Un articulo realmente excelente. Conceptualizas muy bien el pensamiento comunista, y logras desenmarañar una serie de infamias planteadas por la oligarquia corrupta.Si me permiten, quiero contactar al autor del escrito para usarlo de referencia en algunos diarios locales y llevar a la asamblea un proyecto basado en educacion socialista desde la primaria.Saludos, por favor comuniquense al [...]

¿Comunismo? ¿Esa huevada no estaba muerta?

Bueno, pues, si no está muerta, debería morir. Pero hay otra ideología mucho más nefasta que hace mucho, mucho tiempo está pidiendo a gritos una bala en el cráneo.

Sí a la libertad de mercados. No al fascismo.

Yo soy capitalista. Dejemos eso claro — no concibo que la sociedad pueda funcionar sin el incentivo de la competencia en la libre empresa, y aborrezco la intervención de cualquier entidad en los asuntos privados de las personas.

Soy un convencido de que el libre mercado funciona. También soy un convencido de que, sin supervisión, el mercado tiende a degenerarse en un solo conglomerado de poder. Es decir, el libre mercado tiende a suicidarse. No es nada nuevo — los economistas han observado este efecto por ya casi 200 años.

Y a ese fenómeno, en un mercado libre, lo llamamos fascismo. Si tuviéramos que construir una definición moderna de fascismo, ésta sería la misma de siempre: aglomeración de poder y corrupción corporativa institucionalizada — el Gobierno y las corporaciones en la cama. Todos creían que este había muerto con Mussolini y Hitler, pero nadie se percata de que el fascismo está vivo hoy más que nunca.

Claro — hoy no lo llamamos fascismo. Ahora le decimos “corporatismo” — el eufemismo contemporáneo de moda, que captura todo ese movimiento que (decía Andrés López) “viene a ser el fusion acquisition markets mergers“.

Una persona que esté a favor de la libre empresa, por lógica, no puede estar a favor del corporatismo, porque la existencia del corporatismo implica, necesariamente, la anulación de la competencia y por consiguiente la cesación de la libre empresa. Como es usual, cuando el corporatismo domina, existe la apariencia de libre empresa (ustedes saben, es más fácil proceder cuando la gente pendeja vive una ilusión) — pero ningún incumbente puede competir contra la concentración de poder preexistente.

Lo más grave de todo es que las atrocidades más abominables del mundo contemporáneo son productos directos del corporatismo.

Veamos unos ejemplos.

La guerra

Piensen en la guerra de los EE.UU. contra el resto del planeta. Ese es probablemente el mejor ejemplo de la lucha del poder y el dinero por sí mismos. Y el ejemplo más cruel.

¿En verdad pueden ser tan audaces de decir que esa guerra no es por el petróleo? Porque, que yo sepa, Osama bin Laden está más libre que el estadunidense promedio.

¿Quiénes se benefician de la guerra?

Obtengan la respuesta, y no les quedará otra que concluir que la guerra, señores, es un producto del corporatismo.

La salud

Hoy nomás leía que los americanos están más gordos que nunca. ¿Cómo no va a ser eso cierto, si con un dólar compras cuatro veces el mismo número de calorías en comida chatarra, comparado con comida sana?

Claro… existe siempre la tentación facilista de culpar al cerdo hedonista obeso gringo por sus propios males. Y honestamente hay cierto componente de culpa en el asqueroso cerdo obeso que se atraganta con McDonalds.

Pero esa tentación se desvanece justamente al descubrir que los 5 lobbies alimenticios más grandes de los EE.UU. tienen la vida resuelta desde los setenta, cuando comenzaron a obtener pingües subsidios del gobierno norteamericano. Obviamente, el perejil va a ser más caro que el azúcar de maíz denso en fructosa subsidiado.

¿Podemos seguir culpando al consumidor, cuando de su propio bolsillo salen los impuestos que engordan los bolsillos de la gente que diabetiza a la población? Porque, si eres pobre, la plena que no te queda de otra que comer chatarra o morir de hambre.

¿Me van a decir a mí que eso no es producto del corporatismo?

El tema no es “capitalismo vs. comunismo”

El tema es la concentración del poder. El tema es la corrupción sistémica. El tema es cuando los intereses particulares se toman las mismas instituciones que se supone están a nuestro servicio.

