Militant Geek Custom Shirts

Sometimes amidst corporate jocularity and acid twinged spin we can forget just what fine, upstanding people Geeks are at their core. This oldie-but-goodie by way of Craigslist reminds us of just what is important.

In the wide world of dating, there are many options. Do you go for the flashy guy with the smooth smile, or the dude in the corner typing away on his laptop? The following are reasons why I think my fellow females should pay more attention to the quiet geeks and nerds, and less attention to the flashy boys.

1.) While geeks and nerds may be awkward, they’re well-meaning 9 out of 10 times. That smooth dude with the sly grin and the spider hands? Wonder what HIS intentions are… plus, I’ve never had a geek guy not call me when he said he would. Score major points THERE.

2.) They’re useful. In this tech-savvy world, it’s great to have a b/f who can make your laptop, desktop, and just about anything else that plugs into a wall behave itself.

3.) They’re more romantic than they’re given credit for. Ok true, their idea of romance might be to make up a spiffy web-page with all the reasons why they love you, with links to pics of you and sonnets and such… but hey. It lasts longer than flowers, plus you can show your friends.

4.) Due to their neglected status, there are plenty to choose from. You like ‘em tall and slender? There are plenty of geeks/nerds who are. You like ‘em smaller with more meat on their bones? Got that too.

5.) They’ve got brains. Come on now, how can intelligence be a bad thing?

Remember: enduring debates on router specifications is a small price to pay for a lifetime of utter devotion.

Machinima is cool. Mondays aren’t. To help get your geek twinged week off on the right robotic inspired step here is the incredible Code Guardian short from CeeGee Productions. [As an aside, no, there weren’t really mechs in WWII. Now stop asking or Tom Brokaw will start to cry.]

I’ve really been enjoying Woot.com (less, I know - like college I am once again late to the party). It’s not so much for the extreme deals or the euphoria of buying only marginally needed tech gee-gaws, however. What tickles the funny bone are the product descriptions. An example, you say? How about this recent entry for a USB router:

So your [parent of similar gender] has been [action verb]ing your [beloved object with cross-generational appeal]. At the same time, your [parent of opposite gender] has been greatly [verb]ed with your [secondarily beloved object usually of interest only to the younger generation]. This has you so upset that you could just [body noise]. Well, we here at [company name] are more than happy to help you out with that by offering the Zyxel M-202 USB 2.0 Mimo Wireless Network Adapter. Sure, the 802.11b/g standard compliant WiFI may not make you [normal human emotional reaction], but it will certainly [surprising counterpoint], and this is without even mentioning the WPA2 and WPA security protocols or the AES and WPA-PSK encryption built right in. After you own one of these [endearing name used in the plural], there won’t be much reason for [previously mentioned parents now combined] to [amusing action verb] so that they can [amusing action verb] your [television or movie reference dating from between 1974 and 1995] instead of [expression of joy] that [vegetable]. How can you live without it?

It’s like they peeled off the suit, boiled away the greasy hair gel, and laid a tech marketer bare in one effortless description. It’s entertainment of the highest degree…oh, and the deals are pretty good too.

Jason Calacanis is a pretty outspoken guy; something that leads him to say some incredibly dumb things. Perhaps that’s why he’s adopted an ‘email only’ interview policy. Email gives him a chance to see the questions first, quietly reflect, carefully balance prevailing opinions, and then say his dumb stuff anyway.

The policy, however, seems egregious to the Wired staff. In a post by Dylan Tweney he refers to the fat blogger as ‘cowardly’. He then rambles on in what’s supposed to be a hilarious recap of Wired’s technical (or lack thereof) prowess.

*sigh. Email was so 1999. If they really wanted to do a cutting edge interview they would log into second life, dress their avatars as furries, and head over to the IBM island. I hear its pretty empty. That way Calacanis could have all the privacy he wanted… to continue to say something dumb.

Proving that geek innovation never rests (or that geeks simply have their mind on something else) is the Tiddy Bear - a real infomercial worthy product. While I would have liked the smooth styling of Ronco delivering the bountiful benefits this YouTube screen capture will have to satisfy:

By beating earnings expectations and winning acquisitions despite having the lower bid Google is the new aristocracy. But sometimes earning billions in cash and grossly embarrassing your rivals just isn’t enough. For some at the Mountain View company, like product executive Marissa Mayer, their just deserts come in frosting form.

According to Valleywag Marissa is backing a custom cakemaker in the San Francisco area. What might the creations from someone responsible for Google’s ‘no-frills’ search page look like? We posit some possibilities:

Yummy!

BoingBoing.net, despite having some of the most diatribe-prone personalities on the net (see XeniSucks.com and CorySucks.com), is usually a pretty good read. It’s a self-proclaimed directory of ‘wonderful things’ - things that are apparently too wonderful for the city of Boston.

After being brutally attacked by LightBrite-like advertising the town known for Beans isn’t taking any chances. As users of the city’s freely available wifi are finding out their government provided Internet doesn’t come without a side of irrational censorship. Seen first on Gizmodo:

Microsoft has been trying to spin its way out of lackluster sales of its latest operating system, Windows Vista, for some time now. Whether its the considerable hardware requirements needed to run, the lack of compatible drives for hardware, or a just downright general contentment among existing Windows OS users there hasn’t been much love for Vista. Microsoft had been able to rest assured that at least people buying new PCs would be forced into the new OS; however, the latest announcement from Dell undermines even that lackluster silver lining.

A story on Information Week describes how Dell has decided to reverse course and re-offer Windows XP - due to customer demand:

Dell said late Thursday that it’s reintroducing Windows XP — Vista’s predecessor technology — as an option on its consumer and home-office PCs based on customer demand. “We heard you loud and clear on bringing the Windows XP option back to our Dell consumer PC offerings,” said a statement posted on Dell’s Web site.

Oh well, at least Bill Gates is being accused of having the world’s best murder simulator, if not the world’s lusted-after OS. That has got to count for something.

… make sure it is this incredible 23 minute Odyssey like epic that’s currently circulating the series of tubes. While game play is normally the domain of nerds references to electron firings make the comedy gold geek enough for us.

As mentioned the whole video is profanity drenched and NSFW - unless you happen to have a good set of headphones and your coworkers don’t question random bursts of laughter.

Net neutrality is one of those flash points of modern culture. Despite the mind numbingly dull nature at its core (routing packets isn’t sexy, IMHO) the money thrown to fight the war of words would easily fill an Eastern European war chest. Neither side is innocent of projecting reality as most know it. Joe from TechDirt has the latest in the propaganda:

Sonia Arrison Hates Pirates. Loves DRM. Lukewarm on the truth.

The latest absurd argument comes from Sonia Arrison, who works for a telco-funded think tank, who claims that supporters of net neutrality are really just supporters of piracy because of their opposition to blocking P2P networks. This ignores the fact that blocking or slowing down these networks doesn’t stop piracy. It also buys into the myth that there’s a serious bandwidth crunch that can only be solved by things like traffic shaping, which net neutrality supporters tend to be opposed to. Still, Arrison saves up her ultimate canard for the end of the column when she says that supporters of “net neutrality theory” should be opposed to Apple’s plan to sell DRM-free MP3s from EMI because Apple’s use of price differentiation (unprotected tracks will sell at $1.29 as opposed to the normal $.99) is non-neutral. Of course, nothing at all about net neutrality would imply that different prices for different products should be illegal. All this example proves is that Arrison either doesn’t understand net neutrality or is willfully trying to distort the concept.

For more on the shill-factory that Sonia works for check out Joe’s other excellent piece that does the dot connecting.