This is really disheartening... I guess in my heart of hearts I was holding out some hope that you were just trolling or trying to spread FUD; and that 2010 was just a fluke... but your link is completely accurate.   I think the worst part is that in the actual competition, where the Kings are crowned (so to speak), they finished an absolutely impotent 19th out of 25. Yeah, I really don't want the Bitcoin flag flying on the mast of such a mediocre ship - fly high like eagles, not in 19th place with the pigeons.

Besides, I think if Immanuel really liked Bitcoin so much, he'd be off spreading the word for free and not asking for handouts to do the honorable, heroic thing.  

So basically, give money to Immanuel and a half-empty gymnasium full of mostly-bored parents and kids will see the word "BITCOIN" on a mid-tier robot by a slacker (16th out of 24 on "Notebook") school? And then the donated money is actually spent on... beer and candy bars or whatever?

Yeah, not really looking terribly attractive. Immanuel seems to be framing this as "your donations will help propel our entry towards the top", but in the end this is one of the rare few competitions that's truly about mental ingenuity and "intellectual Darwinism" rather than who has the most money or time to lift weights. The fact that this group regularly places below-average leads me to question its reputation amongst the other schools. I don't want the Bitcoin name tarnished by being associated with a mediocre laughingstock.

I have my doubts that this poster would ever donate, given his name, but he does raise a valid point. The 2010 results are posted at the Capitol Best site (as a sidenote, they could really use a decent web designer). There, Gateway High is listed as:
#13th overall, out of 24 schools. Interestingly, with only one exception, the teams below them did not participate in the Team Exhibit & Interview portion - if Gateway hadn't participated either, they would have dropped down to #17th overall (still ahead of the only other team ranked beneath them which also participated in the Team Exhibit portion). As far as their "Robot Performance" score, they were given the equivalent of a "C" grade - I guess that's technically right in the middle, but since there's no limit to the amount of "A" and "B" grades that can be attained, it seems pretty silly to use "percentile" to describe this. The official website describes their grade as resulting from performance in the "top 60%" of entrants - so theoretically you could be 60th out of 100 and still get this score.

Anyway, no matter how you cut it, 13th out of 24 is in no way the "50th percentile" overall. It's a sliver over the 45% mark. Very misleading.

What's even more alarming is that it seems like all teams are given the same "kit", and if this is like the high school Robotics competitions I'm aware of, all teams are expected to confine their designs to the parts supplied to them in the kit. So I'm not exactly sure what these donations are supposed to be going towards. 

I couldn't find the 2009 results mentioned above, but the 2010 results are damning enough by themselves. And I do have to second FAtlas' statement about the 50th percentile - it's sorta like trying to win points at the playground by saying that your dad washes the astronauts' suits, or saying your dad wouldn't lose too hard in a fight against another kid's dad. Adding dishonesty to the equation makes it even more of a bummer.  

If Satoshi mines a bitcoin and the network isn't around to see it, does it go in the blockchain?

Truly profound stuff 

I'm sure the speculators will love this 

Well, hey, every little bit helps, I guess!

Wow!  Bitcoin is very much a world-wide phenomena now.

It's spelled "too", mate.