It seems it would have been quite reasonable to develop this in the time you were paid for. That would have made it property of your employer and you would have gotten fair compensation. As it is they are asked to buy untested 3rd party software of unknown quality which is not budgeted for. Could be difficult to make that happen.

A third option: rather than just handing it over you could at least make it open source. This way you'd retain the right to use the software elsewhere if you change jobs at some point in the future.

The screen is too small and there is no full-sized keyboard, so phones are unsuitable to develop on. The barrier of entry to develop *for* Android is extremely low, all the tools are there for free and the quality is decent.

Tropical fish are not a national currency either. National laws apply.

Well, I live in Germany. I own my phone, and have a prepaid contract (Tchibo in case anyone is interested) with a flat rate for data (500 MB max - after that speed drops). Costs me EU 10 / month plus whatever phone calls I actually make (not a lot, I suppose I could get it down to zero if I'd always use Skype). I can switch to another provider at any time, although taking the phone number with me is a hassle.

I use the phone to watch videos when I ride the subway to work, I have an app to get the public transport schedule, and another to buy rail tickets (I don't even need to print it, the conductor can scan it from the screen of the phone). I use the GPS, surf the internet, check my private mail (my employer can buy me a phone if they want me to check my company mail) keep my appointments, maintain my shopping list, check the weather forecast, listen to mp3s and there are a few games to keep my little daughter entertained when we are in a restaurant. (Mainly painting programs and "fruit slice" - she likes these.)

Occasionally I read books on it, too - but that's limited by my personal antipathy against DRM. Also I take photographs and videos sometimes.

A lot of fun and a lot of utility for the price. What's going on in the US these days?

Or alternatively, rather than making the wires twice as thick, you could implement the system twice and add some checker logic to find out if something has gone wrong. That's being used a lot on ICs for automotive applications, currently. (At least duplicated embedded CPUs and core logic - peripheral logic is checked with other means.)

Also for safety applications you have to consider other fault sources like radiation flipping bits which occurs a lot more often than IC wires breaking due to aging. These capsules don't help with that at all, but having duplicated checking systems would.

And then of course there is triple-voting (also frequently used in automotive safety for certain critical parts of the circuit).

The article states this technology is intended to automatically repair integrated circuits via "microcapsules, as small as 10 microns in diameter". Being charitable and going with 90 nm geometries (which we still used in our company last year - we are a bit slow) that's too large by a factor of 100. Interesting for PCBs, but not for integrated circuits.

The article also states that the technology would fix things "so fast that the user never knew there was a problem" and then explains that "a failure interrupts current for mere microseconds".

The summary corrupts that somewhat into the claim that "operation can continue without interruption". It's far too slow for that. Let's assume a rather slow 33 MHz bus - that gives us a clock period of 30 ns - so we'd miss at least 33 clock cycles in this scenario. This interruption might not be noticed by the user, if an error correcting protocol is used on the bus and the system retransmits. Otherwise you would get wrong data, and you have to assume that will be noticed sooner or later.

Interesting technology on PCBs or communication wires, I could see it being used in safety-critical applications. On integrated circuits it doesn't seem feasible. Basically you make the transistors and wires on ICs already as small as you can. To repair the wires on the IC you now need to insert capsules into the wires to do the automatic repair - so they would be way smaller than the wires. If you could manufacture these structures you'd make the wires smaller though and then you'd lose your ability to insert the microcapsules ... there is no way to win that race.

Depends on the type of union. If you have to join a union in order to be able to do your job, then political donations by that union are not legitimate. If you have a choice whether to join that union and still be able to do your job, then they have the right to participate in the political process.

Having said that: this is an agreement in principle. I think it's completely justified to shoot a grizzly when there is a danger it would kill a human. I think the reasons for that are valid - they would also be valid if it was a frog which was about to kill a human. There are many companies in the US, which could on their own - if they were so inclined - outspend all of the unions in the US combined. The problems posed by one side are orders of magnitude bigger than those on the other side. To gloss over the dangers posed by frogs is entirely justified.

Still - if there was a decent chance to pass a law banning both unions and companies from political donations: I'm all for it, that's the right thing to do.

You still have freedom of association if you don't let companies make political donations. No company shareholder is banned from additionally joining or founding a political association and donating with their own money.

On the other hand, owning shares in a company does not mean you agree about politics with other shareholders, that would be a weird coincidence. Using your share of the company's profits in order to support a political party is therefore quite improper, as it's using your money against your interests. The only way a company can use company money for political purpose and reasonably assume that it acts in the interests of it's shareholders at the same time, is if those contributions are beneficial to the company's business interests. However that's exactly what companies should not be allowed to do. Now if a company has just a single owner, or if there are just a few owners and they happen to agree on politics, then there wouldn't be a problem with the company making donations. However in that case they could just as well donate with their private money, there is no legitimate reason why they have to do it as a company.

There are no rights being lost by not allowing companies to donate - just bribery would be reduced a little.

That's all very nice, but he is using it with a keyboard. He is not using the standard input methods for a tablet, and he is not using it as a handheld device. Neither the touchscreen nor the touchscreen-oriented software contributes to the way he is using this computer. So you could just as well say that a tablet on it's own doesn't appear to be suitable for what he does.

His arguments for the setup make sense: he has everything he needs in a relatively compact package, has the connectivity he needs and good battery life.

I would see that as a challenge to laptop makers though: improve battery life, reduce weight (there really is no need for a DVD in most cases) and have built-in 4G. (Actually a recessed USB port might be the better option, so you can plug in the right USB stick without it interfering with the handling and style of the device.)

We're going to threaten them with tariffs? They'll just go to the WTO and get us penalized.

That's just a mutual agreement. You can get out of that or replace it, if it's no longer mutual.

Or, even worse, just start selling US T-Bills till we change our minds about the tariffs....

And destroy their own foreign currency reserves... They are not that stupid.