Top ten nerds and geeks

In 1997, Malda (also known as CmdrTaco) founded Slashdot, a touchstone for the world's geeks. Slashdot is one of the world's most popular Internet discussion forums and is famous for its mix of rowdy debate and commentary on developments in science and technology. If you are a geek, chances are you post there. Malda also used Slashdot to propose to his then girlfriend, Kathleen Kent, in 2002. She accepted. That is true geekdom.

Neumann was a fiercely intelligent man who pioneered the computer, helped invent the hydrogen bomb, was a member of the Princeton 'demi-gods' and drank ferociously. Neumann is perhaps the most atypical nerd ever to have lived. Famously, he would hold debauched parties and enjoyed reading books while driving -- a habit that was known to result in arrest. At the age of six, Neumann could speak Greek, and by 25 he had published ten important scientific papers. His other achievements are too numerous to list here, but he's the closest thing the geek community has to an Indiana Jones.

Torvalds' personal mascot is a penguin, he invented Linux using an old 386 PC and he insists he is named after a character in the Peanuts comic strip -- in fact he was named after Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist. Torvalds' operating system is used by computers all over the world and some believe it poses a serious threat to Microsoft's Windows -- not bad for a lone Computer Science student.