This was covered in our C classes in college, and it is probably more interesting for programmers here if you understand what the bug actually was.

The "software error" Wiki alludes to is that the Patriot missile kept track of its internal clock with floating point numbers. When the machine had been booted in the recent past, such as every time in testing, the floating point number spent most of its precision to the right of the decimal point. This let it able to do the designed behavior, which was calculate very small delta(time) to be able to do velocity/position calculations and get fairly close to fast moving objects then go boom.

The problem is that floating point numbers have a limited amount of precision available to them, and if you are using a few billion milliseconds (2 weeks), almost all of your precision is lost to the left of the decimal point (and, given that this is precision-intensive work, you didn't need to wait that long to see anomalies).

Lower precision meant that taking delta(time) got increasingly less precise as time went on. Which meant that velocity/position calculations got progressively more screwed up. Which meant the missile did not go boom in the general vicinity of incoming missiles. Which killed Americans and allies.

Thus the moral of the lecture: a) your computer is a powerful, tricksy beast which has many ways to trap you in even straightforward code and b) you should treat software quality like some 19 year old's life depends on it, because it might.

Let's review: you're not a co-founder, and have no equity. Vague promises have been made about you "getting a share", but no commitments. The co-founders all went on vacation immediately prior to a launch, but you cancelled yours to get the product ready. The business is foundering, and you're not convinced that the co-founders are responding to the challenges in the right way, and you suspect the company will run out of runway before Christmas.

Is that a fair summary?

If so: why are you even thinking about staying, if you've got other options?

If you've got a plan that you think will put the company on a firmer financial footing, I'd pitch it to the co-founders, and ask to be brought in on the equity side.

Otherwise, I'd walk as soon as the right offer came along.

Bill Gates rather puts the lie to that.

folklore.org paints a pretty interesting picture of Jef Raskin, and one which indicates his words should be carefully weighted and not taken at any more face value than those of Jobs.

For instance:

> Whatever idea that you came up with, Jef Raskin had a tendency to claim that he invented it at some earlier point.

folklore also shows Jobs's contribution very differently than Raskin's own take:

> The plan of record for the Macintosh industrial design was still the one conceived by Jef Raskin, which chose a horizontally oriented, lunch-box type shape, with the keyboard folding up into the lid of the computer for easy transportability, kind of like the Osborne I, which we weren't aware of at the time. But Steve had a real passion for industrial design, and he never seriously considered following Jef's recommendations.

As well as complete and utter disagreement with what was apparently written by Raskin, behold from ZeroGravitas's link:

> The elimination of slots had been dictated by Jobs, however I thought this would hamstring the product. Thus I invented the all-important bus diagnostic port discussed below

Whereas on folklore.org:

> But Jef Raskin had a very different point of view. He thought that slots were inherently complex, and were one of the obstacles holding back personal computers from reaching a wider audience. He thought that hardware expandability made it more difficult for third party software writers since they couldn't rely on the consistency of the underlying hardware. His Macintosh vision had Apple cranking out millions of identical, easy to use, low cost appliance computers and since hardware expandability would add significant cost and complexity it was therefore avoided.

> Apple's other co-founder, Steve Jobs, didn't agree with Jef about many things, but they both felt the same way about hardware expandability: it was a bug instead of a feature. Steve was reportedly against having slots in the Apple II back in the days of yore, and felt even stronger about slots for the Mac. He decreed that the Macintosh would remain perpetually bereft of slots, enclosed in a tightly sealed case, with only the limited expandability of the two serial ports.

> Mac hardware designer Burrell Smith and his assistant Brian Howard understood Steve's rationale, but they felt differently about the proper course of action. Burrell had already watched the Macintosh's hopelessly optimistic schedule start to slip indefinitely, and he was unable to predict when the Mac's pioneering software would be finished, if ever. He was afraid that Moore's Law would make his delayed hardware obsolete before it ever came to market. He thought it was prudent to build in as much flexibility as possible, as long as it didn't cost too much.

> Burrell decided to add a single, simple slot to his Macintosh design, which made the processor's bus accessible to peripherals, that wouldn't cost very much, especially if it wasn't used. He worked out the details and proposed it at the weekly staff meeting, but Steve immediately nixed his proposal, stating that there was no way that the Mac would even have a single slot.