I bought a Microsoft lifecam-VX3000 webcam recently from amazon. I was initially happy with it. The video quality was good. It was better than my creative webcam I had before this. I have also a headphone with mic attached for the audio. I was using the headphone for a while without any problem before buying the webcam.

But after I started using the webcam the person on the other end started complaining now and then about some buzzing noise. I did not have any problem on my side. There is a microphone on the webcam also. I thought the problem noise must be coming from that. So I tried disabling the microphone in the webcam via device manager. It was not possible to disable the microphone alone. Both audio and video are available as one device. Muting and reducing the level to zero of the webcam microphone also did not help.

One day after the other side had me listen to the buzzing noise, I opened the camera with a screw driver to see whether there is any chance of disabling the mic inside. I could not find any easy way. So I went destructive and cut the microphone from the wires and took it out. I put back the camera, connected it, and it was working fine.

But the next day once again there was noise. I did not know where to look. I remembered my cellphone causing frequent interruptions on my PC speakers. So I am right now trying to keep my cellphone away while on computer. There are no complaints for a week now. I am still not 100% sure what is the cause of the noise.

After some mistakes, corrections, sudden attack of rule following and conspiracy theories FIDE released the corrected rating list for April. Here are the top 10 players.

1. Anand, Viswanathan 2786
2. Topalov, Veselin 2772
3. Kramnik, Vladimir 2772
4. Morozevich, Alexander 2762
5. Aronian, Levon 2759
6. Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar 2757
7. Radjabov, Teimour 2747
8. Leko, Peter 2738
9. Svidler, Peter 2736
10. Adams, Michael 2734