Perhaps they order American food for the novelty factor ? If I eat Sushi/IndianFood/EthnicFood at home everyday, then I might pick a Burger at a restaurant.

This is atrocious ! The Chinese should rise up in armed revolt and establish a people's state. Oh wait...

That protector of ours, Brennan-Monster is at it again !

Field programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs http://www.xilinx.com/) are increasingly being used in the classrooms for teaching digital electronics. You can get a good starter board with 500K gates for around 150 bucks and the design software is free from the FPGA vendors.

Heres a couple of links to FPGA based development boards:

• Digilent http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Nav1=Products&Nav2=Programmable&Prod=S3EBOARD/
• Xilinx http://www.xilinx.com/products/devkits/HW-SPAR3E-SK-US-G.htm