Date() - Buggy behaviour working with Number() or uint()

Question

It took me half day to track down this, apparently it is a bug (I don't know if there is some obscure logic behind it).
Date() behaves much differently when casted/created with the same amount as Number() or uint()
Here is the output when tracing:
new Date()
=
Wed Jun 13 20:12:43 GMT+0200 2012
new Date().time
=
1339611163266
Number(new Date())
=
1339611163266
uint(new Date())
=
3876334210
new Date(Number(1339610984911))
=
Wed Jun 13 20:09:44 GMT+0200 2012
new Date(uint(1339610984911))
=
Sat Feb 14 21:42:35 GMT+0100 1970
As you can see, converting a date to Number(new Date()) or uint(new Date()) gives a completely different result.
Also, working with the same time amount, if new Date(Number(time)) or new Date(uint(time)) returns a completely different date.
So, even though milliseconds from 1st jan 1970 are obviously an integer, AS3 treats it differently if casted to Number or uint.
Is there a logic? To me it looks like a bug...
namaste
Filippo

Answer 1

If you look up the different numeric classes you will see how they differ in their limits.  One problem you will probably run into someday ( I have a couple times) is when you use a uint as a counter in a loop that is counting backwards... when it should reach a -1, which it cannot do, it jumps to 4294967295, leaving you scratching your head wondering why the loop never ended or some other out of range error occurs.