Posts by Alastair McFarlane 63 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Dec 2008
Yes, admittedly I can see a scenario where you just *cannot* make the scompiler produce the code you want, but I guess that depends on what parts of what is generated is non-browser compatible. ost of what you write (in theory!) is going to be plain ol' Javascript, and that should (in theory!) make it no *harder* to write for compatibility.
Of course it won't be any *easier* either...
Agreed. However what it doesn't do is actually guarantee that you're using types correctly. You still use var to declare variables, but you can then specify a type using additional syntax. I don't know whether the compiler can be made to reject code which misuses variables (for example placing an integer in alert() causes an error - the function is meant to accept a string), or whether it's more intended to display warnings, but I do know that the playground online just compiles the code anyway, regardless of misused variables.
Hopefully at some point they'll set up the ability to save your own examples on the playground, a la jsfiddle, which would make it easier to explain these things!
Obviously the cynic in me doesn't automatically trust someone from MS tell me that they're supporting standards, but I *did* get the impression that they wanted to help rather than hinder. The direction they're taking has reportedly been chosen to try and keep them in alignment with ES5 and the upcoming ES6, vis their participation in the standards group. Additionally, none of the feature they're adding actually form part of the language. Because it compiles out to produce pure JS at the end, it means they can develop along whatever lines the language takes. If, somewhere down the line, ES introduce "proper" OO, or some sort of static typing (not that it's likely, or desirable), the TS compiler can just output those from the proprietary syntax they already have. There's nothing there that prevents the feature form being used in JS. In theory at least!
We saw this unveiled by Shanku Niyogi at MS office in Edinburgh last night, and I was quite impressed.
Admittedly I've never attempted to use CoffeeScript yet, but as someone who deals with a fairly large JS infrastructure every day, I can see the advantage of developing in an environment with pseudo-strong-typing and class/module support. I will of course be looking into the competition, but from an initial glance it looks like CoffeeScript is just syntactic sugar, rather than IDE-style type checking and warnings?
Obviously object orientation isn't suitable for every project, but using TypeScript I would be able to use it or not use it, and the compiler just wouldn't say a thing. There's an online compiler using Microsoft's new code-editor-for-the-web at http://typescriptlang.org.
Somehow, despite not having watched any TV for the last few days, the BBC have entertained me almost every day this week. Thanks, BBC, and El Reg, for this tremendously funny saga. I have no doubt that "Pestongate: The Costume Drama" will be coming to BBC2 before the end of the year.
(I'll bet Paris has let a few teaboys take pictures...)
Yup, I worked in Audio & TV while I was at university (graduated last year), and I can confirm as above that the Washing Machines (and white goods in general) are Electrolux, the digital radios either Pure or Magicbox, depending on the range, and the TVs Linsar (the same company, funnily enough, as Avtex).
That was my own and one of my fellow (equally technical) employees view after much testing on both customer returns (they were not happy that the two did not work together) and the brand-new units (to confirm). As a disclaimer I feel I should point out I am no longer working in retail and am in my own field (software engineering), and therefore no longer (not that I ever was personally - come to me and you got honest advice) biased towards selling better products.
If you noticed, there were a range of problems I mentioned, and of course we had firstly replaced the playback software and codecs.
Sounds like someone has a *major* beef with retailers...
Working in a major retailer during what shall henceforth be known as "the rise of the netbook", I thought I should point out something we noticed. Connecting an external DVD drive, while fine for data use, was not so useful for DVD viewing. In practice, the reduced spec of the unit itself resulted in either no playback at all, just the audio to play back, or just the video.
That was on the Windows XP netbooks. Mine (one of the old AOA-150 Linux machines) can run youtube video and the like perfectly, something the XP ones could not, but I have never tried to watch a DVD on it (that's what the mammoth desktop is for!), so the Linux unit may perform better.
"the ESC1000 delivers 2.8 teraflops at single precision and 234 gigaflops at double precision"
You *could* get 1.1 teraflops by adding those two together and dividing by two...
I mean an average for that sort of thing would need to be skewed towards whichever it did more often, but a straightforward mean would give you the figure required.
Aren't timezones defined with an offset from GMT? (or UTC, same thing)
So if GMT changes to be an hour later (ie. most of the country stay in BST - presumably no longer so-called), all the timezones will have to rename?
Also, timezones look like longitudinal bands, surely splitting Britain in half *latitudinally* (as you'd be doing by leaving Scotland in a different zone) would just make things even *more* confusing?
Am I the only actually looking *forward* to an extra hour's sleep this weekend?
I agree, from a common sense point of view.
However, Sony did the same with the 'P' series - those stupidly small things with a small keyboard and only a nipple-mouse. They outright refused to call them netbooks, presumably to allow them to be priced at £800, but as a result shot themselves in the foot as MS wouldn't give them XP unless it was a netbook. As a result, the 'P' series laptops were tiny, underpowered things running Vista.
They did *not* perform well.
I see the same thing coming with these. Windows 7 may carry less bloat than Vista did, but on an Atom processor I expect them to be pretty slow, and at that price, they'll struggle to sell them.
Loaded google.com (which quickly transforms into google.co.uk - that'd probably break it), pasted the script into the address bar and hit enter, then reloaded the page. No change. I also tried changing the end of the script to read .co.uk instead of .com - still nothing.
Tried in IE and in Firefox.
The horse is dead when eaten though...
I don't know how they're killed, but I assume it's not particularly violent, much like killing a cow for food in this country.
I'm steering clear of an opinion on horse porn (not my cup of tea though), but that doesn't seem a great comparison...
Paris? Well...
Surely that's a bit like asking "Is The Register a website?"
I mean, asking if he's an idiot is fair enough, would get a good split in results I think (unless you offered "yes" and "yes" as answers, obviously), but asking if he's one-eyed and Scottish just seems a little unnecessary...
I'm fed up of people misinterpreting the Sale of Goods Act and its EU regulation counterpart, and thinking they have more rights than they do.
The EU provides a two eyar period of "protection", the SOGA extends this to 6.
This period is the period under which you can claim that your goods did not conform to contract at time of purchase. Contract here means that the goods are "of a reasonable quality" and (that old phrase which is also mis-used) "fit for purpose".
However the burden of proof still lies with the consumer outwith the first 6 months. If you take a product back within the first 6 months of ownership and claim that it did not conform to this contract, then it is up to the retailer/manufacturer to prove otherwise if they wish to dispute it. Outside of this period, however, and up until the end of the 6 years provided by the SOGA, the consumer must prove that the goods *were not* fit for purpose or of a resonable quality, or to go through a claims court if you choose to.
Now of course "reasonable quality" is not well defined in legislation, but electrical goods from *most* of the main brands (steering clear of any blanket statements here) these days are indeed of a reasonable quality and fit for purpose. maybe if you bought Technika from Tesco, you might be in with a chance, but not usually otherwise.
This period is *not* a guarantee period, and neither the retailer nor the manufacturer is under *any* obligation to repair/replace outside of the guarantee which they do offer.
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