Nine "Life Hacks" that will make you happy.

I've read 'em all&mdash;does that make me the King of the Geeks? (And shouldn't <I>Cryptonomicon</I> be in first place?)

From the frontiers of neurobiology.

Be the hippest kid on your musical block.

On November 12, the audio forum <A HREF="http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/index.php?">Head-Fi</A&gt; staged a meet at the Adria Ramada Inn and Conference Center in Bayside, NY. You may be asking yourself, <I>What's a Head-Fi meet?</I> That's a complicated question, but the simplest answer is that it's an attempt to provide a real-world equivalent to the sense of community that Head-Fi's forum has engendered on the Internet. It's also a chance for like-minded enthusiasts to share their favorite equipment and software with one another. In a hotel conference room, some 30&ndash;40 headphone lovers set up their systems (frequently incorporating more than one headphone amp and multiple sets of headphones) and then everybody started listening, taking turns around the room, and discussing what they'd heard.

After posting a <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/110705sony/">round-up</A&gt; of the news about Sony BMG's F4i's XCP digital rights management system (DRM), which hid itself inside consumers' computers' root-kit code, I spent a frantic week simply trying to keep up with all of the breaking news on the issue on my <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/wesphillips/">blog</A&gt;. During the week of November 7, I posted no fewer than 9 URLs outlining breaking news on the Sony story. However, by the end of the week, the company was reeling from the news that hackers had managed to install malware (malicious programs that dismantle a computer's firewall protection) on consumers' computers that masked its presence by using the hidden software placed there by Sony BMG's DRM system.

Jim Thiel sounded almost bored. "Almost everything about the CS2.4 is pretty standard stuff&mdash;short-coil, long-gap, low-distortion drivers, aluminum diaphragms, polystyrene capacitors, spatial coherence, time coherence, reduced diffraction baffles, reduced cabinet vibration, etc., etc. Of course, <I>I</I> think the execution of the 2.4 is more successful than our previous models, but in terms of what's really different, that mechanical crossover is what's special."

Jim Thiel sounded almost bored. "Almost everything about the CS2.4 is pretty standard stuff&mdash;short-coil, long-gap, low-distortion drivers, aluminum diaphragms, polystyrene capacitors, spatial coherence, time coherence, reduced diffraction baffles, reduced cabinet vibration, etc., etc. Of course, <I>I</I> think the execution of the 2.4 is more successful than our previous models, but in terms of what's really different, that mechanical crossover is what's special."

Jim Thiel sounded almost bored. "Almost everything about the CS2.4 is pretty standard stuff&mdash;short-coil, long-gap, low-distortion drivers, aluminum diaphragms, polystyrene capacitors, spatial coherence, time coherence, reduced diffraction baffles, reduced cabinet vibration, etc., etc. Of course, <I>I</I> think the execution of the 2.4 is more successful than our previous models, but in terms of what's really different, that mechanical crossover is what's special."