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Sample question: While not at work working, what do you spend most of your time on the computer doing? Doing work I rarely use a computer away from work Chatting, and/or using MySpace, Facebook, etc... Reading technology news (e.g. Slashdot, Digg, TechWeb, CNet, etc...) Playing video games Doing random stuff Porn

ELM MOTT, Texas - A Navy man who got mad when someone mocked him as a "nerd" over the Internet climbed into his car and drove 1,300 miles from Virginia to Texas to teach the other guy a lesson. As he made his way toward Texas, Fire Controlman 2nd Class Petty Officer Russell Tavares posted photos online showing the welcome signs at several states' borders, as if to prove to his Internet friends that he meant business. When he finally arrived, Tavares burned the guy's trailer down. This week, Tavares, 27, was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading...

Sunday morning at three minutes and four seconds after 2 a.m., it will be exactly 02:03:04 05/06/07. And if you find that so astounding that you won't be able to sleep until you've experienced this once-in-a-century sequence, you are, in case you didn't know … a nerd. A numbers nerd, that is. No shame in that — I'm one, too. (Hey: one, too. Cool numbers are everywhere.) Folks like us find it hard not to shout, "Look! It's 12:34!" Even 2:34 is sweet, as are 1:23, 3:45, and of course 4:56. And when it's 11:11 — well, it just doesn't...

Originally scheduled to be shot at Emory, the remake of "Revenge of the Nerds," the 1984 film in which a group of bookish and socially awkward outcasts band together to fight their oppressive bullies, has been cancelled, Fox Atomic Films announced last week. The magazine explained that filmmakers' concerns with the direction of the movie prompted the decision to cancel, but some movie bloggers blamed Emory for the shutdown. McClurkin said the filmmakers initially proposed to the University a crew of about 100 people with three trucks of equipment. But the filmmakers' final proposal called for about three times as...

First prize winner, for sure. Today I am announcing this column's inaugural blue ribbon award for the totally dorkiest look of the year. There's no contest here. Without any doubt, the dumbest sight anywhere in 2006 is a human ear with a Bluetooth technology device sticking out. For starters, it looks ridiculous — like a reject part from the Borg (evil cyberbeings). Is anyone so important she or he must be linked to Verizon Wireless or Cingular or any mobile service on an 24/7 basis? I don't think so. And if one has to be on call for any reason,...

Rocket scientists, long considered the gold standard in intelligence among all professionals, are not nearly as smart as originally thought, according to a controversial new study published today by the American Association of Brain Surgeons. The study, which appears in the organization's monthly publication, Popular Brain Surgery, is entitled "The Intelligence of Rocket Scientists: Myth Versus Reality," and suggests that rocket scientists' reputation for smartness is largely undeserved. "It does require a superior intellect to function as a rocket scientist," the article concedes. "Having said that, though, rocket science is not brain surgery." The article drew an immediate rebuke from...

http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/09/17/fashion/17vows.600.jpg Adam Berger and Stephen Frank By KATHRYN SHATTUCK THEY had been close friends for years, first at college and later in New York, but now Adam Berger was baring his soul to Stephen Frank. “I have news: I don’t play on your team,” he said, adapting the line from “Seinfeld.” They had gotten to know each other as freshmen at Harvard. As college progressed, they became best friends, dated women and ultimately became suite mates. They bickered, they quibbled, they finished each other’s sentences practically before the one speaking knew what he was actually going to say. So much...

World of Warcraft is what's called an MMORPG - a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game, for you non-geeks - and like all computer games, it has its share of goobers who take the game way too seriously. This video makes fun of said goobers. Watch it at your peril - both because it contains profanity, and because if you know anyone like this, your face will hurt from laughing.

Have fun! I'm just a low-ranked nerd.

On the O'Reilly Factor just now, Schumer is spinning his crap and hilariously just called Justice Alito "slightly nerdy". I know this isn't newsworthy, but there's hypocrisy and then there's hypocrisy.

