My MMORPG days are now long over, but a few years ago, I used to spend several hours a day playing Dark Ages of Camelot. However, when my son was born, I just didn’t have the time to play anymore. Did you know that the more you spend time in those games, the more your brain becomes addled, and one day, MMORPG-speak starts invading your everyday life? Just check out this guy:
Ok, the guy is probably exaggerating for the purpose of the news report, but if he’s not, I predict that he’ll eventually get dumped by his hot reporter girlfriend… unless she is of the same specie that is!
‘Tis the season for romantic gifts, and having been on the receiving end of plenty of flowers and candy in my life, I have to say that I prefer something a little more practical. Still, it is nice to have a bit of a romantic theme, so here’s one suggestion:
It’s the Pink Meletta designer USB flash drive from Mimobot, a neat company that figured out that a lot of people like gadgets that are, well, cute. I for one use flash drives constantly because on any given day, I might use three different computers but be working on the same document. Also, I lose things, so being able to hook it to my keychain is a definite plus.
And the reason I think this one is particularly appropriate for Valentine’s Day is that it also has a love story attached to it. Mimobot drives come with preloaded content–graphics, sounds and video. This one has a short cartoon: “Meletta is in LOVE! Someone snuck past that monkey on her head and gave her a kiss, and now she’s blushing pink and black!”
My additional suggestion in regards to thumb drives as gifts: Add your own content! It might seem cheesy, but some girls (and guys, I assume!) like cheesy. After all, if you’ve ever seen (or read) High Fidelity, you know that a mix tape is the ultimate expression of love–so why not load up a cute flash drive with your favorite MP3s?
P.S. If your significant other isn’t the cute monkey type, Star Wars is always a good option. I kind of want the Princess Leia one.
Also, if you don’t like this idea (or even if you do), stay tuned to [GAS] in the next few days for a more extensive Valentine’s Geek Gift Guide!
It used to be that a geeky wardrobe was embodied by suspenders and thick-rimmed glasses, but no longer! 21st century geeks have a wide array of t-shirts to choose from which will proudly display their inordinately high intelligence and tech-worshiping ways to the world. So if you’ve been looking for a way to advertise your geekhood to those around you, you’ll be delighted at the 25 incredibly geeky t-shirts we rounded up for this article. Enjoy!
How many times have you walked into someone’s house and, instead of being greeted, were simply bombarded with requests to fix someone’s computer? Aren’t you tired of it? Don’t you wish that just once, you could summon the courage to say “no!” the next time some dolt calls you up fretting about their broken Internet connection? Well thanks to this shirt, you can! Never again will your friends and family take your superior computing knowledge for granted. Oh, who are we kidding…they probably still will!
Everyone who has taken a networking or programming class has heard this joke at one time or another. But until the pressing of this t-shirt, there was no way to carry it with you and identify your geekhood to others of like mind. Luckily, you can now show everyone who passes by which of the 10 types of people you are…(not that they’ll get the joke, of course.)
If you’ve ever held the thankless job of setting up a home network (either professionally or for your friends and family, à la the wearers of shirt number 1), the “There’s no place like 127.0.0.1” t-shirt is right up your alley.
Few things are lonelier than sitting huddled in a cubicle all day writing SQL statements and retrieving information from databases. And…well, okay, this shirt won’t do anything to change that, but you’ll look a lot sharper and more geeky while you do it. Maybe that will be enough to hold you over until you get that next promotion…(or get canned for not filing your TPS reports on time!)
Have you ever been wandering the halls of your school, workplace, or just around town and wondered whether you could catch a wireless signal? We all have – but who wants the hassle of pulling out your laptop and booting it up to find out? Enter: the wifi shirt. This t-shirt will literally tell you (by lighting up bars across the chest of the shirt) whether there are any wireless Internet signals close to where you are standing. No laptop or cell phone necessary!
One of the timeless identifying marks of geeks from past and present is the pale color of their skin. It’s true – geeks are much more likely to be found huddled up at LAN parties and writing code than chasing a football down a beach. So it’s only fitting that you can now buy a shirt that advertises this already obvious fact. Don’t deny it – wear it proudly!
Some of the best geeky attire combines tech terminology with sexual innuendos, and ThinkGeek.com’s “Try Another Hole” t-shirt is an excellent example. Try wearing it to a bar, and who knows? You might just strike up a conversation with a pretty girl who gets you into a rousing conversation of the pros and cons of Firewire vs. USB! (Hey, you can dream, right?)
