ImFatYoureFat

The problem with this (at least in theory) is that unless US schools devote as much time to learning mandarin, or spanish for that matter, as chinese and taiwanese schools spend teaching english the effort is useless. I have studied mandarin for several years and traveling to anywhere outside of rural china makes my efforts seem largely pointless. There is always a chinese person who speaks far better english than I do mandarin. Essentially unless these schools plan on starting kids in mandarin from kindergarten an going through high school and using it for at least 3 hours every school day, these kids are never going to catch up to chinese children's second language proficiency.

There is something to be said for the power of litigation. Presumably this guy does not have millions of dollars to spend fighting legal battles for the next ten years no matter how much the evidence is in his favor. Facebook and Zuckerberg do.

I know you kid, but there is a lot to be said for the fact that lack of margin leads to corruption. ie, the best way to discourage this kind of behavior would be to create some sort of noticeable difference in value from one model to the next.

you're right, I'm an idiot and was looking at the Netherlands flag.

Having looked at their bracket I kind of wish France or Germany had won.

"In an age when nations have become so large that their citizens no longer identify with distant governments..."

What? it would seem like the complete opposite of this is true. I would say that nationalism and national identity, in the US and most other places in the world, is stronger now than it has been in the past 50 years.

I totally agree that html/css with js and maybe even some basic php if they are up for it is the way to go.

Sure html and css aren't languages, but couple them with javascript and a complete novice can make quite a few dynamic pages (read programs) in an afternoon.

I think one of the most important elements for introducing young children, or really anyone, to programming is providing the ability to build a complete interactive program almost immediately. This can definitely be accomplished with a few html tags and a few lines of js.

Alternatively, if you have access to a licenses for it I would recommend initially starting them out in Visual Basic Studio. It strikes me as a good balance between immediate buildableness and a easy environment to learn the basics of loops, strings, if/then, for/do, etc. Maybe a week or two in vbs and then switch them over to js.

While I have no qualms with languages like ruby or python, the call for them to be used as introductory languages seem misleading. While you can learn to build a stand alone program in them in a week or less, I get the feeling that a static box program is not going to be that exciting for most 10-12 year olds today (obviously this same problem exists for vbs)

My feeling is that to most children computers are two things, the internet and video games. Building your own video games immediately (outside of flash which isn't a terrible suggestion) is somewhat out of reach for most beginners. But building web pages, and pretty interesting ones at that, is very accessible for anyone once they get the syntax down. In truth you have to get relatively far into ruby or python before you can understand how to display a page you've build or get to very much interactivity.

the design of embedding a lot of videos in one page is very nice.

see those were my two guesses: Taiwan or Pakistan.

Guys, it obvious he's from the Vatican.

The down voting is really strange.

If he is Israeli, and in his mid twenties then he has already served in the IDF, likely in a CS capacity. Also if he was Sherut Leumi, then I wouldn't think he would apply for a military contract job in the first place. Furthermore, its especially difficult for people with highly desirable backgrounds like CS or engineering to get Sherut approval.

My only point was that an Israeli in their mid twenties has already served in the military and if they have, or plan to get a degree in CS, they have served in the military in a capacity relating to CS or engineering.

Of course it's totally possible that I'm wrong and he is from Israel.

Just out of curiosity, anyone have any explanations of the down voting? Don't really mind, I just find it kind of bizarre.

Don't think it's Israel, he would have already spent time in the military if he was Israeli.

Lenovo is still pretty solid, though decreasing is quality pretty rapidly. I could probably name for you their 5 or 6 thinkpad brands (s,w,t,r,... well apparently I can only name 4) but I couldn't for the life of me tell you the difference between any of them.

But I don't think the branding is the primary problem.