A solution came suddenly, when I saw some CCFLs on sale in an online hardware store for €4,99. One trip to the shops and 7€ spent later I’m sitting here in the dark, typing this text and having my eyes not stressed at all

The CCFLs I bought were from Sharkoon, and came with a switch, transformator and a Y-cable to connect to the PC’s power supply, obviuosly aimed at the casemodding scene:

“That’s all very nice”, I thought, “but firstly, how do I power it (my PC is under the table, and the monitor sits above it), and secondly, where do I put the switch so I can turn it on and off?”. I decided to elongate the power cable by 5-6 feet and to put the switch (together with the transformator and the cables) on the back of my screen, where the CCFLs themselves would go. After thinking that, I went to a hardware store and got the following stuff for a total of 7€:

My plan required: a plastic box to put the switch and cables in, cable binders and connectors (because I do not have the tools for soldering), isolating tape and some cable.

I cut the Y-cable after the split from the Molex connector, and reconnected it with 6 feet of my cable using the connectors. Then I put th switch in the side of the plastic box, and put the cable and connectors inside.

After that I connected the transformator and the CCFLs, connected the Y-cable inside my PC, and turned it on. It worked!

A little detail remained – the whole thing had to be put onto the screen. I put the box with the switch on using double-sided tape near the bottom of the screen, so the switch can be easily reached and cannot be seen. For the rest (transformator and lamps) a set of stick-on pads was included in the package, so I used that.

Result: a nice working backlight for 12,99€, that anyone can build.

If we try to describe anything known to us with our words, there will be no word deficiency. One description will be good, another one not so – that will tell the difference in the describer’s skill. But noone will stop looking for the next needed word in a simple story.

An “idea crisis” can only happen, if the designer sets out aiming to think of something new and unusual.

Something new and unusual cannot be thought up – it can only be discovered while working on a specific, defined goal. It’s the same difference as there is between recitation of words and a story.

A writer’s block is a dead end of a senseless way.

© art.lebedev, my translation from Russian

In every folder that is managed with SVN, it creates a hidden .svn subdirectory. In it, a list of all files and subdirectories in that folder are stored, together with technical information about their history as well as every file itself. The file .svn/entries contains a list of all files and directories in the folder where .svn is located, and the directory .svn/text-base contains the recent revisions of all files, with .svn-base added as an additional extension.

project
  |- index.php
  |- config.php
  |- dir
  |    |- .svn
  |    |    |- entries
  |    |    '- text-base
  |    |         '- file.ext.svn-base
  |    '- file.ext
  |- .svn
  |    |- entries
  |    |- text-base
  |    |    |- index.php.svn-base
  |    |    '- config.php.svn-base
  |    '- ...
  '- ...

Now, normally the .svn is hidden, and doesn’t bother anyone much. However, with default settings, the webserver will treat the files inside it just like any other file – if requested directly, those files will be served. Using the entries file, a list of accessible files can be obtained – among which there might be configuration files or others containing confidential information. And since the files in the text-base directory have their extension changed they will not be processed by, for example, PHP – the sourcecode will be shown as it is.

This vulnerability was discovered some time ago by a group of Russian programmers. They did a scan of a large amount of websites, including some fairly big names in the .com, .de and .ru zones, and the results were staggering. Owners of hundreds of websites were notified of the vulnerability, and after it was closed, some details were disclosed on a large Russian IT blog Habrahabr.

There are multiple ways of securing against the vulnerability. Among the most simple and efficient are:

• Blocking web access to the .svn directory altogether using, for example, the .htaccess file for Apache.
• Using the svn export command instead of the usual svn checkout does not produce the .svn directory in the first place.

While those solutions might seem obvious (and they really are), I was very surprised when I did a simple check among a few websites from my bookmarks list. So webmasters – if you haven’t yet known about this, beware.

A good idea soon came from a friend: a client for the menu of the Mensa, university’s cafeteria of sorts. So one can look, while walking from the lectures (or sitting in them), what there is to eat today, and whether one doesn’t rather want to walk straight home. And so, a day, lots of coffee and a lot of googling later, I present you this wonderous Android app to see and download:

The app is available from the Android Market, and can be found easiest by scanning the following QR Code (if you don’t have the Barcode Scanner app, go and install it from the Market now, it’s a must on Android):

For the ones who dislike WMP and prefer the old good Winamp, there now also is a possibility to make use of these new possibilities. It is granted by a new Winamp plugin, win7shell, available here: http://code.google.com/p/win7shell/.

This plugin implements the following:

• Progress bar showing the current position of the playing track. Becomes yellow when paused and red when stoppen:
     
• Overlay mini-icons for play, pause and stop, also combined with the progress bar:
     
• Aero Peek – different options of displaying the track information, as well as album art and playback control buttons:
   
• Jumplist – a list of the recent and most played tracks as well as some frequently used Winamp options, accessed with a right click:
  

Plugin’s author is actively working on it, talking with the users on Google Code and releasing updates. I found out about this plugin yesterday and instantly recommend it to anyone using (or considering) Winamp on Windows 7.

A 42-year old driver has to pay 900 Euro for speeding on the autobahn Thursday morning. The man was going along in a rental car on the A5 near Weiterstadt. A camera has caught him going at 149 km/h in the road works area. Only 80 is allowed there, so the police. Because the driver has no residence in Germany, he has to pay the 900€ as a “security payment”.

Holy crap. I go along there every week a few times, and virtually noone is keeping inside the speed limit… a good thing I’m already out of the probation time, and have never been caught *shudder*.

