Monday, January 25, 2010

Early Misdeeds Evident

A January 20 Scientific American piece titled Endangered Species: Humans Might Have Faced Extinction 1 Million Years Ago says that the early human species -- including Homo erectus, H. ergaster and archaic H. sapiens -- were down to about 18,500 breeding individuals.

According to genetic evidence the early human population faced a major setback about one million years ago. It is thought that the diminished genetic diversity one million years ago suggests human ancestors experienced a catastrophic event at that time as devastating as a purported supervolcano thought to have nearly annihilated humans 70,000 years ago.

According to Pat Robertson this was another act of god:
Something happened a long time ago in Haiti Africa, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French Homo erectus. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French Homo erectus. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal. Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Windows 7 and Canon Utilities

After my modest success with installing Windows 7 on my home computer, I spent my Monday morning at work installing Windows 7 there. Because I sometimes use my Canon camera at work, I brought in the software CD for EOS utilities.
When I tried installing the software, however, I encountered a dialog that said "Installation program of EOS utility requires administrator privileges." The problem was that I am the admin on this machine! I don't know what that difference is between my home and work environments that would cause this to happen. I tried the "run as administrator" command, and I tried compatibility modes.
When I googled the error message, I got one hit: http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?p=9162655. The solution, which worked, by the way, is a doozy. Get a load of this:
  1. When you receive the error , DON'T click the "OK" button.
  2. Navigate to the following path: "C:\Users\admin-user\AppData\Local\Temp\".
  3. Inside this directory, you should see a directory named something like "CanonUPW_000". Copy this whole directory to another location.
  4. Then click "OK" on the installation program error on the screen (which removes the directory you just copied).
  5. Open the directory that you copied in the last step and navigate to the following location: ".\CanonUPW_000\INST\INSTALL\COMMON". You should find an "Install.exe" file in this directory.
  6. Open the properties of this "Install.exe" file, then select the "Compatibility" tab.
  7. Select the "Change settings for all users" button and select the "Run this program in compatibility mode for "Windows XP (Service Pack 3).
  8. Under the "Privilege Level" section, select the "Run this program as an administrator", then click OK twice.
  9. Execute the "Install.exe" file. The installation should start and finish successfully.
Great googly moogly!