After setting up a new workstation at work with Windows Server 2003 x64 I discovered an annoying problem that was hard to live with and wound up being harder to solve than I expected.

For work, I often view alot of MSDN video and webcasts.  The problem I was having was distorted audio during playback of these webcasts.  Other MP3 or YouTube sources were problem free.  The distorted audio was distracting and very annoying, but you could still hear the audio, which for these webcasts was typically just voice audio for the webcast presentation.  Because the other audio sources were problem free, I initially thought that the audio for these webcasts was just poor quality, and I lived with it for a while, until I tested one at home, and found that the audio was perfectly fine at home.  This caused me to investigate further, and for some reason finding a solution was much more difficult than I think it should have been. 

Maybe the patch had just been released at that point and not indexed by google yet, I'm not sure.  I was very glad to find a fix though.

Anyway, the fix is available from Microsoft and cures a problem with audio that has been encoded using the Windows Media Audio Voice 9 codec, which was the case with many of the MSDN webcasts.

The fix can be found here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940666

While doing some research for something I was working on, I came across this blog about ASP.NET and the Viewstate.  This is a must read for those who are somewhat familiar with the viewstate and those who believe they know it all.   

http://weblogs.asp.net/infinitiesloop/archive/2006/08/03/Truly-Understanding-Viewstate.aspx

The following are some points that I took away from the article:

• an ASP.NET control will automatically restore entered/selected values even if the ViewState is DISABLED!  (wait, what? I thought that is what the ViewState was for?)
  
• the Viewstate is typically only required for simple controls if the controls will be hidden between post backs (otherwise, see point above)
• if you databind your control on each request in the OnInit event, you can disable the ViewState and the control will still automatically restore entered/selected values

Let me start by saying that I am not an audiophile.  I do not download alot of music.  I do not own an iPod.  Mostly I listen to the radio in the car on my way to work, or streaming music from the website of a local radio station when I am near the computer.  I am sure that this preference is due to my inherent inability to be a good DJ. 

Despite this, I am a consumer, and I think this entitles me to an opinion.

I recently read an article in the Toronto Star by Ben Rayner with great interest.  The basic ideas I got from the article were these:

• The majority of bands make their money from touring, not from CD sales.
• The record companies get rich from CD sales, in return for promoting the talents of their signed artist.
• The record companies are now including a cut of the proceeds of touring, management and even merchandising in their contracts with new artists, due to reduced CD sales.

In the years before the internet and modern home computers, artists needed the record companies to record and promote their music.  Without the record companies, an artist would starve back in those days, but the technology of today has changed all of that.  The most unfortunate aspect of that recipe was that the record companies were essentially deciding for the public which artists would be stars because they would decide who would get a contract.  I have no doubt that a lot of dubious criteria was applied to new and upcoming artists and simply having talent was not enough.

In the world of today, it is much easier for artists to record and distribute their own music through the internet, reaching millions of people and building legions of fans worldwide.  The only requirement is talent.  Just the way it should be as far as I am concerned.

I believe the hoopla surrounding music downloading is largely the noise that is generated by the record companies realizing that their services are no longer required, and they are desperately trying to find a way to prove their continued worth and justify their continued collection of millions of dollars worth of fees from their artists.

Change can be difficult.  Being fired or getting dumped does not feel good, and coming to terms with the thought that you are not needed anymore kinda sucks.  On one hand, I don't blame them for trying to hang on to their cash cow.  Hanging on to the cow is easier than the alternative choice of changing your business model, or finding a new business altogether.

Nonetheless, this article helped to solidify what I already knew on some level.  It is time for the record companies to go away.  It is time to allow the market to dictate the price of a CD.  I find it interesting that the manufacturing cost for a CD has decreased over the years, and yet, the average price of a music CD is still what, $15?  It has been $15 ever since I can remember.  The price of HD televisions has dropped 50% or more in the last year or two, and yet the price of a CD hasn't changed in years?  Give me a break.

I also think the focus for artists SHOULD be on touring and performing live.  It is their job.  I get up every day and go to work to earn a living.  Touring is the job of a successful artist.  Especially in this world of technology, where a poor vocalist can be digitally enhanced in a recording to sound spectacular.  In my opinion, touring is required for an artist to demonstrate that they actually do have talent.

Talented artists can record the music and distribute the music for next to nothing.  Why shouldn't it be free?  Many artists have realized that the money is in touring and if you give out the music for free, you can build a huge fanbase.  A huge fanbase means sold out shows when touring.  Even popular artists like Madonna have realized this, opting to drop her record label of 25 years and instead sign agreements with a concert promotion company.

The record companies like to say that music downloading will kill the music industry.  It won't.  It will only kill them.  The artists will always do what they do, because they love it and because they can still make a good living at it.

Through the years, the evolution of technology has created new jobs/industries and killed others.  The record company of today is the blacksmith of yesterday.  In the end, I think the artists may be better off without them.