Admit it: if you’re a geek, you’ve probably fantasized about lording it over the jocks and popular cliques who teased you during high school. It’s why every nerd grows up telling themselves that someday, all of these jerks will work for them. Well, now you have a t-shirt to encapsulate those comforting (or not-so-comforting) words that have been passed down from one generation of geeks to the next for decades. Wear it and wear it often!
No collection of geeky t-shirts would be complete without the obligatory online “LMAO” shirt. Perfect for those who find themselves thinking and talking in online lingo more than actual English, this shirt is sure to be a big conversation starter at the next party (even if it is just a LAN party.)
ThinkGeek.com sums it up perfectly: “no need for funny one-liners or obscure and geeky references here. Just a simple homage to the markup language that makes the web go ’round.” For a mere $17.99, can any respectable web designer afford not to wear opening and closing tags on their chest and back? We think not!
Believe it or not, some geeks do, in fact, have girlfriends. We know, we know – we were just as surprised as you! But with Valentine’s Day right around the corner, we can think of no better shirt for these lucky ladies to wear around than this one. Now if she could only convince her binary-loving boyfriend that a Magic The Gathering party isn’t exactly the best idea for a romantic date…
If your girlfriend wasn’t very fond of the “I <3 My Geek" shirt, perhaps a binary heart would do the trick. We must warn you, though: bringing a girl with this shirt to any kind of computer fair, Harry Potter book signing, WoW tournament or video game store is just asking for her to be hit on!
One of the original geek t-shirt classics, the “I > U” equation shirt is perfect for those whose wardrobe is lacking in geek street cred. You will also find this equation on multi-player gaming chat screens, Slashdot comments, and anywhere else the technically inclined congregate.
Cut from the same cloth as the “There are 10 types of people in the world” joke, the “Johnny was a chemist’s son” chestnut is another timeless gem that is told and re-told in computer classrooms and IT departments every year. But who knows? Maybe if enough geeks wear this shirt, your C++ professor won’t feel the need to trot it out each time he needs example text for your hello world program to generate.
Geeks love irony, and what better way to stitch irony into a t-shirt than to show the words “Nanotechnology is huge” in miniscule letters? Look no further, folks!
Few things get more laughs out of a bunch of stuffy, literalist geeks than a well-timed Stephen Hawking joke, and now you can wear one on your back at least once a week. (We all know that geeks never, ever wear the same shirt twice in a week, or go without showering, or anything like that…)
To the non-geek, it’s baffling why anyone would think to put a “p” in the word “owned.” But for those who know no other way, this t-shirt is the key to spicing up an otherwise boring wardrobe.
It is commonly believed that only males are geeks, but this is simply not so! Fortunately, the makers of geeky apparel have not bought into this misbegotten stereotype, as evidenced by this snazzy “Geek Girl” shirt for females. If you’ve been looking for a way to join the testosterone-dominated party of brainy fashion, this shirt might be the missing link!
Okay, so this isn’t actually a wearable t-shirt, but we thought it would be criminal not to include it in the article. After all, any geek can wear a t-shirt to show his true colors. But it takes a real master of the craft to outfit his bedding in a button-up, pocketed work shirt! Seriously guys, extra credit for anyone who actually finds this shirt and buys it. (And we all know geeks never shy away from the chance to get extra credit!)
23) “Get Laid”
Most of the t-shirts in this article try to portray geekhood in a positive light, making geeks feel better about the quirks that society has been ostracizing them for their entire lives. Unfortunately, some t-shirts still serve to remind them of the all-too-painful truths they’ve grown familiar with, and this is certainly one of ’em!
If your refrigerator is never without Red Bull and you consider it sacrilegious for a LAN party to begin without cracking open a case of Bawls, then you need to make the Caffeine Molecule t-shirt the next addition to your geeky wardrobe. Let the rest of the unwashed masses consume things that they don’t know the atomic structure of; you’re supposed to be smarter than that! (You are smarter than that…aren’t you?)
What – you didn’t really think you were going to make it through an entire article on the 25 most incredibly geeky t-shirts without at least one l337-speak shirt, did you? Shame on you! No respectable geek should be without one of these bad boys, and if you didn’t already know better, now you do. So go out and get one. Now!
