We are not so smart

De este libro había hablado un poco en goodreads, y su temática es una que conozco, en resumen me he estancado en leer libros de esta índole, padezco muchas de las debilidades de las que se habla en el mismo.

Mi opinión mejoró mucho, y en realidad hasta me dieron ganas de abofetear a algunos de los reviewers que no se detenían a pensar en cual fue el origen de este texto (un blog) y aplaudo su estructura, o más bien, la falta de la misma, puedes leer cualquiera de las maneras en que te engañas sin necesidad de leerlas anteriores o de hacerlo en secuencia.

Cierto que pocas cosas son nuevas (para mi, por "atascado" con este tipo de libros) pero vaya que sería útil en ambientes en los que me frustro fácilmente, por ejemplo, para platicar con chicos de secundaria y prepa (mi experiencia de maestro) y que se les quede una pequeña cita (el libro es bueno en eso, de hecho mientras terminaba de leerlo, en un estacionamiento del estadio azteca, puse algunas en mis redes sociales) o, el que me frustra aún más, el ambiente Godinez de las empresas mexicanas, con un pendejete administrador que trata a la gente como ganado y sólo los monitorea, pero nunca piensa que en realidad el idiota es el. A esa gente me dan ganas de golpearla con este libro (una pena que no es de pasta dura y unas 2000 páginas)

You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself by David McRaney

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Si ya leiste a Gladwell, no te molestes, el estilo es menos formal (se nota que es un blog) pero la información es la misma, los mismos experimentos, las mismas teorías, las mismas investigaciones, y, tendré que leer el blog, no encuentro la voz del autor, reporta sin "reportear"

Eso sí, si es tu primera incursión es un texto excelente (agregale una estrella si no has leído a Malcolm Gladwell )y el mismo estilo de post tiene como agradable consecuencia que cada capítulo es de lectura ágil




View all my reviews

Recomendable para todo el mundo, aún si ya antes se ha hecho, y tal vez mejor.

La anécdota de como comenzó todo con un viaje a Alemania y una maestra que iba más allá de lo estrictamente necesario me han encantado, y sí, yo siempre cometeré ese error de valorar las cosas por lo que me dicen de mi, de lo que creo, de lo que siento, de lo que he hecho ¿qué se le va a hacer?

Zinio: BUILD IT, Maximum PC | Mar-13

BUILD IT

An Affordable Linux Gaming Rig

We show you how to pick the best parts, pick the best distro, and put it all together

THE MISSION The free Linux operating system has been around for ages, but its inherent complexity and limited support has always relegated its use to extreme enthusiasts, programmers, and other hardcore types. That might be changing, though, as a lot of loyal PC enthusiasts are less than pleased with Windows 8, and gaming juggernaut Valve has thrown its hat into the ring by launching a Linux version of Steam, its popular online content delivery service. Given the lackluster reception of Windows 8 and the renewed popularity of Linux, we decided to build a Linux gaming box to see for ourselves whether the OS, at this time, could be a reasonable alternative to Windows for gaming.

CHOOSING THE HARDWARE

OUR LINUX MACHINE was built with a low target price of $650 because we wanted this project to be semi-easy to duplicate by anyone. With this in mind, we started with Intel’s Ivy Bridge Core i3-3220 processor, as it comes at a reasonable cost, gives us a great upgrade path, and its low TDP of 55W means we won’t need a massive CPU cooler or PSU. Our Asus P8Z77-V LE motherboard is also affordable while offering both SLI and CrossFire support, as well as two USB 3.0 ports. Power is provided by a CX430 Corsair power supply from the company’s low-cost Builder series. Given our modest build-out, we figured anything bigger than 430W would be overkill.

GPU duties are handled by a Gigabyte GTX 650 video card, which at $120 performs better than a Radeon HD 7750 and should be sufficient for our Linux adventure. The system requirements of the available games are very low, so a more powerful GPU would be wasted. As our budget didn’t allow for an SSD, we went with a 500GB, 7,200rpm WD Caviar Blue. We scored 8GB of G.Skill Ripjaws RAM because it was dirt cheap at just $45. Holding all the gear is a Corsair Carbide case, which is just $60 but has USB 3.0 front panel ports, cable routing, and tool-less drive bays.

With the hardware in hand, it’s time to build the machine. If you need any guidance putting it together, check out this stepby- step guide from a previous build: http://bit.ly/wNwJyQ.

Now, let’s turn your new box into a Linux gaming rig.

