Ruby is close, but Avdi Grimm shows a few of the features Smalltalk still has over Ruby. http://www.virtuouscode.com/20... (ignore the inflammatory title, its tongue in cheek - check the books Avdi's written on Ruby)

> maps of the real-world (like bidirectional properly graphs can).
> The future will belong to a language that manage to express that truth, make it fast, easy and powerful

Something like Flexible Object Layouts being implemented in Pharo Smalltalk?
http://rmod.inria.fr/archives/...

LISP is the language to learn to *think* about functional programming.
Smalltalk is the language to learn to *think* about object-oriented programming.

Smalltalk failed in the 90s more for poor vendor business decisions than technical merits - charging $1000s dollar per seat versus zero cost Java. Scroll down to "merger of ParcPlace and Digitalk" here...
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyIsSm...

The lack of an open source business oriented Smalltalk platform is being addressed today by Pharo (a fork of Squeak). They are slowly building consortium to provide stability in funding improvements...
http://consortium.pharo.org/

You can see some success stories here...
http://pharo.org/success

As others have previously implied... if there are only two products A and B, anyone "switching" to A implicitly was previously using B.
If there are more products but B has the majority share, implicitly the "majority of those switching" come from B.

Next he'll be complaining that 40% of work sick days are taken on Mondays and Fridays.

cheers -ben

Cast a wide net, and somewhere in the billion people in the world "maybe" there is something that can help.

Just last week I saw this on TV...
  http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.co...

which references this...
  http://www.strokebreakthrough....

This is pertinent for me since a few months ago my Aunt had a stroke and is now suffering speech and motor difficulties.

I have a 4yr and 2yr old girls, so I have read other comments with interest. Will definitely be trying some of those out. I've only used Amazing Alex and agree its a great puzzle for my 4yr old.

Here are some of my own suggestions.

Motion Math Hungry Guppy - For very simple addition. You need to join together bubbles holding 1, 2 or 3 dots to make a new bubble matching the number stuck on the side of a cute orange fish, which then swims over and eats the matching bubble and gets bigger and bigger until end of round.

Happy Pig - Children's Logic Game - fill in missing items in a pattern arrangement - my 4yr old knocked this over in a couple of days but I am happy it served its purpose in that time. It was interesting to see her cognition go from incomprehension to mastery in that short time. Revisits occasionally.

Pit Droids - A generator spawns different coloured droids in one direction, and matching coloured arrows need to placed on the ground in front of them to turn them towards matching coloured pits. I've enjoyed helping her get started and now she can now do some levels herself. Got it after reading this review http://apps4ikids.com/2012/06/star-wars-pit-droids-surprisingly-educational-puzzler/ which discusses it being a preliminary training for programming.

Chess Pro With Coach by Christophe Theron - training for strategic thinking - not that my 4yr old is anywhere near that! but the computer can be set really dumb and slowly turned up over the next few years. It graphically suggests good moves and pieces under threat.

Timmy's Preschool Adventure - Simple pattern/puzzle solving. Animation is a little B grade but still engaging for both 2yr and 4yr old.

Kid Klok - shows numbers around the circumference for both hours and minutes - each a separate colour matching hour/minute hands and digital clock reading.

Flow Free - path planning - 4yr old picked it up much faster than I thought she would.

Team Umizoomi - numbers and simple math in an engaging presentation for both the 2yr and 4yr old

Bugs and Buttons - lots of cognitive mini-games - 2yr and 4yr both love it.

ToonTastic - just to round out with a non-science app - yet the decision making learnt from creative play is an important skill. Drag cartoon characters onto a background then record an animation with voice-over by the kids.

Concerning getting through school too easily and then giving up when hitting the wall, this following article is quite important....
https://www.stanford.edu/dept/psychology/cgi-bin/drupalm/system/files/Intelligence%20Praise%20Can%20Undermine%20Motivation%20and%20Performance.pdf

QUOTE:
        Dweck sent four female research assistants into New York fifth-grade classrooms. The researchers would take a single child out of the classroom for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a series of puzzles—puzzles easy enough that all the children would do fairly well. Once the child finished the test, the researchers told each student his score, then gave him a single line of praise. Randomly divided into groups, some were praised for their intelligence. They were told, “You must be smart at this.” Other students were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard.”

        Then the students were given a choice of test for the second round. One choice was a test that would be more difficult than the first, but the researchers told the kids that they’d learn a lot from attempting the puzzles. The other choice, Dweck’s team explained, was an easy test, just like the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The “smart” kids took the cop-out.

Two more stages of testing provided this startling finding:

        Those who had been praised for their effort significantly improved on their first score—by about 30 percent. Those who’d been told they were smart did worse than they had at the very beginning—by about 20 percent.

Don't say: "not having the overhead of antivirus software"
It has been drummed into the masses that they need virus protection and it will just confuse them.
Instead say: "virus protection included" - well Linux does protect you from viruses

Also, the masses may be suspect of "freedom to copy." Perhaps just make it look like the free CDs on magazine covers like "4GB of free software"

>60% oxygen is lethal, yet lesser amounts are beneficial. a paradox?

...as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced

Perhaps a little offtopic, but stopping apoptosis may be useful to prevent systemic self-dectruction of cells during reperfusion of heart attack victims or other victims deprived of oxygen - allowing people to recovery from being deprived of oxygen for an hour.
.
To Treat the Dead -- http://www.newsweek.com/id/35045%5D
.
Currently they use a hypothermia protocol to reduce the damage done during reperfusion.
http://www.med.upenn.edu/resuscitation/hypothermia/

The Nanocaust begins (I heard you the first time)
.
.
**Never alone with multiple personality disorder (I agree)

http://arduino.cc/
Multiple variations and suppliers

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other actuators. The microcontroller on the board is programmed using the Arduino programming language (based on Wiring) and the Arduino development environment (based on Processing). Arduino projects can be stand-alone or they can communicate with software on running on a computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP).