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The top 10 greatest geeks of all time

itnews.com.au — Guess who's number one?

Who dugg this? Made popular Nov 11, 2008

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  • soulpunisher, on 11/11/2008, -5/+1721: Linus Torvalds
    2: Steve Wozniak
    3. Sir Tim Berners-Lee
    4: Seymour Cray
    5: Marc Andreessen
    6: Rear Admiral Grace Hopper
    7: Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce
    8: Alan Turing
    9: Richard Stallman
    10: Paul Allen

    11. me, for making this list for you
  • dreamofrevenge, on 11/11/2008, -30/+179Bill Gates.
  • strictnein, on 11/11/2008, -2/+107Shouldn't this list be on 10 separate pages?
  • indraneel24, on 11/11/2008, -2/+101Kevin Rose, despite how much we all love him, has a long way to go to be in the same paragraph as these guys.
  • username7410, on 11/11/2008, -4/+81Where's Copernicus? Isaac Newton? Come on!
  • lukasmach, on 11/11/2008, -4/+47Gates was an excellent programmer, but he concentrated on business - that's not a geek move.

    Kevin Rose is only web 2.0 entrepreneur, who's fanbase mostly consists of Apple fans. Almost every word in the previous sentence has geek factor 0.
  • Bradl3y, on 11/11/2008, -7/+46I hope you are joking.
  • Louis11, on 11/11/2008, -0/+35Copernicus was a quack. Everyone knows the earth is the center of the solar system.
  • padraic2112, on 11/11/2008, -1/+36Dugg for Grace Hopper.
  • yohnstoppable, on 11/11/2008, -1/+34Isaac Asimov
  • Bradl3y, on 11/11/2008, -5/+34And a business man can not be a geek? Come on...
  • MakanGuru, on 11/11/2008, -1/+29They missed the ultimate all time geek

    Da Vinci
  • Tanktunker, on 11/11/2008, -4/+31Yes.
    Honestly, this is the ***** list ever about anything, no hyperbole.

    But I'm serious, Bill gates and his Microsoft pals made computers what they are today, and I can't believe Turing and Stallman got last places.

  • JEWestbrookJR, on 11/11/2008, -15/+38This list is missing Kevin Mitnick. The other choices are still fantastic, however.
  • TheSabre, on 11/11/2008, -2/+25Nonesense. Gates and Allen created Altair BASIC, the first implementation of the BASIC interpreter for a "home" computer. I consider that a milestone. Maybe not on the same level as those mentioned in this article, but Gates was far from just "lucky".
  • ModeSeven, on 11/11/2008, -0/+23^^^ I see way too many Linux geeks with this attitude, it ain't doing the cause any good. ***** elitist prick.
  • IamMikeMusic, on 11/11/2008, -7/+29If you're talking geeks then it's got to be Linux, I mean...Linus.
  • inactive, on 11/11/2008, -1/+23Dugg down for no Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace. Also cuz Alan Turing is almost last wtf.
  • mooseofshadows, on 11/11/2008, -1/+20Vin Diesel, for those that don't know, is a huge geek, he loves D&D and has tattoos of some of his characters.
  • kevisazombie, on 11/11/2008, -4/+22Why did they not list them in reverse order?
  • jakash, on 11/11/2008, -25/+43I hate lists that start at 1, why couldn't we have just had a countdown? And of course, nobody likes clicking through to another page.
    Also, no Bill Gates? Kevin Rose?
  • 4321234, on 11/11/2008, -2/+20I heard Linus only has 2 keys on his keyboard. A one and a zero.
  • inactive, on 11/11/2008, -1/+19another reason...
    "Linus Torvalds is married to Tove Torvalds (née Monni) – a six-time Finnish national Karate champion..."
    -wiki
  • sindex, on 11/11/2008, -6/+23Me? I was, after all, also Man of the Year.
  • anselm83, on 11/11/2008, -4/+21I realize it's really fashionable to hate on Bill Gates, but it's incredibly ridiculous to exclude him from this list. You don't get to where he is by merely having a passing, vague interest in technology: he full-on embraced geekdom (even foregoing that whole "hygiene" fad in order to get it up for tech 24/7).
  • elementop, on 11/11/2008, -0/+16A *REAL* geek would insist that the list should start at zero.
  • PIPBoy2000, on 11/11/2008, -1/+16microsoft fanboys ATTACK!!!
  • inactive, on 11/11/2008, -0/+15Dugg for #11.
  • CasinoJack, on 11/11/2008, -1/+15Charles Babbage, by far...
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage#Eccen ...
  • mrfizzle, on 11/11/2008, -25/+38nvm digg me down
  • pingudownunder, on 11/11/2008, -5/+18Really? Kevin Mitnick was a crap "hacker" but a great social engineer. Doesn't make him a geek.
  • sLydE, on 11/11/2008, -0/+13You do mean Steven Hawking, right?
  • matthistory, on 11/11/2008, -1/+13Jobs is a business man not geek
  • GiggleStick, on 11/11/2008, -1/+13Knuth?
  • SirFragsMore, on 11/11/2008, -13/+25Vin Diesel?
  • ub3rgeek, on 11/11/2008, -2/+13Randall Munroe did NOT invent Rule 34...
  • disappointed, on 11/11/2008, -1/+12No reference to "of all time" shall refer to anything prior to 1900. It's the law. In the same way that "in the universe" refers only to America.

