john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

Upgrade?

Thu, 2009-11-05 23:45 -- John Hawks

For obscure reasons, I'm installing Windows 7 on one of my MacBooks. The installation has gone pretty smoothly. But the first thing I wanted to do was install Safari -- not because I'm a zealot or anything, but that's what I use on every other computer, and I don't see any sense using a different browser on this one.

So how does Microsoft welcome me back into the fold? Internet Explorer won't load apple.com, or any pages from apple.com. No problem loading any other website -- heck, I've got Firefox downloading now. Nope, just Apple, which loads fine right at this moment on the MacBook I'm typing this on.

Meanwhile, on the TV comes the new "Switchers" commercial, where the PC goes into a time warp of endless promises of stability from the past.

And where the heck is my bash prompt?

UPDATE (2009-11-10): A reader writes to remind me of Cygwin, which installs bash and other Unix utilities on Windows. Oh, it works like a charm. Backslashes have their place, but the file structure is not it.

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Neandertals

For years, I've worked on their bones. Now I'm working on their genes. Read more about the science studying these ancient people.

Denisova

From a finger bone of an ancient human came the record of a completely unexpected population. My lab is working on the science of the Denisova genome.

Acceleration

The advent of agriculture caused natural selection to speed up greatly in humans. We're uncovering some of the ways that populations have rapidly changed during the last 10,000 years.

Malapa

Just outside Johannesburg, the Malapa site is producing some of the most exciting finds in human evolution. This site is the headquarters of the Malapa Soft Tissue Project.