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Comment: Re:Perl's a mess (Score 2) 379

by Lisandro (#42726645) Attached to: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere

For myself, I learned Perl first, but was still interested in languages, and so continued with Python, PHP, Java, and so on. For a scripting language, I settled with Python, and feel that it is far superior to Perl in just about every way imaginable (and yeah, I'm a fan of the indentation, too, though I can see that if that's not similar to how you formatted your code in the first place, you'd not be likely to appreciate it. Me, I come from a C background where indentation far more formal than the K&R style was required.)

I love Python and use it daily, but there's one area where it lacks: speed. Perl is, by far, one of the fastest languages i've used and a very good choice if you're doing heavy batch processing.

Comment: This is interesting (Score 1) 272

by Lisandro (#41376313) Attached to: Paypal Users In Argentina Can No Longer Make Domestic Transactions

I wonder what (or who) made Paypal cancel domestic transactions in Argentina. If anything, they were making a lot of money out of this.

This is very likely due to the increasing restrictions on Argentina's exchange market. I live there, and the past years have gotten increasingly worse - the Argentinian peso has an inflation of nearly 25% but the government insists on keeping an (almost) fixed exchange rate with the dollar. A lot of people perceived, correctly, that the USD became a cheap way to protect their savings. The net result is that Argentinians withdrew almost $87 *billion* USD between 2003 and 2011 from Argentina's economy.

So, instead of attacking inflation the government decided to choke the exchange market. This happened slowly but right now is simply impossible to buy/sell foreign currency. Even if you're traveling, the amounts that they clear you to buy are ridiculous - less than 20 Euros per day of stay in Europe, for example.

As a result, there's now a black market that tops the "official" dollar value by more than 20%. A lot of commercial operations are using this as a reference; it's the only one you can get your hands on.

The only exception so far have been credit cards, which, at least until last month allowed unrestricted purchases with the official value quote. I say "at least" because credit card purchases have recently been taxed (15%), disguised as an "advancement on income taxes". On top of that banks are discretely restricting credit card operations as well, since most institutions simply can't get enough currency. My guess is that Paypal has been having a lot of issue clearing transactions.

Comment: I'll be damned, but... (Score 1) 663

by Lisandro (#40351655) Attached to: Torvalds Slams NVIDIA's Linux Support

...NVIDIA blob drivers have always been rock solid in my experience, for both their GPUs and chipsets. Not only that, they're just as feature complete as their Windows counterparts. ATI used to do the same thing and their drivers weren't nearly as reliable.

From the kernel developer point of view binary blob drivers are hell. Yet, NVIDIA managed to provide some of the best hardware support available on Linux with it.

Comment: Re:Uhh, it's a third-world country. Be careful the (Score 1) 386

by Lisandro (#40335955) Attached to: RMS Robbed of Passport and Other Belongings In Argentina

You should work on your reading comprehension, since you're quoting a newspaper saying that 21% percent of the active workforce in Argentina is employed by the Government. Which amounts to... tadahh... roughly 4,153,000 jobs, or 9% of the population. Add to that a minimum of 2,500,000 citizens living directly off the state (unemployment pensions, "social" plans) and see how close you are to that 50% of the working population i mentioned on my first post.

Again, these are straight, unadultered INDEC figures. The same INDEC that considers subemployed (less than a day a week) citizens outside that "unemployment" figure. Even with highly doctored figures (what's the real annual inflation in Argentina?) these are horrid indicators.

Grab a calculator. And, again. Doze. The. Fuck. Off.

WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE Oh, dear, where can the matter be When it's converted to energy? There is a slight loss of parity. Johnny's so long at the fair.

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