Having just recently transitioned to Visual Studio 2010 (finally) at my day job, I found myself in a bit of a predicament.

Previously we'd been using VS2005, for which there was a little extension called MetalScroll (based on another named RockScroll); this extension changed the scrollbar into an actual thumbnail of the code in the editor. For very large and complex files, this makes navigation considerably easier and quicker because you can learn the code's physical layout and identify important locations in the code by sight.

Unfortunately, as of VS2010 all extensions have to use WPF; MetalScroll was a Win32 extension and the author had no interest in rewriting it for the new version.

There are some other scrollbar replacements available for VS2010 (AllMargins by David Pugh, and the modified version of it which is included in Microsoft's Productivity Power Tools for VS2010).

These have some nice new features, like showing a code preview tip window when you hover your cursor over the scrollbar, but none of them quite stack up to MetalScroll as far as navigation goes. AllMargins's included StructureMargin extension just shows an abstracted representation of code blocks and regions, while PPT's "full map" mode only renders every Nth line in large files, so the scrollbar image is not at all representative of the actual code layout.

Fortunately, while the source is not available for the improved version of StructureMargin that is included in PPT, the original one from AllMargins is. So this weekend, I decided to try my hand at tearing it down and rebuilding it into something approximating MetalScroll as closely as possible. Here's the result:

I call it MetalMargin (very creative eh?). It retains some of the features from AllMargins that I liked (the code preview on mouseover), while removing and rewriting the abstract structure view into a direct physical preview, which uses your own VS color settings to draw the thumbnail.

It's available here if you're interested in giving it a try. I haven't tested it anywhere other than my home machine yet, so if you have a "clean" VS2010 environment which has not had 2005/2008 installed also, you may be missing some dependencies. YMMV :)

In a sudden and baffling outbreak of common sense, the President and the Department of Justice have announced their opposition to some rather disturbing legislation that's been snaking its way through congress of late.

In the proposed bill, among other things, the DoJ would be given the responsibility of enforcing copyrights and prosecuting infringement, formerly civil offenses within the responsibility of the IP holders to deal with at their own expense. [more]

Worse, the bill would grant broad powers to seize any property believed to be involved in infringement. Given that the world is filled with copyrighted materials and it's incredibly trivial for anyone to infringe on *something* at some point, even unintentionally, this should give everyone a moment of pause, to say the least.

Say what you will about the President (though in the politics section, please, no flames here), it seems that at least one thing might get done right if this bill gets vetoed as it deserves.

Ah, Wikipedia. Savior of internet debaters and bane of those who try to set themselves in a positive light against the connected masses. And now, apparently, the Department of Homeland Security is relying on it to reinforce their own legal arguments. Or maybe not.

It seems that the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals had to tell the DHS and the Board of Immigration Appeals that Wikipedia is no excuse for evidence to use in their proceedings. In this particular case, an Ethiopian woman had entered with false papers, seeking asylum. The DHS and Immigration dutifully looked up her real papers from back home on Wikipedia and decided (based on the wiki article about the documents she was using) that they weren't good enough proof of identity. [more]

You'd think that it should be common sense--Wikipedia is great for learning about stuff in general when you're bored, but given that there's no requirement of actual knowledge in order to edit entries there, it's pretty commonly agreed that it shouldn't be used for anything where documentation and proof are important.

But with the government and anything internet-related, it seems more often than not that sense is anything but common... ;)

Does it really take a rocket scientist to install an anti-virus app and keep it up to date? If the astronauts aboard the International Space Station are any indication, even that's not enough!

Apparently, earlier this month NASA detected that a worm had infected some computers that were taken up into orbit in July. Smart as astronauts have to be, it seems none of them thought to even install an AV program on their laptops. [more]

Fortunately, the virus in question is only designed to steal passwords for some MMOs popular in East Asia, so shouldn't do any real damage while it is investigated and contained (if the astronauts do play those games, the lag from space might be a bit too much...).

On the upshot, now you can say you're smarter than an astronaut simply by keeping your AV on and up to date :)

Having returned from a much needed vacation last week (my first since starting to work for Stardock two years ago), it's time for me to get back on the old soapbox and talk about the latest news on software and law!

It seems that while I was away last week, a ninth circuit court of appeals overturned a previous ruling in the matter of open-source developer Robert Jacobsen versus a company who'd taken parts of his code, stripped all attribution to him, and used it for their own purposes in violation of the terms he released it under.

The previous ruling, made a year ago yesterday, was that the code had already been released to the public and that the company's use of it didn't constitute copyright infringement (dramatically limiting the developer's options to stop them). This new ruling holds that it is indeed infringement to redistribute open source code in violation of the terms it was released under. [more]

I think this serves as an interesting counterpoint to the ruling I posted about a month ago (which is still going strong). In that case, the judge ruled that simply running a legitimately obtained piece of software in violation of the EULA counted as copyright infringement, which I still feel is an abuse of both the letter and intent of copyright law. In this case, the offender really was making copies, and just because the author gave it away for nothing, I think it's entirely sensible that he should still be able to govern its further distribution.

