I admit it – I love Christmas music. I like the old, traditional stuff. I like some of the funny stuff. I even like some of the new-fangled stuff! Earlier this evening, I was listening to some Christmas tunes while working in my office, and the Twelve Days of Christmas song came on. As I hummed along with this cute little song, I remembered that there’s a “redneck” version, as well. That got me thinking… where’s the Geek version?! Surely there are more than enough gadgets lying around to help inspire us, right? We demand equal representation! If Jeff Foxworthy can sing about redneck gifts, why can’t we sing about Geeky ones?

Here’s my challenge to you – come up with a whole new version of the standard Twelve Days of Christmas. The catch is, of course, that it has to be Geek style! Only Geeky gifts, gadgets and gizmos are allowed for each of the days. Make sure the song makes sense, and rhymes at least somewhat. If you want me to sing it on stream some day, you need to make sure it sounds at least kind of coherent. If I receive one that is truly awesome, you never know where you might see or hear your creation!

Get to writing, and email me your lyrics!

• Corel has sealed a deal that will allow them to keep on living.
• The Twelve Scams of Christmas
• Could your Mac be dead on arrival?
• We the bespectacled demand ways to tweak our monitors!
• Google is taking ad revenue to TiVO.
• Have you ever been misplaced on the social scale?
• Are bed bugs back and ‘better’ than ever?
• A former Geek Squad agent is blowing his whistle.
• Why is the New York Times telling us to boycott Microsoft Bing?
• If you had plenty of start-up capital in the bank, what type of business would you start?
• Two more media outlets are joining News Corp in throwing a hissy fit.
• Is Ubuntu giving users paper cuts?!

There are a lot of cool games and software titles available for excellent prices in our downloads center today – just in time for holiday gift-giving!

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The Twelve Days of Christmas – Geek Style

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I don’t mind when a movie has something “Tech” in it, as long as it’s realistic, or even remotely so. There have been times in movies, though, where you just have to hang your head as a Geek and wonder what Hollywood was thinking.

Bwana mentioned being bothered by the movie Jurassic Park, during the scene where the girl uses a Unix system. After this video was posted, I received a follow up email to explain that scene. The file system you saw on screen in that scene is called “3d navigator” and was developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) for their version of unix. You can see a Screenshot here.

SC_Thor has to cringe when watching Swordfish. Build a virus out of legos? What are you talking about? Ohhh. I feel the need to go play with something the guys can’t see while they continue talking!

Wirelesspacket doesn’t mind Hackers so much. At least it’s realistic in the sense it COULD be that way in the future. However, he feels that the movie Takedown was more realistic.

Clear and Present Danger just wasn’t right at all. There’s a part where someone is trying to delete files on a computer from the Command Line, and the directory is longer than it should be. How hard is C:\??

And now, for my invention! Look… I built my own virus out of Legos! Now all I need to do is send it to the Mother Ship. I’m such a genius.

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Movies that Don’t tell the Tech Truth

http://live.pirillo.com/ – What exactly are hackers? There are a lot of different types of hat: white, gray, and black.

White hates can be considered someone legal: they help find, fix, and generally help make the public more secure than they would otherwise be.

Black hats are people who you would normally consider a hacker: unscrupulous, unethical, and generally the wrong kind of person to piss off. They hack either because they can, for political reasons, or for monetary gain.

Gray hats lay somewhere between white and black: they may not be entirely `without ethics, but they also don't work within the letter of the law.

That's our description, but what's your definition?

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What are Hackers?