1 2 DOWNLOAD YOUR DISTRO

WE CHOSE the Ubuntu flavor of Linux for this project because it’s considered the easiest to use for beginners. To get started, we headed to the website (www.ubuntu.com) and downloaded our preferred flavor (image A). We chose version 12.04 LTS because it will be supported for five years rather than the latest 12.10 version, which will be only be supported for two years. After the download was complete, we prepared to burn the ISO image to a blank CD-R.

2 BURN THE ISO TO DISC

WE HAD TO find suitable software for burning the ISO to CD-R (at 695MB, the distro fits on one disc) since Windows 7 doesn’t natively allow burning ISO files like Windows 8 does. After searching, we settled on the free and easy-to-use Active@ ISO Burner. Go to www.ntfs.com/iso-burning.htm for the download, then run it. Browse to the ISO, select your optical drive, and hit the Burn button (image B). When it’s done, pop the disc into the optical drive of your new guinea rig, and prepare to install Linux.

3 INSTALL THE OS

THE BIGGEST DECISION you’ll have to make when installing Linux involves drive partitioning (a partition is a chunk of a storage device that appears to the OS as a separate volume). If you’re multibooting, install Linux to a separate partition, but if you’re like us and just want to run it off one storage device, you can ignore partition options (image C). After you’ve finished (or skipped) partitioning your hard drive, the OS will begin to install. It took about 30 minutes on our 7,200rpm drive, but it will take about 10-15 minutes on an SSD (we tested it just for fun).

4 UPDATE THE OS

JUST LIKE WITH Windows, the first thing you’ll want to do after you’ve installed Ubuntu is update the operating system. To do so, you will need to grab the latest updates from the Update Manager. Do this by clicking the power button in the right-hand corner of the screen and then clicking Update Manager to see a list of the latest updates; click Install Updates (image D). Unlike with Windows, which can take days to get up to date if you’re not using a Service Pack, the update process for Ubuntu took about 15 minutes. After that and a single reboot, we were up to date.

5 INSTALL VIDEO/SOUND DRIVESR

THE LAST THING you’ll need to do before installing Steam is to install the latest video drivers and other non-open-source or proprietary drivers, such as those for your motherboard. To install these drivers you’ll simply click the green video-card icon in the right-hand corner of the screen, which pops up a window that displays the proprietary drivers for your computer (image E). One of the cooler features of Ubuntu Linux is that it finds all the available drivers for your system, so you don’t have to visit the manufacturers’ website to download them. After you’ve finished downloading the drivers, you’ll need to restart your system, and then you’ll be completely set up and ready to tackle some games with Valve’s Steam client.

6 INSTALL STEAM

INSTALLING STEAM is fairly simple. Download the client from Valve’s website (www.valvesoftware.com) and then double-click it to run the installer, which takes you to Ubuntu’s Software Center. This Software Center shows you any newly installed software, and it’s where we’ll install Steam (image F). Once it’s installed, you can run the client. But first, you might want to check out other open-source games that are listed in the Software Center, which is a mini app store providing a few games and other small applications for Linux users.

7 SET UP STEAM

AFTER INSTALLING Steam, you will need to log into your account and authenticate your computer via email. You can start installing games on your Ubuntu 12.04 machine (image G) after your first log-in. As of this writing, there were 41 games available, and just like in Windows, each of them (aside from TF2, of course) costs money. You will also be able to download any of your previously purchased games that are Linux-compatible (Team Fortress 2, for example). Although 41 games isn’t very many, Valve has been adding new titles at a steady clip. The company added 15 of the 41 titles in its Linux library in just the first month of the new Steam client’s existence.

LIVING LA VIDA LINUX

OVERALL, WE WERE impressed with the experience we had using Linux for Internet browsing, word processing, and playing games. The OS ran surprisingly well on our modest rig. It booted quickly, shut down in a heartbeat, and handled multitasking without any problems. When it comes to gaming, our feeling is that it handles the games we play just fine, but the test bed of 41 offered by Steam at this time is too small a sample—we want more! We know Steam is not the only supplier of games, but we’re still talking about a relatively small gaming universe on Linux. As an example, Steam offers more than 6,000 titles on the Windows platform, so clearly no hardcore gamer can survive on Linux alone. Also, there are zero triple-A titles on Steam for Linux at this time—that right there is a deal-killer for us, at least in the long run. In testing, we sampled Team Fortress 2, Trine 2, and Waveform, and they all ran with ease at 1920x1200 on our budget box, with all settings maxed. We were greatly impressed by just how smoothly the games hummed along.