Ese es el tema. En el comunismo, es muy directo: como el Estado es el dueño de todo, es fácil romperte las piernas. En el capitalismo pasa exactamente lo mismo, sino que ahí son las corporaciones en colusión con el Estado. Igual te rompen las piernas — y gracias al fantástico marketing (propaganda), acá te venden las muletas (dicho sea de paso, las equivocadas) a un ojo de la cara.

Ya lo dice el viejo meme: In Soviet Russia, television watches you! En el siglo 21, corporations watch you! In HDTV!

Siempre que discutimos (nosotros, como sociedad) el tema del comunismo y el capitalismo, nos “clavamos en nuestros talones” y nos cerramos a todo lo que no corresponde con nuestra ideología. Por favor, ¡basta!:

1. No caigan en la tentación de pensar que el capitalismo es lo mismo que el corporatismo. El capitalismo ha sufrido grandes golpes culturales y hoy a éste se le achacan todos los males económicos modernos. Sean inteligentes y reconozcan al fascismo — el verdadero causante de nuestros males.
2. Tampoco caigan en la tentación de pensar que el comunismo es la solución. La misma corrupción que es el cimiento del corporatismo existe en el comunismo — sino que los perpetradores de los crímenes en el comunismo son parte del Estado, en lugar de ser corporaciones. Es como que más directo, por lo cual es preferible abogar por libertad de mercados.

Un capitalismo sin corporaciones

A veces hago el experimento mental de preguntarme cómo sería el mundo si no hubieran corporaciones (es decir, si se aboliese la personería jurídica). He llegado a la conclusión de que abolir la personería jurídica sería el mecanismo más expedito para terminar con tanta desigualdad, incluso más efectivo que la abolición de todas esas leyes en pro de intereses particulares, como los copyrights y las patentes.

Un libre mercado donde los agentes que participan se representan a sí mismos sin coludir estaría muchísimo más cerca de ser un “mercado ideal” como lo visualizó Adam Smith.

El mundo de los negocios sería muy diferente… pero los negocios no se detendrían (los negocios predatan muchísimo a las corporaciones); simplemente se dificultaría muchísimo la acumulación obscena de poder.  Y también se le dificultaría mucho el trabajo a las personas que no conocen el significado de la palabra ética, porque serían directamente responsables del perjuicio que causen, en lugar de esconderse tras una persona jurídica.

Evidentemente, no tengo muchas esperanzas de que esto suceda — los millonarios tienen décadas dando por descontado y dependiendo de esta nefasta “regla del juego”. Pero les sugiero que hagan el experimento también.

Otro típico error: Seguridad social no es comunismo.

Revisemos tres hechos indiscutibles:

• Los pobres necesitan educación para salir de la pobreza.
• Los enfermos necesitan medicinas y médicos para salir de la enfermedad.
• Los inválidos necesitan ayuda para poder convertirse en miembros productivos de nuestra sociedad.

Estas son verdades innegables — excepto por los elementos más inhumanos y egoístas de nuestra sociedad, incapaces de tener empatía, y los extremadamente millonarios completamente aislados de las realidades del otro 99% de la gente.

Por eso, cuando escucho a un pendejo decir que la seguridad social es un error socialistoide, me provoca reventarle un par de batazos en el cráneo. Como de costumbre, no pienso que la seguridad social debería ser obligatoria (de hecho, nada que sea obligatorio me suena bien, y usualmente esas huevadas obligatorias terminan convirtiéndose en íconos de la ineficiencia) — pero la gente debe al menos poder optar por ella.

Ideólogos: pónganle el nombre que quieran, pero dénle gracias a Dios que, cuando a ustedes les toque rajarse con cien mil dólares por su cáncer o su cuadriplejia, habrá algo que los ayudó a no morirse botados en su casa.

¿En conclusión?

Ya dejémonos de huevadas y usemos la pensadora, que las ideologías están viejas y cansadas, y tienen décadas convocando con carácter de urgente al sentido común y a las soluciones prácticas. Las ideologías sólo confunden el diálogo que tan caramente necesitamos tener ya.

You see, I’m in the unique position of having thousands of links pointing to a specific page in my blog. A big part of the responsibility for that lies squarely on the fact that I have two WordPress themes available for download — so each deployment means I get an extra inbound link. And, let me tell you, I see at least one (sometimes more) link pointing to me daily — keeping in mind the fact that this count only tallies up Technorati-registered blogs!