Recently my Symantec Antivirus 2005 edition support contract ran out and I began to get the nagging, "fear of god" messages from the program telling me that my computer wasn't protected and that I could no longer get the latest virus definition updates.  It was very scary.  Ok, scary may not be right word.  Annoying may be a better word.

Avast! Home Edition - http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html
I started by installing and trying this free antivirus software product.  Early on, I ran into conflicts.  Avast! reported  that it could not properly initialize all of its scanning services while Symantec was installed.  My contract had run out, and I was using the older 2005 edition of Symantec anyway, so I uninstalled it so I could get a clean taste of what Avast! could do for me.

The biggest problem with the free version of Avast! is that you cannot schedule the virus scans to occur on a regular basis automatically.  You must manually run the scan yourself.  Overall, the software seemed pretty decent, easy to use, etc. however, for me, I want my computer to do things for me, not the other way around, so having to manually run scans was a bit of a deal breaker.  Of course, I could always upgrade to the paid version of Avast!, but my intention was to see what you could get for free.

AVG Antivirus Free Edition - http://free.grisoft.com/
I am currently trying this product, after having uninstalled Avast!.  From my point of view, there isn't much difference between AVG and Avast!.  They both appear to be competent in the function they perform.  AVG is generally user friendly, as was Avast!.  The big limitation with Avast! is not present with AVG and I am able to schedule a scan, however, only one scheduled task is permitted, and that task is limited in its defintion.  It only provides for a daily scheduled scan and you can only define the time at which it runs.

The most annoying thing I've found about AVG is that updates to virus definitions seem to always require a reboot of the computer.  The scheduled task for updates is similar to that of scans... only one is permitted and it is daily, or a manual process.  Neither of these options is perfect because you have to choose between manually updating the virus software yourself, or be faced with possibly having to reboot the computer on a daily basis in order to finish installing the update.  This annoyance is heighted by the fact that after an update is downloaded and installed, the AVG virus scanner is deactivated until you do reboot, which means delaying the reboot leaves you unprotected.

I am going to leave it another day or so, to see if the updates and reboots are truly a daily event, or if I've been unlucky with a steady stream of updates these last couple days.

So I left it a few more days, here are some of the results... the following list is "number of days between reboots" where 1 is the next day.  This assumes the software updates itself on a nightly basis, so this table provides a glimpse of just how often a reboot is required.

2 > reboot > 2 > reboot > 2 > reboot > 4 > reboot > 2 > reboot > 2 > reboot > 0 > reboot > 4 > reboot > 2

As you can see, AVG has me rebooting my machine almost every other day.  It is unfortunate that their update process involves a reboot so frequently.  It might be time to try out another offering...

I'll let you know what I find.

Update:
Ok, another oddity I've discovered with AVG.  It detected a virus on my machine, in an old archive file, so I'm not too concerned about it.  But here is the thing, it didn't notify me that it found a virus.  I had to go into the Test History (double checking to make sure they were still running) and that is when I saw that it found a virus.  In fact, it has been finding this virus with each scan every day for over a week.  If I hadn't gone into the Test History on my own, I still wouldn't have known about it.  Wierd. 

Update (2008-04-09):
I recently came across this site which provides the results of some comparison tests of many different antivirus products.  Worth a look if you are shopping around.
http://www.av-comparatives.org/

I started working on a legacy web application that was comprised of both classic ASP and ASP.NET.  The development box was running win 2003 server x64 with IIS 6. 

The application typically uses the standard 20 minute session timeout period, however, for my dev box, I wanted to lengthen that time to avoid having to log in more times than necessary.  I set the classic ASP session to 240 minutes, and the ASP.NET session to 240 minutes in the web.config file.

I then proceeded to go to work.  A short time later, I was redirected to the login page.  Hmm, wierd I thought.  Ah, let it go this time.  Log in and keep working.

The next day, after my initial log in, once again my session timed out after about 40 minutes and I was redirected to the login page.  I double checked my session times, both were still set to 240 minutes.

After a little bit of head scratching, I found my way into the properties of the Application Pool for my web app in IIS.  My attention was drawn to the Recycling tab where I noted that my application pool would be recycled every 1740 minutes.  Since my sessions were stored "In Process", this recycling would kill my session, however, the timing didn't seem too likely.  Nonetheless, I changed the property to configure the worker process to recycle at a specifiec time instead:  3am.

On the Performance tab, I found something even more interesting.  An "Idle Timeout" setting that was set to shutdown the worker process after being idle for 20 minutes.  Bingo!

So even though my session timeouts were set correctly at 240 minutes, I could still lose my session after 20 minutes because the worker process would be shut down after 20 minutes of inactivity... which might be common on a development machine where you are the only web site visitor and you are distracted by other work or working in other applications for a period of time.

Once I turned off the "Idle Timeout" feature for my Application Pool, my premature session death is a thing of the past.