Just because we can’t survive on Linux alone doesn’t mean we didn’t like experimenting with it on the side, however. Building the Linux gaming box was a fun experience, and we’d recommend any enthusiast take it for a test drive. Besides, both Linux and Steam are free, so trying either one won’t cost you a dime.

WHERE ARE THE BENCHMARKS?

We know your eyes are scanning the pages looking for some hard numbers, but sadly, we don’t have any benchmarks this time around. We wish we did, but Linux isn’t very well supported by software developers who make benchmarking tools. We can tell you that to our eyes, all the games we tested played well on our GTX 650 at 1080p, running at least 30fps at all times. We were never lacking for GPU horsepower, in other words.

We wanted to try out the Phoronix Test Suite benchmarks, but Ubuntu warned us off installing it with a "bad quality" message. Another possible benchmark is x264, but it’s designed to test a machine’s CPU rather than its GPU, so it wouldn’t paint a complete picture of this system’s capabilities. Being a gaming machine, most people—ourselves included—are more interested in GPU performance and specific frame rates for games, but again, these numbers are hard to come by. None of the games on Steam have built-in benchmarks, and Fraps is Windows-only at this time, along with 3DMark, Catzilla, and all of the other games and programs we typically use. This situation might change now that Valve is pushing the gate open, but until it does, we’ll stick with an old favorite—EyeballMark.

read an article from Maximum PC | Mar-13 and would like to share it with you!

The original article is included as an attachment to this message.

For more publications go digital at www.zinio.com

Zinio: Room service, PC Gamer (US Edition) | Mar-1...

Room service

Somewhere in Bellevue, Washington the Valve Corporation is working on a gaming PC that Gabe Newell describes as “living room-friendly.” So it’s safe to assume that, in addition to being compact, quiet, and easy to hook up to a TV, it’ll be based on standardized components inside a sealed case that does everything but detonate upon opening to prevent you from messing with the hardware.

I can’t say I’m not looking forward to one. I can easily imagine something that gives me easy access to my PC games in the living room vastly extending the amount of time I spend slumped on the couch. On the other hand, I know that the most effective and dependable way to make something easier to use and “living room-friendly” is to remove choices. I think of PC gamers as people who do things the way we feel like doing them. We’re people who like to mess with things: we customize, tweak, break, reconfigure, and perfect. It’s a platform for our imagination and expression as much as for our entertainment—even if we’re just expressing our choice of videocard.

All in all, I can live with the standardized hardware, but not without mods and my choice of controllers. The more flexibility and choice the mysterious “Steam Box” can offer me, the more likely I’ll cotton to it.

What about you? What would convince you to pony up for a living room rig from Valve? Let me know at logan@pcgamer.com.

LOGAN DECKER

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

logan@pcgamer.com

@logandecker

BRINGING YOU THE SCOOPS THIS MONTH...

Evan Lahti @elahti

Played an unhealthy amount of CS:GO. Dreamt of a future where FPSes were popular eSports.

T.J. Hafer @anubistj

Was declared a saint in Crusader Kings 2, and spent the holidays acting all smug about it.

Tyler Wilde @tyler_wilde

Hunted through Far Cry 3’s menus to find and kill its cruelest antagonist: constant tutorial pop-ups.

Tom Francis @pentadact

Our efforts to delay Gunpoint continue: this month we made Tom play BioShock Infinite.

read an article from PC Gamer (US Edition) | Mar-13 and would like to share it with you!

The original article is included as an attachment to this message.

For more publications go digital at www.zinio.com

Zinio: LOOKING DEEP WITHIN, Maximum PC | Feb-13

LOOKING DEEP WITHIN

Quinn Norton

Byte Rights

OVER THE YEARS, there’s been talk on and off about a technology called Deep Packet Inspection, but apart from sounding like the title of sysadmin-themed porn, why should you care?

Technically, DPI is what happens when an ISP looks past the headers, or metadata, of the packets that carry information all around the Internet and into the content. On its own, looking doesn’t hamper the Internet, but only that packet header is required by the machines that need to pump the cats through the series of tubes.

Like all technologies, DPI isn’t inherently good or bad, but potentially either. Good uses include cleaning up spam and viruses, and useful traffic shaping. Bad uses include dystopian control of digital expression and perfect totalitarian surveillance.