What do you guys think? Is this new ruling fair and sensible, and will the courts ever find the proper balance between the rights of creators and consumers that copyright was meant to provide?

In a new report issued jointly by the United States Library of Congress and preservation groups in Australia, the UK, and the Netherlands, a problem has been brought to light that companies who use DRM may not have foreseen: their works can't legally be duplicated by the LOC, and may well disappear entirely once the media degrades or the means to use the works are lost.

We've had discussions recently about DRM that causes trouble for legitimate users, but this takes the issue a step further--thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a growing number of games, programs, music, and other digital works may only last as long as the discs they're on. [more]

The Library says that they do have the option to propose exceptions to laws preventing archival (which then need to be approved by the government), but even if they can get permission to circumvent DRM, they are powerless against the DMCA's prohibition on obtaining the tools to do so.

Some people have commented that DRM is okay as long as it isn't "too" onerous. But sadly the DMCA makes no such distinction--the weakest is just as much a problem as the very worst, since the Library of Congress is bound to abide by the law in their efforts to preserve creative works.

Let's not sit idly by and let the games and music we enjoy die within our lifetimes. Support companies who don't use DRM, petition those who do to stop, and work for change in laws governing it (in the US and in other countries with similar laws)!

In his summary ruling on Blizzard's case against World of Warcraft cheat-maker Michael Donnelly (released yesterday), District Court Judge David Campbell has stated that the act of using a bot in violation of a game's license or terms of use qualifies as a copyright violation. Huh?

Just to get it out of the way, I'm as much against cheats as the next guy. As a WoW player in particular, I'm glad to see Blizzard shut down the cheaters and cheat-makers. But this ruling doesn't make much sense to me; it seems like a case of the judge just trying to find a way to cover something which doesn't really cross any real existing laws. Worse, it sets some (arguably) nasty precedent, effectively making EULAs law (any violation is a violation of copyright), rather than simple contracts where the most you can lose is your right to use the software. [more]

Strangely, the judge actually dismissed Blizzard's claims that the cheats violated the DMCA. Given the amount of use the DMCA gets in such cases, you'd think that the ruling would have been the other way around, at least. In any case, it seems the case is now going to trial to decide the DMCA portion for certain.

What do you guys think? Should this ruling stand? Personally, I think that it shouldn't--stripping cheaters of their access to the game and perhaps making a civil claim against the cheat-makers for damaging the game for everyone else is justified, but making any EULA violations illegal, as Judge Campbell (inadvertently or otherwise) has done is going too far.

Some of you may be aware of the "three strikes" plan recently approved in France, where suspected copyright infringers are liable to be banned from the internet for up to a year if they persist after two warnings, and failed efforts to push similar laws across the entire EU a few months back.

Not content to be rebuffed, proponents of the laws have put them back on the table in Brussels, where they were set to be voted on yesterday. No news seems to be available online yet about how it went (any Europeans visitors have details on that?). 

Is banning pirates from the internet going too far, or is it justified? [more] It seems that no amount of DRM ever deters them for long, so perhaps cutting them off from their sources entirely would be the solution to large-scale piracy. Or maybe it just might drive them underground, and result in innocent users being banned on suspicions only. What do you guys think? Could this possibly work, or will it only make matters worse?

In a new joint study recently released by Google, IBM, and Switzerland, it was found that more than four out of ten web users don't have the latest updates for their browsers of choice, and are likely vulnerable to attacks as a result.

It's probably not too surprising, but in the per-browser breakdowns, Firefox and Safari users do mostly keep up to date (83% and 65% running the latest versions, respectively). What is a bit surprising to me, given that users who opt for alternate browsers tend to be more security-conscious than the general internet populace, is that Opera came out with just over half of its users keeping up with patches. And finally, IE ranked at the bottom with a bit less than half of its users running the latest version, despite automatic updates having been standard on Windows machines for some time.

What about you guys? Are you running the latest version of your browser? If not, why not? [more]

More Firefox news today! Some of you may be aware of Firefox's notorious record for memory usage in older versions--slowly growing throughout the day to the point that few dark corners of your RAM were free from its grasping tendrils. Happily, it looks like those days are now over.

Programmer Sam Allen of Dot Net Perls has released the results of some real-world usage testing of Firefox 3 and other current and upcoming browsers, and Firefox users will find the results quite pleasing: FF3 appears to be far better at using less, and cleaning up no-longer-needed memory than previous versions (usage remained low and fairly steady throughout the testing session).

[more]

Better, it now seems to use overall less than IE8, Opera 9.5, and Safari for Windows, if Sam's usage was consistent between browsers (I'd place less stock in these conclusions, in any case).

I'm a heavy Firefox user myself--my forum rounds typically see hundreds of tabs coming and going throughout a day-long session, so this is great news to me. Even more, it makes Firefox an even better option for low-end machines where memory is at a premium. Just one more reason to switch, if you haven't already.

This concludes this week's Firefox evangelism post ;)