Bonus #1: “Lesbian Trapped in a SysAdmin’s Body”
By this point, you should know that a vital pillar of geek fashion is witty self-deprecation. An excellent case in point is this t-shirt, emblazoned with the slogan “I’m a lesbian trapped inside the body of a crazy, mad, ugly system admin.”
Of course, for all the innuendos, irony, playing-on-words, and suggestive language that makes so many of the above shirts funny and geeky, there’s still no beating a t-shirt that comes right out and beats you over the head with a sobering dose of the obvious. For that, we turn to the classic Periodic Table of Elements t-shirt, which removes all doubt that you were always picked last for competitive sports in gym class.
Google introduced a new service called Latitude yesterday. It is a social networking service based on Google Maps that shows any friends that you have that are nearby. It can also be used to see the status of family that may be on the move, such as getting home from the airport after a rough flight. Check out the video below.
Whether geographical based computing will prove to be beneficial or not has yet to be decided, but Google has staked out their own territory in this market now. Do you think having such a service will improve your social life? And do you feel comfortable with having a powerful corporate entity tracking your movements? And what if the government offered this as a service?
Featured at the Nepcon world exposition in Japan, “Pack in Instance” is a new packing technology that allows you to perfectly pack sensitive items, regardless of size of item or boxes. Just insert packing material in the box, inject a special gel and… voilà!… instant protection for your valuable gear.
Thanks to a breakdown in a previous licensing agreement between YouTube and Warner Music, last month there was something of a witch hunt for any videos containing any songs from Warner’s library.
However, whereas most of the time when YouTube deletes videos due to a DMCA takedown notice, these videos are usually wholesale copies of content–for example, TV or movie clips, or music videos. Now, the videos that are disappearing are getting closer and closer to fair use territory. Early in the month, a number of fanvids were taken down, and now you’re not even allowed to sing a song. A large part of the reason may be automatic filtering systems designed to blindly recognize the music, leading to the same fate no matter what kind of video it is.
Many of you may be familiar with Corey Vidal, who did the Star Wars a cappella tribute:
The problem with all of this, of course, is that the law is unclear. Fair use is a subjective, four-factor test determined by courts on a case-by-case basis. Each factor has to be considered and weighed, and the weight of these different factors has actually varied in court decisions over the years. The Copyright Act (including the fair use doctrine) was written in 1976, when copyright really only involved professionals. The end user as part of the equation didn’t come up at all until the VCR was invented and the law had to deal with the idea of consumers making copies–and still, no one pictured the kind of wide dissemination that the Internet has made possible. Even the DMCA was written more than ten years ago, and these takedown measures that Warner is relying on were designed to deal with file-sharing, not with teenage girls singing “Winter Wonderland” in their bedrooms.
Of course, as much as I’d like to paint Warner as the big bully in all of this, it’s not as if they don’t have a legal leg to stand on. Even in the case of cover songs, someone owns that copyright. Not in the sound recording (i.e. Bing Crosby’s version of “Winter Wonderland”), but in the underlying composition. To cover a song, you have to deal with compulsory licenses or performing rights. And it’s still not clear as to whether something like a YouTube video counts as a public performance. Again, were these designed to deal with a noncommercial Internet video? No, but in copyright the law generally doesn’t distinguish between commercial and noncommercial use. Even in fair use, that’s only part of one of the four factors. (And for those of you who aren’t in the U.S., don’t even get me started on international copyright issues.)
The bottom line is that this is a really sticky mess. However, I suspect that Warner is hurting more from the bad PR than any damage that could have been done by these YouTube videos. Plus, they may want to remember a certain dancing baby. Last year, when Universal Music had that video taken down due to their copyright in the Prince song that’s playing in the background, the mother who posted the video took them to court (under a little-used cause of action for when a copyright holder sends a takedown notice in bad faith). The court said that a copyright holder must make a good faith effort to determine whether a video could be considered fair use before sending a takedown notice.
First the VCR, then Napster… now YouTube/remix. This is just the latest copyright crisis, and until there’s some actual law on the subject, everyone’s just going to keep flailing in the dark.
After waiting more than a year for new episodes, the folks from Blame Society Films have finally launched the second season of Chad Vader! What took you so long Chad, we missed you!