But let’s break that down a bit. Because DPI looks into each packet, it can be used, as in the case of the NSA warrantless wiretaps, to copy every packet. In the case of Comcast, it was used to identify Bit-Torrent traffic and disrupt it. In America, it’s been used to very specifically target advertising. In other countries known to use DPI, like China and Bahrain, it could be (and likely is) used for specifically targeting political activists.

DPI is the technology that allows violation of net neutrality, lets ISPs throttle competing services, and rights-holders to comb the net looking for content. But despite the dark side, given how easy and useful for companies it is, it’s inevitable. Without rigorous legal protection, you’ll never know if it’s used on you.

The only thing that slows down DPI at all is encryption, coded messages ISPs can look at but never make sense of. Fortunately, encryption tools are becoming available to everyone. DPI is the future of the net—and so is you encrypting your way back to free speech and privacy.

Quinn Norton writes about copyright for Wired News and other publications.

read an article from Maximum PC | Feb-13 and would like to share it with you!

The original article is included as an attachment to this message.

For more publications go digital at www.zinio.com

Strike Suit Zero

Otra de esas historias de éxito de Kickstarter que ya están dando frutos.

Earth needs you! Help us raise enough to finish Strike Suit Zero, and bring the space combat genre back with a bang.

Es un juego de PC, de hecho es una carta de amor a un genero que ya está casi desaparecido, ¿y cómo no?, esto se juega mejor con joystick y las niñas consoleras todo lo quieren hacer con gamepads.

Le faltan cosas, como el famoso barrel roll , pero tiene EMPs para reemplazarlos.

Se le nota que su inspiración son los clásicos del genero porque sigue sus tradiciones muy de cerca, desde las misiones (las escoltas siempre son frustrantes)  y la dificultad, que es de los viejos tiempos, no para esta generación de "push button to win" y se vuelve repetitivo muy pronto, de nuevo, sólo los que lo extrañaban no sentiran ese tedio.

Tiene cosas muy interesantes como el soporte multimonitor, pero que difícil es que el force feedback funcione en los joysticks como el force 3d pro .

En resumen, un homenaje a los clásicos de un género que siempre fue de PC, y que ne PC ha logrado seguir con vida, financiado de un modo novedoso.

Es difícil, quenadie se engañe

Maldita maldición: Lakers

Octubre, Noviembre, Diciembre, Enero...Febrero parecía ser el fin de estos (apenas) cuatro meses (que se han sentido eternos) de esta temporada de pesadilla para los Lakers, cuando por fin parecía que se había tocado fondo y sólo se podía mejorar, se atravesó el juego de Phoenix (igualito que el de Orlando), juegos que se debieron ganar y por incapaces se perdieron, y luego en Brooklyn perdimos a Pau, si bien nos va llegará al final de marzo.

¿cómo se puede tener tanta mala suerte? , es como si toda la mala vibra de los haters (ya vieron que Kobe y MWP están en la lista de los 10 atletas más odiados) hubiera tomado forma, Nash, Blake, Gasol, HOward, otra vez Gasol, otra vez Howard y Jordan Hill está fuera, nunca están todos sanos, o a gusto con el coach que se ha pasado pasando sobre Pau, Morris y Duhon no están para competir ¿y Sacre? , tal vez nunca lo sabremos

Legend of fat Ninja

Poco que agregar, es gratis, es una historia de éxito, los ports se pagaron con ayuda de un kickstarter (rebasando la meta por muy poco)

by Zephyr Games

Legend of Fat Ninja features hours of single player gameplay for iOS and Android. It’s a fast-paced arcade game and a blast to play!

Download #LegendOfFatNinja For FREE thanks to @appoday tinyurl.com/ahrnffw #iphone #ipad #itunes
— Legend of Fat Ninja (@FatNinjaLegend) February 6, 2013

Help Fat Ninja become the greatest chef the world has ever known!

Located near the peak of Mt. Fuji, the famed Iron Skillet Academy has existed for centuries, working to mold the best chefs of the age. Combining the unique ninja style of combat with the culinary skills of past masters, the academy is incredibly exclusive some years having not a single graduate!

This year is different however, not one but two ninja chefs have graduated! Kureijita, aka The Fat Ninja, and his sidekick Kaminoha! They have left the Iron Skillet and have now endeavored to open their own famed noodle shop. But in order to be the very best, they will have to find legendary ingredients that other chefs across the land use. In order to do this, they will travel to the homeland of each of these famed chefs and defeat them and their servants, all while serving up the highest quality noodles to the locals!