Autobahn (pronounced /ˈɔːtoʊbɑːn/) is the German word for a major high-speed road restricted to motor vehicles [...], similar to a motorway or freeway in English-speaking countries.
© Wikipedia

Autobahn. A word that is familiar to every driver. One of the last accessible places on Earth, where one can take a car to the very limit, without breaking the law.

Yes, two-thirds of all German autobahns do not have a constant speed limit. Half of them do not have any at all. And still, the autobahns are statistically seen the safest roads in the country – less accidents happen there and fewer people die, than on the rural roads and in the cities. How is this possible?

In this article I would like to familiarise the reader with the phenomenon of German autobahns, their history, features and rules. We’ll begin with history.

History

The official term “Autobahn” is first to be found in the German documents of 1932. It described a “high-speed road without intersections and oncoming traffic”. The first road fulfilling these requirements was opened in the same year between Cologne and Bonn, and was built for speeds up to 75 mph, although only a few vehicles could even reach such speeds at the time. Today this autobahn bears the designation of A555.

In 1933, with national-socialists coming to the power, they begun a mass construction of autobahns. They were planned to be used for rapidly moving troops inside the country, and also as temporary airfields in the case of need. Under the Nazi propaganda pressure the autobahn network developed very fast, and because there were simply not enough cars to create any traffic, even cyclists were allowed to use them.

After the war, most of the autobahns were in a fairly bad state. In Western Germany, a restoration program was lauched in the 50′s, that slowly transformed into expansion of the existing network; a lot of construction went on up to the middle of the 80′s. In the East, however, most of the autobahn network still remained damaged right up to the German reunification in 1990. Little money was spent on road works in the time of the Cold War. East German autobahns had a speed limit of 60 mph, in places even lower than that.

Autobahns today

At the present day the length of the autobahn network in Germany exceeds 12500 kilometres. More than 50% of all the autobahns are unlimited; there is only a “recommended” speed of 130 km/h (roughly 80 mph), that is optimised for fuel usage and CO² emissions. Normal traffic speed in the middle lane of a mildly busy autobahn is about 85-90 mph, and it is common for traffic to flow at more than 100 mph in the fast lane.

Unique conditions are created to ensure safety at such speeds. Obviously, there are no intersections or traffic light; all autobahn connections are made through high-speed multilevel interchanges. Anywhere on an autobahn, there are at least two lanes heading in each direction, three in the more busy parts, sometimes even more. The road surface is kept in perfect condition: tarmac is renewed every 15 years at least, the lanes are clearly marked. In the past years, new autobahns are being built using a new type of concrete surface, that will require less maintenance and will serve up to 30 years.

On the busy parts of the autobahn, such as around big cities, electronic signs are used to display warning signs (e.g. about road works or congestion coming up ahead) and/or temporary speed limits.

Still, despite the heavenly conditions created for fast driving, a vital role in the security is played by the rules and regulations of the autobahn network. There are only a few rules and they are not complicated; however, non-compliance may lead to expensive fines at best, or a terrible accident in the worst case.

Rules of the autobahn

The main rule of driving on the autobahn (just as on every other road in Germany) is the “Rechtsfahrgebot”, the rule to drive on the furthest lane available to the right. It is this very rule that allows the vehicles driving at different speeds not to interfere with each other: slow vehicles drive on the right, and the fast ones overtake them on the left. It also works together with almost all of the entrances and exits being on the right, too: you slow down and switch to the right to exit, and you speed up and overtake slower vehicles going to the left when entering.

When entering the autobahn, cars already on it have the right of way. Thanks to this, the entering traffic does not disrupt the flow on the autobahn. However, there is one expection: if you have just entered the autobahn and are accelerating in the entry lane (which is an additional lane to the right of the main road), you may overtake slow traffic on the right side and enter before them. With this exception, when entering the autobahn alongside a slow lorry, you won’t have to slow down and accelerate again.

Only vehicles capable of going at least 60 km/h are allowed to enter the autobahn. Interestingly enough, the is no regulation for minimal speed on the autobahn itself – it is only forbidden to stop, except in a case of emergency or a breakdown. Running out of fuel is not considered a breakdown and is, in fact, illegal: there are more then enough gas stations along the autobahns.

Fines for breaking the autobahn laws are, as said above, quite high. So, for not keeping the distance to the vehicle in front, a fine can go up to €400 and withdrawal of the driver’s license for up to three months. Speeding tickets can reach €600.

Traffic cameras are common on the autobahns, some installed in certain places all the time, some deployed by the police. Also, the police can be seen patrolling the autobahns sometimes, in designated cars as well as undercover.

Future of the autobahns

The autobahns are one of the most important links in the german transportation network. Surely, this is a warrant for constant maintenance, modernization and expansion of the network, in near future as well as in the long-term plans. But many things can change in the upcoming years.

One of the main problems of the autobahn network is the amount of traffic, mainly by freight transport. Lorry drivers in Germany are prescribed to drive not more than 4,5 hours at a time, and between driving sessions pauses of at least 45 minutes are to be made. The problem is, there are simply not enough parking spaces for all the pauses and night breaks. Different measures are undertaken to solve the problem: new autobahn parking lots and rest centers are being constructed along the main routes, and additional taxation of the freight transport is being introduced.

Another discussed problem is the environmental issue. The main argument is said to be high fuel usage at the autobahn speeds as well as increased emissions. Debates on the topic are being held for many years, but no definite conclusion is in sight.

Sources: de.wikipedia.org, focus.de, Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt, many others and generally Google.