    So the "best person in the world ever" would be whoever won the last series of whatever the biggest reality show is in the US right now.
  • aywwts4, on 11/11/2008, -4/+15What makes Mitnick a great geek? Most of this list created created great things, Mitnik broke systems down, in the worst and least resonsible way. Unlike the very responsible disclosures of the MIT hackers and whatnot.

    He got caught a lot, judges let him off easy because computer crimes weren't really in place or understood or he was a minor, then the final time they threw the book at him because the prosecutors and the media trumped up the threat he posed.

    He was just the first big script kiddie before proper security was implemented.
  • kidjay, on 11/11/2008, -11/+21posted from my mac, with my iphone in my pocket and my neverending supply of apple fanboy apologism:

    where in the ***** is bill gates!?

    credibility of list: zero
  • inactive, on 11/12/2008, -1/+10Mitnick's a douche.
  • drex8, on 11/11/2008, -0/+9Tove or not Tove.
  • drewbeta, on 11/11/2008, -0/+9I think it was just too obvious. The article was aiming for the less-famous:

    "Often unsung and underappreciated, their own personalities or lifestyles usually keep them from gaining greater public recognition."

    everyone knows who Bill Gates is, even my mom and she's afraid to touch a computer. I'm sure that my mom does not know who Linus Torvalds is.
  • Toscino, on 11/12/2008, -1/+9only?
  • KimonoThief, on 11/11/2008, -0/+8But we'd have already built a time machine, rendering his inventions pretty unimpressive by comparison.
  • specialK16, on 11/11/2008, -0/+8Then he would die seconds later after coming in.
  • counterplex, on 11/11/2008, -1/+9It does say "of all time". Shouldn't that be Archimedes or someone from before the 20th century?
  • inactive, on 11/11/2008, -2/+10a top 10 list that starts with number 1? dugg down for the author not knowing how to write a top 10 list.
  • lukasmach, on 11/11/2008, -0/+8I understand what you mean, but Linus actually _wrote_ an operating system. Only it wasn't GNU/Linux: In 1991 he was the only person working on what _became_ GNU/Linux and the thing loaded and worked. AFAIK the decision to use Linux kernel in GNU operating system didn't come from Linus.
  • anaclagon, on 11/11/2008, -0/+7Shouldn't Steven Hawkins be on the list?
  • hartley, on 11/11/2008, -0/+7The "geek" behind apple is #2, the Woz.
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