mefistofele's comments

This "enterprise grade" terminology is suspicious. Did this CTO come up with that as a way to sell his value?

Too often in our industry the word "enterprise" is a smokescreen. Did he bring some real value to the table in terms of what the customer is seeing, or just some basic good development practices sprinkled with magic "enterprise" fairy dust?

Regardless, I have to agree with the other commenters. This guy is not your friend, he is not being straight with you, and he is not looking out for your interests. He could be a massive sociopath asshole, or maybe just an aggressive alpha nerd who doesn't know how to deal with personal problems.

Make sure you're protected. Your equity and your relationship with your cofounder are the two most important things to get covered against this guy, in that order.

Apple is just strapping up for the mobile patent wars which have already begun.

It's an arms race, and it's irrational to place the blame on just one of the actors. To stop the arms race will take mutual action on the part of three or four different companies, or outside intervention. The former is likely to happen eventually, and let's hope that the latter happens sooner rather than later in the form of patent reform.

Really disappointing screen resolution on all of these. Haven't they been paying attention to what's been going on in tablets - at least, in the tablets that people are actually buying?

The tablet form factor is, at its base, a minimal container for a screen. If the screen isn't good, then there goes the whole thing no matter how many other goodies you throw in. Low screen resolution means not good screen.

What's more frustrating is that I share the goals of this device. I want a linux tablet. That is, I want a tablet that will integrate into the workflow I have on my other computing devices, which are all linux.

I don't have very complex requirements for that; I don't need appliKations or Gancy Gesktop Genvironments. I just want a nice high res screen that talks to a bluetooth keyboard when I want, run a standards-compliant web browser, a bunch of tiled terminals, and most importantly Emacs. Android doesn't fit the bill. I can only see appreciating the way Android runs emacs if I was a devoted Buddhist and embraced frequent segfaults as a lesson in patience and discipline.

Many industries are forbidden, by law, from unpaid overtime. The law specifically exempts the software industry from this requirement. Like so many other things about the culture here, this issue seems to come down to the US being afraid of its own shadow. We're the greatest country on Earth... we say so all the time. But to change the law and forbid unpaid overtime for the software industry, something that will make people's lives better here in the greatest country on Earth, is to risk losing all these programmers jobs overseas. A terrifying prospect. So we do nothing out of fear.