Why aren't there any decent audio libraries for .NET?  Don't get me wrong, it's nice that the framework supports some audio features in a very simple way if you want to just play something.  However, if you need access to the audio data to manipulate it in whatever way or just want to know the duration, play location, audio ...

I have to admit that lately I've been feeling a little overwhelmed by the amount of new technology that I need to grok in order to stay ahead of the curve.  In a relatively short window of time, we've had Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Expression Blend, ...

OK, so I took the step forward and decided to live on the uber bleeding edge.  As you can see from the image, I decided to go ahead and install Microsoft Visual Studio Codename Orcas Beta 1 on my main machine.  Yes, the same machine I'm running Vista x64 on.  The biggest reason for doing this is the "support" in Visual ...