TUTORIAL Nerd, Dork, or Geek?

[wardmundy]

Where do you fit in the Venn Diagram?

via Great White Snark

 

[phinphan]

According to my nephew and his buddies who are all Engineering majors at Georgia Tech, it is okay to be a nerd or a geek but definitely not okay to be a dork.

 

[vcallaway]

My son put it this way:

Geek works in hi-tech.
Nerd works in hi-tech, in sales.
Dork just lives in his mothers basement dreaming of hi-tech.

YMMV.

 

[wardmundy]

No offense to the Geeks, but... here’s the best definition we’ve found: “a nerd is very similar to a geek, but with more RAM and a faster modem.”

 

[wardmundy]

Another view...

 

[tycho]

Handy! The source of countless debates among my often-clueless friends. I will share this with them.

 

[krzykat]

and a faster modem.”

Wow that's not dated

 

[tycho]

Wow that's not dated

Hey; it didn't specify =what kind= of modem. I still use a modem: it's just of the cable variety rather than my old USRobotics 56K unit ("pursuant to FCC regulations, the speed of this device is limited to 53 Kpbs...")

Geek-ism/Nerd-ism: my first modem was a "300 baud" device. Never personally owned a 110, but I'd used plenty of them (see my avatar)

I owned a 300, a 1200, a 2400, several 9600s while they figured out "the standard," a 14.4K, a 28.8K, and a 56K. Then I discovered DSL...

 

[krzykat]

OK - so who all owned a CompuServ account? I know I did, while being a clipper programmer, and Novell Netware expert.

 

[tycho]

I had a Compuserve account, as well as an account with the company that then changed it's name into AOL.

No cheating/Googling: who can remember the name of that predecessor company? (I do! I do!)

 

[mbellot]

I owned a 300, a 1200, a 2400, several 9600s while they figured out "the standard," a 14.4K, a 28.8K, and a 56K. Then I discovered DSL...

I didn't "own" it, but was fortunate (?) enough to use a 110 baud modem courtesy of Chicago Public Schools. Even then my home system was better (I had a 300 baud acoustic coupler at home).

FWIW - I was taught in college that you can't spell geek without EE, so I guess that makes me a geek, though I probably fit better in the nerd intersection from the OP.

 

[GomezAddams]

 

[w1ve]

CompuServc?? Ultra-Modern!! When in High School, my math teacher asked me if I wanted to join a "computer club". I said sure. He said "meet me at this broom closet after school. I did not know what to expect... It had an IBM Selectric Typewriter Terminal, with a 110-baud acoustically coupled modem, and a dial telephone...

The Selectric typewriter had an APL typeball (greek character set), and the modem was connected to an IBM System 360 at a local university running APL 360/SV. I was in heaven!!

 

[wardmundy]

w1ve: After the Penn State fiasco, not sure I'd want to meet anybody in the broom closet.

 

[tycho]

It had an IBM Selectric Typewriter Terminal, with a 110-baud acoustically coupled modem, and a dial telephone...

The Selectric typewriter had an APL typeball (greek character set), and the modem was connected to an IBM System 360 at a local university running APL 360/SV. I was in heaven!!

Man, I =so= wanted one of those Selectric-turned-printers back in the day. Rat's-nest of wires out the back hard-soldered into some cobbled-together I/O port on one's home-brew "personal computer" (Altair? Imsai? S-100 buss?)

 

[tycho]

I had a Compuserve account, as well as an account with the company that then changed it's name into AOL.

No cheating/Googling: who can remember the name of that predecessor company? (I do! I do!)

Time's up class!

The correct answer is "Quantum Computer Services." I was a charter subscriber. I've had an AOL account (dusty; it's somewhere) so long that my username is just my 3 initials...

 

[w1ve]

You are right, Ward... but my teacher was a standup guy... When I went to college, my "computer programming" class was on an HP Mini, with 4K of core, using a version of BASIC that you loaded using an OCTAL sequence on the front panel to start the paper tape reader, then ran the BASIC on a Model 19 teletype!! The professor got a $30K grant to upgrade the HP Mini to 16K of RAM -- instead he bought 16 Commodore PET microcomputers running Microsoft BASIC... pretty cool. My first computer out of college was the Altair 8800 Kit from MITS - my roommate at the time bought one! We were both hams, so we had it running with a Model 19 teletype as well. Fun times!