So how do I fare? Rather doubleplus-ungood. First, I only have a PageRank of 5. To paraphrase a multiplatinum italo-house track, fuck that shit.

Second: In theory, my highest ranked page should be the page of the theme, right?

In practice, it isn’t. The admin themer and the XHTML validator rank more highly (as a matter of fact, they rank 4). Not to complain, but the admin themer is a stupid one-off project and I wouldn’t like to be remembered for that come the day I go away (but I really hold the XHTML validator close to my heart).

My first thought was: “well, it makes sense; Google is probably detecting which links are organic and which aren’t based on an algorithm that compares anchor text and, if it detects too big a similarity in the inbound links, pop goes the weasel”.

But then another observation came across my brain: Another page that should be ranked very highly is the HD-DVD number controversy one. I mean, it was linked organically by hundreds and hundreds of blogs, plus the highest-ranking sites around the world (for Chrissakes, man: Digg, Slashdot, del.icio.us, Wikipedia, Reddit, TechMeme, the frigging Pirate Bay!). Yet this page is not even ranked! Why isn’t it even a blip on the radar? Let’s paraphrase the house hit again: come on, man! Fuck that, fuck that shit!.

What’s worse: Google Webmaster Central shows I only have 385 backlinks. What the hell? I have never ever engaged in link buyout. I have tens of thousands of links in Technorati alone. Yahoo! shouts over ten thousand links as well. Why is Google insistent on ignoring the facts?

Even more so: the page singularly most referred to by Google in my blog is my abortion instruction set using Cytotec. Why oh why does that have to top my list of popular pages? I mean, I don’t mind, but I’m not a doctor — I like to consider myself a free software evangelist and expert. And before those, there were two pages I had to take down because they were distinctly embarrassing: one with a picture of an extremely fat lady (I was just trying to make a point but apparently there is a great deal of fixation with fat bitch porn out there), and another with a picture of Keyra Augustina’s (non-nude) buttocks.

Hundreds and hundreds of people looking, daily, for fat and a skinny ass. Another couple hundred looking for abortion instructions. Why can’t I get a decent SERP position on the issues that really matter to me?

Dear Lazyweb: what am I doing wrong in my eternal Google courtship?

Combine that with the #3 spot in the local blogosphere (according to BloGalaxia) — I did break #1 in all of BloGalaxia the day of the HD-DVD leak, but this has been a steady #3 for more than a week. I couldn’t be happier.

Anyway, these things just come and go, so I guess I better keep working at it, lest a newcomer trashes me to the ground next week.

Before I start, I would like to make only one request. If, after reading the story, you like it, please submit it to Digg/Reddit/Slashdot or your favorite site. Remember that I can’t (at least on Digg) because I’m persona non grata over there.

Now, let’s start.

How the story came to be

So there I was, minding my own business, catching up on my daily feed; then it happened, a new post on Reddit was publicizing the HD-DVD processing code. Yes, Reddit is actually where the leak was first made public.

The fact that the security of HD-DVD’s AACS had been compromised progressively was already known — make no mistake. Volume keys had already been retrieved and were shared samizdat in peer-to-peer networks, along with the software on Doom9.

But this was different. A cease-and-desist letter had been issued to Google, regarding search results that included the key. Not any key, mind you, but the processing key. In theory, with this key, one could decrypt all HD-DVD volumes sold so far, so it was a much bigger deal (and a much more publicized censorship attempt) than just volume keys. A blog (Spooky action at a distance) had been completely nuked because of this.

Many sites were already carrying the key; therefore, never in my wildest dreams I imagined what would happen later on. At that moment, I wrote the (now kind of famous) story named Spread this number, partly because I was angry at Big Media’s continuing attempt to screw with our lives, and partly because I knew that the story warranted more attention than just a cease-and-desist.

Since it got dugg (about two hours ago), Rudd-O.com has been kind of (okay, very, very) slow. I’ve enabled WP-Cache temporarily to alleviate the load issue, and incremented the amount of server processes (also as a temporary measure) to weather the storm.

For readers who are WordPress users as well: here’s a guide that will help you weather traffic storms. In the guide you’ll even find a set of scripts that will take care of enabling WP-Cache automatically on demand (based on response times).

Sorry about the slow load times, keep on coming and thanks for your patience! We love to have you here!

Número cuatro. Un par de artículos populares sobre Linux fue todo lo que necesité.

