FACTORTIERRA

Why is good the students know how speaking to a computer.   By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo . Photos Courtesy by Iván Rotta Saavedra .   SULLANA, Peru – The first time I sat down in front of a computer was in 1986. Actually, it was in front of some Atari or Commodore keyboard plugged to a 14-inch white-&-black TV during a vacation class. It was the time when Michael Knight spent speaking with a Pontiac car’s computer in an emblematic TV series, apparently science-fiction that time. Today, many time later, I speak to my smartphone ’s computer when I need verified answers about specific topics which I even write this article. We are not talking about artificial intelligence only. Before it, the process to manage orders and have results have to do with programming the device for it gives me a product or result. In a free etimology , programming means writing or outlining with anticipation, and amid the computation world, it means setting up a set of orders a...

PIURA CITY, Peru – On Thursday, May 30 th ,1.5 million cellphones left literally inoperative because to the blocking applied by the Supervising Organism for Private Investment in Telecommunications, or OSIPTEL as its acronyme in Spanish, as part of a government’s strategy for reducing the bribery. The OSIPTEL’s procedure consists in identifying the international mobile equipment identity, or IMEI, numbers those do not coincide with the user’s chip number according to a database brought by the Peruvian mobile service providers. When detecting that the IMEI number does not belong to the user’s mobile number, it is considered as invalid and it is blocked under suspicion of the device was stolen or was purchased irregularily. Unlike the mobile number, which can change according to the territory or can activate in different devices, IMEI is a unique number worldwide that identify each mobile equipment, and it is ruled by the Global System of Mobile Communications, or GSM, th...

Now, the same community protecting its forest and exporting its cacao presents us oral tradition, rural tourism and organic chocolate.  By Marco Flores Acho , Marco Paulini Espinoza and Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo .  Photographs by Marco Flores Acho and Marco Paulini Espinoza . CHULUCANAS, Peru - The night when Miguel Rivera was watching his property in Palo Blanco Village, he noticed  two little lights appeared at the fence. His cousin, who accompanied him, supposed it was about people walking through the muleteers route going parallel to Yapatera River's upper course, so he let him to know. When Rivera spoke aloud to identify the ones carrying the lights, he got no answer, so he shooted up the air in disuasive mode. The lights froze.  Supposing the advancing ones had understood the message, he tried to contact them for knowing who they were. It was when the lights started to approach towards his cousin and him. The rare was while the shining spots g...

After the visible vulnerability during Coastal El Niño, a modern equipment gets ready for alerting us what happens in the sky real-time . By MSC. Rodolfo Rodríguez  ( University of Piura ). Graphics and photographs provided by University of Piura. PIURA CITY, Peru - The flood-affected towns caused by Coastal El Niño claim a never-again about such disasters.  The summoned ones to change the history are, first, the (regional and national) governments , then the technical and scientific instances  for weather, climate, and disaster management & following-up. They all must consider that also the lack of warning for the projected works resulting seriously affected, as well as the bad settlement and construction of public infrastructure, and precariousness of many houses at rural zones, are factors increasing the vulnerability of a country. Regionwide, after El Niño events occured often, we must step ahead for counting with an efficient system of early alert tha...

This is the last place in South America to enjoy a sunset.       Photographs by Ethniko Negritos .   LA BREA, Peru – The most occidental mainland in South America is in Piura Department . It’s easy to see in a map , but the sensation is other on the field. It’s a great natural landscape system with a view to the enormous Pacific Ocean .   If you get to this place, as much as you get to the edge, you’ll be the one among the other people across south America who gets more into the sea… not needing to get into the water, not needing to get out the continent, or going to an island, aboarding a ship either.   The point was named Balconés in Spanish because the promontory seems to be a set of shelves or balconies viewing to the sea. Only that in this case, the architect was Nature. Even the full promontory is called La Mesa Mount (Cerro La Mesa), that highlights of the rest of the beach and the own coastal plateau , that is aactually the cont...

A Catholic cemetery keeps a… pantheistic shrine? By Nelson Peñaherrera . Photos by Alesban López .   SAPILLICA , Peru – “Cachirís Mount is straight there and Pilán Mount is mostly on the right,” Sapillica [pronounce “Sapijicah”] District Municipality’s Alesban López points me out, whom I am riding a motorcycle again , on our way to Tunal, 37 km away the southwest of the district capital. A local told him there are rocks “pretty identical” to those he featured on his Facebook account . We have to go down from Sapillica town until Timbes [pronounce “Timbehs”], then climbing up until 1617 meters altitude according to the GPS ( global positioning system ) device the crew carries within.   An hour 20 minutes, at least on motorcycle, by the west flank of Andean Western Range, viewing the coast along the full trail. In Tunal, we are on the spine of the mountain, the rocks are so little (1,5 meters by si, approximately) those just could carve one petroglyph per each one...