Microsoft for misrepresenting the capabilities of computers to run its new Vista operating system.

“Consumers paid for Vista capability (the computers were priced higher because of their Vista capability), but allegedly did not receive ‘real’ Vista capability,” reads a US District Court decision from several weeks ago, certifying the case as a class-action suit.

The computers, many of them low-end, were labeled as being “Vista-ready,” but customers found that they were incapable of taking advantage of many of the features of Vista, because their video cards were not able to use the Aero display, Media Center PC interface or Flip 3D window-switching. In addition, many of the peripherals that work with Windows XP won’t work with Vista, because drivers are not available or don’t work.

The lawsuit was first brought last year by a Washington State woman, but the law firm successfully argued that many consumers have similar complaints – opening the way for the suit to be certified as a class-action suit.

Apparently, the issue is one of either a misunderstanding between customers and Microsoft, or over-enthusiastic sales on the part of salespeople. Any new computer sold with Vista is capable of running Vista – in its basic version, that is. It would seem that many people got or were given the impression that even cheap computers were capable of running Vista Premium, with all its bells and whistles.

Should Microsoft have known better or been more careful in the way it presented Vista? That’s for the court to decide, but if you want to get in on the action, check out http://tinyurl.com/28rjuy to see if you qualify. It appears that Microsoft is going to have a hard time contending with this action; apparently Vista’s “dog” status was well known to Microsoft insiders (http://tinyurl.com/2tcnc9), who in a series of e-mails (released for the trial) apparently knew all about the problems with Vista – and went to market anyway, with what the plaintiffs contend was deceptive marketing.

If you were one of the early adopters who bought a Samsung Blu-ray DVD player, you’re in luck – you, too, can sue! Now that Toshiba’s HD-DVD has more or less thrown in the towel, with Sony’s Blu-ray standard the winner in the next-generation DVD format war, Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray DVD owners (other models have issues as well) have an extra reason to be hopping mad; their “victory” has been marred by the fact that their machines can’t play several popular movies (http://tinyurl.com/2ty4mt).

Samsung may just be the tip of the iceberg, industry insiders say, with the company likely to claim that it cannot be at fault, since standards for Blu-Ray were still in development when the machines in question were sold (June 2006). Purchasers of Blu-ray DVDs from other makers have also had their share of complaints, but this is the first certified class-action lawsuit against a Blu-ray DVD maker (other manufacturers in the industry have been sued over patent or other issues).

Because of the standards argument, and being that Samsung has issued several firmware updates to ensure full compatibility for players, the company has a better chance than Microsoft of surviving the consumer onslaught.

Then there’s the scam Network Solutions has apparently been running, according to yet another lawsuit. The company would automatically buy domain names that potential buyers searched for, and hold onto them for at least several days (http://tinyurl.com/ytu67u). Anyone who wanted to buy the names had to buy them from the company – for $35, instead of the eight bucks it would have cost you at a service like Godaddy.com.

Network Solutions has a story, of course, but a lawsuit is in the works, and may be granted class-action status as well.

If you’ve ever been a customer of Verizon Wireless in the US and had to pay an early termination fee to get out of your contract, you could get a piece of a whopping $1 billion that the company is being sued for in a class-action suit (http://tinyurl.com/2slx6u).

And if you own a Treo 600 or 650 PDA and have had to repair it two or more times, check out http://www.palzasettlement.com/ and file for a cash rebate ($50 or $75) in a recently settled case. It may not solve all your financial woes, but like I said, if you can get in on a bunch of these suits, you’ll be riding down Easy Street in no time!