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Submission + - Microsoft Releases TypeScript 1.0 RC

Submitted by CMULL
CMULL writes: Microsoft unveiled TypeScript 1.0 RC in its Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 today. TypeScript is the company’s programming language that is meant for application-scale JavaScript development. Unlike Google’s programming language Dart, which is a strategy to replace JavaScript, TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript designed to strengthen the language and make up for its missing elements like larger scale application structure concepts and static typing. According to the core developer of TypeScript Anders Hejlsberg, TypeScript enables projects, multiple files and cross-platform refactoring to give the look and feel of Java or C++. TypeScript 1.0 RC is the near final version of TypeScript 1.0

Submission + - Will Overselling Global Warming Lead To A New Scientific Dark Age? 5

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Patrick Michaels writes in Forbes that atmospheric physicist Garth Paltridge has laid out several well-known uncertainties in climate forecasting including our inability to properly simulate clouds that are anything like what we see in the real world, the embarrassing lack of average surface warming now in its 17th year, and the fumbling (and contradictory) attempts to explain it away. According to Paltridge, an emeritus professor at the University of Tasmania and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, virtually all scientists directly involved in climate prediction are aware of the enormous uncertainties associated with their product. How then is it that those of them involved in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) can put their hands on their hearts and maintain there is a 95 per cent probability that human emissions of carbon dioxide have caused most of the global warming that has occurred over the last several decades? In short, there is more than enough uncertainty about the forecasting of climate to allow normal human beings to be at least reasonably hopeful that global warming might not be nearly as bad as is currently touted. Climate scientists, and indeed scientists in general, are not so lucky. They have a lot to lose if time should prove them wrong. "In the light of all this, we have at least to consider the possibility that the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously overstating the climate problem—or, what is much the same thing, of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem—in its effort to promote the cause," writes Paltridge. "It is a particularly nasty trap in the context of science, because it risks destroying, perhaps for centuries to come, the unique and hard-won reputation for honesty which is the basis of society’s respect for scientific endeavor."

Submission + - Can Wolfram Alpha Tell Which Team Will Win the Super Bowl? (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Which football team will win the Super Bowl this weekend? That’s a multi-million-dollar question, given the amount of cash people will bet on either the Seattle Seahawks or the Denver Broncos to win. Fortunately, Wolfram Alpha (the self-billed “computational knowledge engine”) can analyze the historical statistics for both teams and throw out some potentially useful numbers. Developed by Stephen Wolfram and based his Wolfram Research’s Mathematica analytical platform, Wolfram Alpha is an altogether different search engine from Bing or Google, which generally return pages of blue hyperlinks in response to queries. Instead of multiple results leading to still other Webpages, Wolfram Alpha usually returns set of definitive, numerical answers. (A lengthy rundown of the engine’s capabilities is found on its “About” page.) So how does Wolfram’s engine, which features sophisticated algorithms chewing through trillions of pieces of data, break down the potentials for Sunday’s game? Out of the 38 times the two teams have met on the field, the Broncos have triumphed 25 times (versus 12 wins for the Seahawks), scoring 98 total touchdowns to the Seahawks’ 84. It’s definitely advantage Broncos, in that sense. But the teams’ percentages are fairly close with regard to total yardage, penalties, penalty yards, and other metrics, although the Seahawks have managed to nab more interceptions (47, versus the Broncos’ 37). But while Wolfram Alpha can crunch all the historical data it wants, and that data can suggest one team will likely triumph over another, there’s always the likelihood that something random—a freak injury, or a tweak to the player lineup—can change the course of the game in ways that nobody can anticipate. Also, given how player and coaching rosters vary from year to year, the teams taking the field can change radically between meetings.

Comment Re:DOSBox (Score 1) 683

by olsmeister (#46072969) Attached to: VC Likens Google Bus Backlash To Nazi Rampage
Don't mean to imply that it does. I'm just commenting on how things got to this point. Also, I would add that the iPod / iPhone have been extremely key in keeping the Mac viable as well, although more so in people's homes and not the corporate world. But rewind the clock 20 years, and most people probably didn't have a computer at home.
I was in a big engineering school back in the early 90's, and I had to take a technical writing class. I was randomly enrolled into a 'special' version of the class - the first that was going to be all done on Mac's. We had plenty of other computers around back then, mostly PC's and SparcStations. The only place the Mac was used was in the humanities writing lab; I'm not sure there were any other ones anywhere on campus. That was their niche. They couldn't run the technical software we used in other classes and normal students could never afford one for their dorm room. This was the hole they started from.

Comment Re:Technology taking jobs (Score 1) 683

by olsmeister (#46072487) Attached to: VC Likens Google Bus Backlash To Nazi Rampage
Mac's [sic] never made it in the corporate space because they were monolithic and overpriced. With a PC, you could put one together with as few or as many different components as you wanted, of varying capabilities according to your needs, and different hardware manufacturers would compete driving innovation and dropping prices. Also, PC's had a head start. Before there were Windows or Macs, there was MSDOS. There was a lot of software written for DOS and Windows would run them (mostly). Or at least allow them to be run. This was a big deal. The deck was stacked against the Mac from the start. Having said that, I'm still impressed that they're still around and doing quite well.

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