Earning money from ads is not a “smack the ads on the blog” proposition. It takes time. It takes research. Hopefully, after reading this article, you’ll have a bit more information to help you milk the most out of your own Web sites.

If you’re familiar with AdSense, I suggest you skip down to the next section. For everyone else, let’s start with an intro.

An intro to AdSense

As you can probably tell, I’m using Google AdSense for the ads in this blog. AdSense is great. Google mostly pays you by the click (and, on some image ads, by impression). Since the gross of your income is generated through clicks, AdSense ads should be tuned to generate the maximum amount of clicks with the impressions your site gets (this is called clickthrough rate).

The recipe for a perfect ad

How can you tell which ads fare the best? You cannot, because you don’t get to pick which ads are displayed. However, what you can control is the ad format, color palette and placement in your site. Thus, key to generating the most clicks is to use the most appropriate palette, ad format and placement.

Notice how I didn’t say best, but most appropriate. Which colors, format and location depend exclusively upon the circumstances of your site. Can you fit a 200×180 ad in a certain spot? What palette should I use: contrasting (stands out) or blending (blends with your site)? Where on the page should I place the ads?

Fortunately, AdSense does publish some information about it. They tell you right away that:

• The integrated rectangle, 336×280 in size, is the ad that fares best.
• The best position to place the ad is smack mixed with the content.
• Palettes heavily depend on the palette of your site.
• Ads above the fold (on the first screenful of the page) fare dramatically better.

Analyzing which ad fared best

Another thing you get with AdSense is personalized criteria. They are a bit like tags — you apply them on your ads, and AdSense performance reports can be grouped by them. In practice, this means that you can create a blue on white and a red on yellow ad, tag the first with blueonwhite, the second with redonyellow, and after a couple of days, see which one fared best.

The entire tuning process can be summarized in this image:

Now that you’re familiar with AdSense, let’s explore how to optimize ads for results.

My criteria system for the past 2 months: fair, but not excellent

Two months ago, I decided I would deploy ads on this site using a set of criteria I thought would be optimal. I’d tag my ads using criteria based on these four ad attributes:

1. ad format
2. color scheme / palette
3. type of page
4. position in page

Dumb move on my part. As it turns out, this criteria system just didn’t give me enough information. It just gave me aggregates.

For example, I could tell which color scheme or ad format gave me great clickthrough, but I couldn’t consistently tell if this clickthrough was due to the position of the ad, the type of page where the ads were displayed, or the format. In other words, each criteria aggregated a number of unrelated ad impressions.

Alas, it did yield me valuable information. The ad that gave me the most income (82%) was definitely the one embedded in article content — the first ad you see when you visit an article. I actually expected this, because this ad is entirely above the fold.

Knowing that this ad was a red/black on white 336×280 large rectangle, it was a good starting point. With so many variables to track, it was rather fortunate to find that a single one determined my income so strongly. Having pinned down the most performant ad position, I used this knowledge as a starting point for my next experiment.

Experiment X: make six variants, keep the best

To perform an accurate experiment, you need to keep constant as many variables as you can. Once I knew for a fact what the best-performing ad position was, it was time to start paring down three other variables: alignment, format and palette.

Guaranteeing unbiased data

I didn’t want results to be skewed, so, in the name of science, I decided to forsake a few bucks. So, using the AdSense Deluxe plugin bundled in my Turbocharged blogging system, I turned ads off for the entire blog. Since my theme embeds ads through the AdSense Deluxe plugin, I did not have to touch a single line of code.

Generating and tagging the ads

Then, using the AdSense ad creation tool and a bit of CSS (stylesheets) magic, I generated six versions of the base ad. This graph summarizes how I generated the new versions:

The criteria system I used was derived from my old one:

1. Type: always article above content. Combines the fact that these ads appear only on articles (not on static pages, or archive sections), and they are located above the content.
2. Format:
   1. 336×280
   2. 300×250
3. Palette:
   1. R3.0 standard red/black on white
   2. R3.0 with green titles
   3. R3.0 with green borders
4. Code: each ad would have a tag named after the same AdSense Deluxe code, so I can track performance per-ad, on each variant.

After generating the six versions, I saved each one of them in a new AdSense Deluxe slot each.