There’s nothing worse than that moment when you realize your data is gone. All the music, saved games, instrument presets, documents, and information that you took for granted are now lost forever. When my last hard drive crashed, there was the sickening moment when I realized the data was gone, and it was almost as hard to deal with as a break up.
Seagate has revamped its FreeAgent series of external drives. The drives now come with a five year warranty, and a fold out instruction page with less than 1,000 words.
I had the opportunity to test out all three of the drives in the line, The FreeAgent Go, FreeAgent Desk, and FreeAgent XTreme, and I am impressed. With a huge bang for the buck and more data storage than most people will ever need, the FreeAgent drives are definitely a choice to consider if you’re shopping for a portable storage solution.
The drives are sleek and have the coolest drive light I have ever seen. The display LEDs glow brightly when plugged, pulse in brightness when the drive is reading or writing data, and dim when it goes into standby. As an energy saver, all the drives automatically jump to standby after 15 minutes. The drives are simple to use. Simply plug them and start rocking. As if looks and ease aren’t enough, the drives are almost silent.
The FreeAgent Go is a tiny bit larger than an iPhone, and can easily fit in your pocket. The unit has a docking bay and leather case (sold separately) that eliminate the need to plug and unplug cables on your computer. While the included USB cable is only 3.5 feet, it’s a perfect carry along. I put the Go in my pocket and went to see some friends with my data, and found that the FreeAgent Go is the perfect portable drive. It took much less than I expected to pour my data onto their computers. The FreeAgent Go comes in several colors, and you can choose between three file capacities, 250GB, 320GB, and 500GB. You can get the 500GB for as low as $122, making this drive a cheap addition to your rig, and perfect for bringing the entire contents of your computer somewhere else.
The FreeAgent Desk and XTreme seem almost the same, with the exception of the casing and a coupe of features. They both have 7200 rpm drives, making them near the top of the line in speed. While the color is different (The Desk is silver and the XTreme is black), the only other feature that sets them apart is the interface. While the desk is USB 2.0 only, the XTreme also has ports for firewire and eSATA, giving it a leg up on speed. Both drives come in four storage sizes between 500GB and 1.5TB, and span in price from $140 to $280. You can also get them for much cheaper on Amazon.com.
The software that comes with the FreeAgent is easy to use. It includes some simple diagnostics, and automated backup controls, including setting specific folders and backup times. The software also includes an encryption option. While there are several steps to the encryption and decryption process, it’s nice to know that if someone takes my drive, they won’t get my data. I tested the drives by backing up my 168GB of media, documents, pictures, and studio sessions on all the drives… at the same time. In less than nine hours all three drives were complete When I Copied my music collection (50GB of MP3s) to the FreeAgent go, the transfer was complete in less than 90 minutes.
We’ve yet to see what the new drives’ reliability over time will be, but Seagate’s offerings look good, are easy to use, and are inexpensive – and that works for me! I’m impressed.
(Editor’s Note: [GAS] Contributor Brian Boyko had an earlier version of the Seagate FreeAgent drive – his hard drive crashed on him. However, Seagate promptly replaced the drive, and the replacement has continued working for 18 months so far.)
I don’t know about you, but I think there’s just something really wrong with this cake. It probably has something to do with our favorite Sith lord lovingly holding a baby girl. Oh well, I guess there are a lot of pregnant geekettes out there who would give a lot to get such a cake for their baby shower.
By hooking a $250 Motorola RFID reader and an antenna to his laptop, Chris Paget was able to easily harvest and clone multiple RFID identity documents while driving through San Francisco. Fortunately for the victims Chris is a white hat hacker and only did this to prove that using RFID-enabled identify cards can only be a bad thing for everyone.
However, whereas most of the time when YouTube deletes videos due to a 
There’s nothing worse than that moment when you realize your data is gone. All the music, saved games, instrument presets, documents, and information that you took for granted are now lost forever. When my last hard drive crashed, there was the sickening moment when I realized the data was gone, and it was almost as hard to deal with as a break up.
The drives are sleek and have the coolest drive light I have ever seen. The display LEDs glow brightly when plugged, pulse in brightness when the drive is reading or writing data, and dim when it goes into standby. As an energy saver, all the drives automatically jump to standby after 15 minutes. The drives are simple to use. Simply plug them and start rocking. As if looks and ease aren’t enough, the drives are almost silent. 
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