The world is moving into a new age of numbers. Partnerships between mathematicians and computer scientists are bulling into whole new domains of business and imposing the efficiencies of math. This has happened before. In past decades, the marriage of higher math and computer modeling transformed science and engineering. Quants turned finance upside down a generation ago. And data miners plucked useful nuggets from vast consumer and business databases. But just look at where the mathematicians are now. They're helping to map out advertising campaigns, they're changing the nature of research in newsrooms and in biology labs, and they're enabling...

Feature A Guy Named Craig How a schlumpy IBM refugee found you your apartment, your boyfriend, your new couch, your afternoon sex partner—and now finds himself killing your newspaper. By Philip Weiss Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, in his San Francisco apartment.(Photo credit: Robyn Twomey) The Exploder of Journalism and I have an appointment at noon at a café near the Haight in San Francisco, and he’s right on time in the Kangol hat. To be honest, he’s not much to look at: short and balding, with a little smile and round cheeks with bright-pink patches of color. Modish...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A team of researchers at Central Missouri State University has discovered the largest known prime number, university officials said Tuesday. The researchers, led by associate dean Steven Boone and mathematics professor Curtis Cooper, are affiliated with a worldwide computing project that uses volunteers to run software that searches for an elusive set of numbers called Mersenne primes. A prime number is a positive number that is only divisible by itself and one: 2, 3, 5, 7 and so on. Mersenne primes are a special category, expressed as 2 to the "p" power minus 1, where "p"...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Researchers at a Missouri university have identified the largest known prime number, officials said Tuesday. The team at Central Missouri State University, led by associate dean Steven Boone and mathematics professor Curtis Cooper, found it in mid-December after programming 700 computers years ago. A prime number is a positive number divisible by only itself and 1 — 2, 3, 5, 7 and so on. The number that the team found is 9.1 million digits long. It is a Mersenne prime known as M30402457 — that's 2 to the 30,402,457th power minus 1. Mersenne primes are a...

Note to thread police: I am posting this in Chat. I am trying to find a way to modify the priority of a program/process that I have running as a Windows service on Windows 2000 Server. I have tried the right-click from the task manager method with no luck (access denied.) I need the priority setting to be static so I don't have to reset it every time I reboot. Some of the most knowledgable IT people I know are on FR, so that is why I am asking here.

DELAWARE, Ohio (August 30) — The star of the cult hit Napoleon Dynamite said making the film gave him the chance to "celebrate the nerd within me." Jon Heder, who plays the film's curly haired, awkward namesake, appeared with Aaron Ruell, who plays Napoleon's older brother Kip, at Ohio Wesleyan University north of Columbus Sunday. They said they could relate to the movie, which follows Idaho outcasts trying to find their place in the world. "We created Kip and Napoleon from ourselves and from people we knew and experiences we had," said Heder, 27. "It was fun to celebrate the...

A geek, by definition, is "any person considered to be different from others in a negative or bizarre way, as a teenager seen as being awkward, tall, gangling, stupid, brainy or antisocial." But really, haven't all of us felt that way at one time or another? Well, a little-known holiday is coming up this Wednesday -- "Celebrate Your Geekness" day -- and I think it's high time the geeks of the world unite in celebrating their individuality! Who says it is bad to be different? Just think of all the things we would be missing out on without the geeks...

In honor of today's premiere, here is Triumph the Insult Dog hammering people in line for the opening of Attack of the Clones. One of the funniest things I have ever seen on TV. Triumph

Ask George Lucas about his hopes for the closing instalment of Star Wars, Revenge of the Sith, and he replies that he expects it to fail. In an interview with TIME magazine, Lucas says that like everyone who makes movies, he is "always convinced the next one will be a flop". "So right now I’m thinking it probably won’t make any money and will be considered a failure." But in spite of his fears, he concedes he is very satisfied with the final product. "I think it turned out as well as I could have hoped, and at the same...