If this little quiz is anything to go by, being a geek is hard. Really hard. This cool little image was created by Virtualhosting.com and it names the 50 things a geek should know. I guess I must be a fake geek boy, because there are so many things on this list I just don’t know! Anyone want to test themselves?
There are just such a wide spread of topics, across multiple different knowledge bases. Despite the fact that I clearly love video games, I actually lack in a lot of tech savvy! This image exposes my weaknesses massively!
Anyone here know everything on this list?
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Comments
54 responses to “These Are The 50 Things ‘Geeks’ Should Know”
32.
What the hell is a hacker space?
It’s like a Net Cafe, only it’s purely dedicated to hacking.
So a good place to get arrested then?
Not so much hacking as in the hacking sites/computers, but more of the hardware hacking, building stuff, 3d printers, cnc mills etc space.
Think Mens Shed but less wood craft, more electronic focused.
Really trying to get a hackerspace started in my area, would be quite handy to not have to purchase all the tools I want to use… but also learn from the knowledge of others.
Ah. That’s makes much more sense. And sounds a lot more awesome.
16
I’m sorry, but I’m not a walking stereotype of what the media believes a geek is
Me neither buddy!
I bet if there were some wrestling related stuff on there our scores would be higher lol
I thought I was in some pretty serious trouble when I’d hit 10 so early on, but thankfully my complete inability to invest heavily in anything enough to do more than pick up the vaguest smattering of surface data kept me at a respectably low 18.
Because it would be terrible for people on a video-game blog site’s comments page to think I was a geek. 🙂
I got 13.
Man I suck at being a geek. But I’m not cool either. I’m stuck in the space between worlds.
I got to ‘know how to jailbreak an iphone’ then realised I was being had. >_>
Hmm, only 25. The “geekiness difficulty” of some of them varies just a little: Building and programming a fighting robot vs Doing the Vulcan Hand sign… So I guess all my geek knowledge is in tv/game references and not actual, practical skills then!
This is wrong. Han didn’t shoot FIRST!
Han SHOT!
Finally some sense in this topic
45..
My wife laughed at me…
– 30 for having a significant other. Your true score is 15.
😉
Hahahaha, I literally laughed out loud at this.
31. Yes. I did used to be a geek. Then, I dunno, I stopped dicking around with computers quite so much.
Anyway, why on earth does the difficulty level in skill-based stuff range from “knowing how to make a basic website in notepad” which is like 3 html code commands, and progresses up to shit like “programming a fighting robot”. They’re really setting the bar too low or too high.
Also, six months ago I would have scoffed at the idea that anyone is actually incapable of reading leetspeak, but I discovered my wife is illiterate to it. She has a rudimentary understanding of how the replacement characters are supposed to look like letters, but she can’t read it. Might as well be Japanese. So I guess that’s a legit geek skill.
Knowing how to program HTML in notepad merely marks your age, I think. After all, kids these days build websites with GUIs to do it for them!
You’d be surprised. I have three work colleagues who are into building robots.
20! Wow, better than I was expecting.
But is it really possible to beat the Tomb of Horrors?
I think the first doorway kills the first person to walk through, regardless of trap check skill. And that guy gets off light.
I believe the point of the tomb of horrors is that you will probably die or at least lose limbs. If played straight by the DM (and it was designed purely so the DM could bitchslap their players when they were getting cocky) you will either not come out of it, or you will at great personal cost, probably with no treasure.
That first doorway errs on the side of just little bit complete bullshit.
This is why you take NPCs with you, I guess?
Man, if I ever play D&D again I’m totally going to kidnap some orphans instead of putting points into checking for traps.
Tomb of Horrors is still one of the greatest DnD experiences I’ve ever had.
Particularly cause I was the second character to enter the tomb.
Haha. What level were your characters? How big was your party?
Were there survivors?
We made fresh level 20s purely for the Tomb, and there was 5 of us plus some NPCs. We didn’t get far (no prior knowledge of tomb encounters), but it was a hell of a lot of fun.
I got a lot of those, but I’m the kind of Geek that doesn’t conform to society’s need to rate and label people. I also realise the irony of being a non-conformist and labelling myself a Geek. I’m surprised they didn’t have some of the more obvious ones like knowing the “odd/even” rule of Star Trek and where the phrase “Hack the Planet” comes from. Also, where’s the Konami code!?
I used google to get the answers for the questions I didn’t know. Can I be a geek now?
20
Definitely tended towards the more pop cultural questions …
31. Computer and Technology kind of killed me and I’m not a big fan of Doctor Who.
The Stargate one is tricky, because there were 2, but didn’t one explode after being teleported out of the mountain?… Or did they replace it… Been ages since I watched Stargate
i think its a bit of a trick question. for most of the original stargate series, there were 2. however the egypt had to be replaced after it was lost somewhere in season 6 or 7. Since the question asks how many ARE on Earth (are referring to the present tense) the correct answer would be 1, as thats how many were on Earth at the end of the series.