Rotating the ads

The whole point of the experiment is to give each ad equal exposure. So I wanted each ad to be rotated fairly, in a equally random fashion. Accomplishing rotation wasn’t difficult, but it did require some coding. My template includes the ad by calling a function:

<?php theme_ad("article_abovecontent"); ?>

<?php theme_ad("article_abovecontent_".rand(1,6)); ?>

Scheduling the next doctor’s appointment

You know how doctors say take two of these, come back and see me in the morning? Well, after doing all of this legwork I scheduled a checkup on my Palm T|X in 8 days. I’m fully on the wait stage now. Why 8 days? Well:

• I want to have 7 full days of data.
• The amount of clicks I get daily (25~50 clicks) lends itself to fair statistical accuracy after 7 days of data collection.
• Okay, strike the last reason — just say I’m impatient.

What I’ll be looking for in the analysis is simple. I want to identify the winning ad, using the code criteria I defined. That way, I can restart the testing process with variants of that same ad.

Conclusions

Tuning AdSense is a laborious and repetitive process, but it has its rewards. While laborious, it can be done, as long as you follow a methodical, scientific process.

The right approach to doing AdSense tuning is that you’re investing in a steady source of income; it’s not like earning two glasses of water instead of one — it’s like changing an 1-inch water pipe for a 2-incher. If you have a popular blog, it certainly pays off.

Come back in 8 days and read me again — I’ll be writing about the results of this experiment.

Right now, I’m hitting my daily dose of literary drugs (read: my RSS feed reader) right now. I’m plowing through more than 1500 unread items, looking for inspiration.

Click on Violent Acres. Read two paragraphs.  There it is: why I lack the inspiration to blog. As always, it’s by reading someone else’s words that I realize something about myself –specifically, what the acidic V said a few hours ago in her latest post:

I think everyone has those moments in their life when something all of the sudden shifts. [...] What I find most intriguing about these moments is that when traced back to their birth, they usually come about in the most mundane of circumstances. [...] The downside to all of this is that these stories are rarely told. A lot of us know that what may seem magical and beautiful to us is, in reality, just another ordinary, humdrum day. So we keep mum because,well, who wants to hear that shit?

I want to hear that shit. [...] look around the world and tell me what you think is happening. Form your own hypothesis. Do your own research. Quit depending on a society to tell you what is real! When did we all lose faith in our individual ability to learn anyway? And when did learning become synonymous with memorization? You can’t teach a conscience. It comes strictly from personal experiences; those mundane moments I wrote about earlier.

Let’s ignore her main argument for a minute.  Let’s focus on the sentence I want to hear that shit.

For months now, I’ve been blogging to serve an audience. Linux enthusiasts. WordPressers. Blogging heads. Google AdSense.

No wonder I haven’t really blogged something of substance lately.

When I started this blog in 1999, I had a different idea in mind. The real reason which drove me to blogging was to expose my Grand Unified Theory of life — how the world works, and how the world should work.  What is right, and what is wrong, and what the perfect system to tell right and wrong is.  Why I hold certain principles (life, liberty, choice, law) dear, while absolutely abhoring others (discrimination, meddling into others’ lives, arbitrarism).

Practically none of my latest posts have actually dealt with that. Dealt with my thoughts and my ideas. I intended to write about hot topics, things my contemporary people would criticize me for, but later generations would recognize to be as true as I know them to be. That was my core mission, and somehow along the way, I lost it.

Thus, so far, I’ve failed, and I’m actually experiencing V envy. She managed to do what I set out to do: build an audience of radical haters and lovers, all of whom religiously read her articles and either categorically agree or mercilessly tear her point of view apart.

In the meantime, I’ve managed to build a “warm cup of coffee” stale blog, with lots of content, but few real pearls.  For Heaven’s sake, my most Popular front page post talks about Alprazolam spammers!

Sure, I’m making more than $200 monthly in ads, religiously spent on weekends’ nights out. But what do I care about it, now that my core mission is no more?

Or is it? It’s never ever late to start writing again.

I guess I should start “pouring my brains out” again.  Trouble is, I don’t know where to start.  I’m, of course, accepting questions on that matter.

I’m using GPLHost. Besides being one of the few quality Web hosting places that accept PayPal and have virtual private servers (I have a Xen VPS, to be accurate) (which I needed for my own host), it’s got great, hands-on support through the mighty hand of Thomas and his helpful staff.

In return, I get:

• full access to my server (yes, administration-level access, or “root” access)
• more than enough bandwidth for this place and other sites I have here

Thanks, Thomas :-).