Disqus - Latest Comments for nikolaus heger

Re: Stop Spotlight From Indexing Your External Drives

nikolaus heger — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:54:41 -0000

What I want is a checkbox that says "don't index external drives". I never want to index external drives because this is a laptop, and therefore external drives are always only connected on a temporary basis. Most of them are backup drives or media storage, there's no use in indexing them at all.

I don't think it's "easy" to remember to put a new external drive in the privacy tab in spotlight every time - it's more Microsoft-ish in that it's "too smart" and doing things behind your back that you don't want it to do. As in I just plugged in a USB drive, and wanted to copy some media files to it. It was incredibly slow, and CPU usage shot up too. Why? Because spotlight decided to index the drive, stealing I/O bandwidth and CPU time from me, and generally preventing me from doing what I want to do. Until I saw the spotlight indicator and put it in the privacy tab.

The only reason I can think of why somebody might want to index their external hard drive is when the external drive acts as a data repository that's pretty much always connected to the computer, e.g. on a desktop Mac. It should be the exception rather than the rule.

Re: PwnageTool 2.1 and QuickPwn 1.1

nikolaus heger — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 05:00:21 -0000

I voted in the Engadget poll... I don't know but you guys should know how relevant you are just by looking at the download numbers.

I have a 1st gen iPhone in an unsupported country, and I want to run 2.1, particularly since 2.0 is so buggy. This is only possible because of the Pwnage tool. Without it, I'd be out in the water (and angry at Apple). I am not alone either, there's half a million others in the same situation.

Is the Pwnage tool still relevant? 500,000 say yes, it is. Even if they don't read Engadget.

Re: PwnageTool 2.1 and QuickPwn 1.1

nikolaus heger — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:40:25 -0000

THE MISSING MANUAL for people with already pwned 2.0.x phones:
1 - Use Pnwage Tool to create custom firmware
2 - In iTunes, option-click restore, select custom firmware, restore phone with it

In particular: You don't need to go into DFU mode if the phone has already been pwned. You can't use QuickPwn on an already pwned phone. You can use iTunes 8.

Re: 2007/09/16/bill-maher-slams-google-yahoo-iphone-buyers/

nikolaus heger — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 03:36:49 -0000

Loved everyting except the breast feeding bit - he didn't seem to have a point there except the rather weak plead to "cover up". If you watch him he never says "don't breastfeed", and he never says "don't breastfeed in public". He just said cover up, which is perfectly reasonable. But not a strong statement. I don't think the lactivists he made fun of would even object to that.

As for planning ahead well I just had a newborn and quite frankly that just isn't possible. You can't plan ahead random. OK? Anyone with kids - which believe it or not is the majority of the people on the planet - knows that.

Lactivists have become neccessary as a strong counter force against the unhealthy yet infinitely more commercially exploitable alternative - formula and baby food. Why is it even neccessary to remind women to breastfeed when it's the most natural, the most obvious, and the scientifically-proven best thing they can do? Only because companies want to sell stuff to women. In a sane world, we wouldn't need any lactivists.

One last thing - yes, dogs can do it, yet the birth of baby is the single biggest miracle a man or woman can ever hope to witness in their entire life. I know - I was there :)

Re: Going Google: The Apple Switch Ads for the Web App Era

nikolaus heger — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 07:15:47 -0000

Bold. Not sure how companies feel about having their sensitive data on google servers. Unencrypted?! MS solutions are so inefficient and expensive that it might just work.

Re: Apple to Finally Offer Pre-Made iPhone Ringtones

nikolaus heger — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:55:41 -0000

I have a 1st generation iPhone and tried to make custom ringtones every now and then but each time they end up being so quiet that I have to listen hard to hear them in a quiet room. For day to day use, they're worthless. The only ones I can use at all are the default and the old phone sound.

Waiting for a 3GS to become available here and really hoping for a ringer that's about 10x as loud.

Re: The Google Software Update Agent

nikolaus heger — Tue, 05 May 2009 05:40:19 -0000

Thanks for the tip. I only noticed this update agent when it told me about a new Picasa version. This is horrible behavior - the last thing I want is some software popping up at random times interrupting my work. What if everyone did this?

Re: Recursively adding files to CVS

nikolaus heger — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 22:49:09 -0000

Thanks, this is fantastic

It did not work for me as specified under bash on OS X, I had to use the following, and note the -n1 parameter for xargs:

find . -type d -print | grep -v CVS | xargs -n1 cvs add
find . -type f -print | grep -v CVS | xargs -n1 cvs add

the -n1 ensures that cvs add is called only for a single file each time. That's required because while cvs add can be called with a number of files as argument, if one of the arguments "aborts" the add, the others won't be added. I found that to happen with the first line which adds the directories. If a directory is already there, cvs add aborts instead of just skipping it like it does with files.

So it would do a cvs add dir1 dir2 dir3, but because dir1 was already in the repository, it would not add dir 2 and 3. I am not sure it's required for files, but it can't hurt.