But then at the end of Atlantis we ended up with a Pegasus gate at least floating above the planet. Not sure if it would have ever been brought down to ground, but it would have still been close enough to be at the same dialing address.
At the end of SG1 there would have been the original Giza gate, at the end of ATL there would have been two as Atlantis landed in San Fransisco. Because it’s an digital gate with a DHD it would have over-rid the gate in the SGC.
A season 6 of Atlantis or movie would have seen the gate moved to the moon, then eventually back to the Pegasus Galaxy. But you know, we got SGU instead.
Oh hey there’s those movies. Still gotta check them out.
I think the fact you know enough to question it means you can safely tick that box anyay 😛
33
I hate shit like this. There’s no test. People who like stuff like stuff. Knowing that Alan Moore worships Glycon the snake god doesn’t make you better than someone who can name the entire Australian cricket team but can’t tell you the name of “the eleven actors who have played the role of Doctor Who” (which should be 15+ and The Doctor, by the way), it just means you know different things.
The great thing about being a geek is that there’s no barrier for entry other than liking something. Don’t force people to check their knowledge against yours just so you can feel unjustly superior.
You clearly forgot episode 342C6 where for a few frames a doctor from the past was in a painting which makes you wrong. Your inferior intellect amuses me.
*tips fedora*
I didn’t really count but I think I got 20-something.
I don’t care, I’m still a geek. I know how to root and flash a custom rom onto an Android device, I’m pretty sure that makes me more geeky than knowing how to jailbreak an iPhone.
A mighty 12.
Were these questions obtained from the big bang theory because, you know, that’s the real test of whether you’re a geek or not. Can you keep up with the laugh track and laugh at every sentence Sheldon says because it’s so geeky it’s funny?
Hmm. Looks like I managed about 22. Not too bad I guess 😛
Did alright in the TV and Movies section, only didn’t know the actors of The Doctor and the Neon Genesis stuff.
Missed a lot in the tech section, they’re the kinds of things that I’d probably figure out if I had to do them. That said, sif a geek would have an iPhone 😛
Heroes and Villains has more of the specific stuff. Don’t know Alan Moore’s god, never done a Bandai model kit (but how hard could it be?), don’t know that Bene guy or Franklin dude. And Klingon? Pfft, that’s for nerds.
Internet stuff is full of a lot of things I don’t bother with, rather than trivia type stuff like the google easter eggs and 127.0.0.1.
Similar stuff with the board games. Never played Dwarf Fortress, nor WoW, nor Katan, nor D&D, nor Risk, nor Magic. But hey at least I can solve a Rubik’s Cube in under a minute and a half 😛
I’m proud of my geek level. I don’t need this “test” to validate it, dammit!
5.
But I always labelled myself a “geek at heart” anyway rather than a true geek.
15. I may not be a geek, but I am a nerd.
17…while I don’t refer to myself as a geek more so as someone who enjoys the classic arts of the Internet and shopping on thinkgeek.
28. Fuck some of those “need to know” – hardcore geeks I know have deleted some of those skills from their memory banks.
And that thing needs to be better written. Constant repetition of “know” makes for bad structure.
/grammar
Only 24 in my case, but I would replace a bunch of the questions. I suspect the quiz was put together out of one geek’s knowledge. Here are some alternatives:
– Knows the “holy trinity” in Everquest. (This is just as reasonable as the WoW questions.)
– Can state the Three Laws of Robotics (and at least one reason why they are flawed)
– Tempting but probably unfair: Knows at least one programming language
– Knows how to swap in a replacement hard drive in a PC
– Knows what joysticks and MIDI have in common
– Knows the difference between a gigabyte and a gibibyte, and why RAM manufacturers use the wrong one
– Knows which Thunderbird is which (bonus points for specifying Thunderbird Six)
– Knows what will eat you in the dark in the Zork games
Jailbreak an iphone, but not root an Android?
I thought he was Patron Saint of the Internet?
2 BTC questions vs the Litany from Dune? how many geeks born in the last 20 years would have watched Dune? How about “Know the speed of the modem from the laptop in Hackers?”
Setup a LAN Party? How about wire an ethernet cable (in crossover) or network your house?
Remotely park a HDD?
meh
This is the kind of stuff that alienates people from liking geeky things, and thus, nobody takes our interests seriously.
I can see that it’s all just in good fun though, but man, am I sick of this segregation.
–
30-40 for me, maybe more, i dunno not counting
20
Do I get cake now?