my digitized life // john hwang

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Why Geeks and Nerds Are Worth It…
Date: 2005-04-03, 9:30PM PDT

In the wide world of dating, there are many options. Do you go for the flashy guy with the smooth smile, or the dude in the corner typing away on his laptop? The following are reasons why I think my fellow females should pay more attention to the quiet geeks and nerds, and less attention to the flashy boys.

1. While geeks and nerds may be awkward, they’re well-meaning 9 out of 10 times. That smooth dude with the sly grin and the spider hands? Wonder what HIS intentions are… plus, I’ve never had a geek guy not call me when he said he would. Score major points THERE.
2. They’re useful. In this tech-savvy world, it’s great to have a b/f who can make your laptop, desktop, and just about anything else that plugs into a wall behave itself.
3. They’re more romantic than they’re given credit for. Ok true, their idea of romance might be to make up a spiffy web-page with all the reasons why they love you, with links to pics of you and sonnets and such… but hey. It lasts longer than flowers, plus you can show your friends.
4. Due to their neglected status, there are plenty to choose from. You like ‘em tall and slender? There are plenty of geeks/nerds who are. You like ‘em smaller with more meat on their bones? Got that too.
5. They’ve got brains. Come on now, how can intelligence be a bad thing?
6. Most are quite good at remembering dates. Like birthdates and such, especially if they know it’ll make you happy. Due again to their neglected status, they’re more attentive than guys who “have more options”. Plus, with all that down time without a steady girlfriend, they’ll likely have mental lists of all the things they’d love to do once they GOT a girlfriend.
7. Sex. Yep. Sex. I’m not really familiar with this myself, but I’ve friends who’ve been intimate with geek guys and it’s raves all around. They say a virgin wrote the Kama Sutra… all that time thinking about sex, imagining sex, dreaming about sex, (they are male after all) coupled with a desire to make you happy? Use your imagination.
8. They’re relatively low-maintenance. Most can be fueled on pizza, Twinkies and Mt Dew. No complicated dinners needed here, so if you’re not the best cook, eh. Can you order a pizza?
9. Most frequent bars as often as slugs frequent salt mines. You won’t have to worry much about your geek guy getting his “groove” on with club hotties because, frankly, he’ll be too busy rooting around under his computer wondering where that spare cable went. You won’t have to worry about him flirting with other women because, 9 out of 10 times, he’ll zip right by them in a perfect b-line towards the nearest electronics store. I’ve seen this happen.
• Me: “Eww. Victoria Secret’s Models… They’re so skinny. How is that feminine? You can see her ribs!”
• Geek Guy: “ooooooo…”
• Me: “Hey!” *notices he is staring lustfully towards the computer store*
• Geek Guy: “What?”
• Me: “Never mind…”
10. Although he may not want to go to every outing with you, you can arrange swaps, as in, you’ll go to his Gamer Con dressed as an elf princess if he’ll take you to the ballet. Plus, if he doesn’t want to go someplace with you, you won’t have to worry much about what he’s up to. You’ll probably come home to find him asleep on his keyboard in a sea of Mt. Dew cans with code blinking from the screen. It’s ok. He’s used to this. Just toss a blanket over him and turn out the light.
11. His friends aren’t jerks. I can’t stress this enough. You’ll more likely get “Omg! A GIRL!! Can I see?!” than “Hey hot stuff back that ass up here and let me get some grub on…” They’re awkward geeks too and will, 9 times out of 10, treat you with the utmost respect and, more than likely, a note of awe. A cute girl picked one of their clan to date? It could happen to them! Hope! Drag some of your single girlfriends over, open up a pack of Mt. Dew, crack open the DnD set and get working. Nothing impresses geek guys more than a girl who can hack-n-slash (well ok maybe if she can code… a geek can dream).
12. They’re rarely if ever possessive. They trust you, so you can be yourself around them. You like to walk around the house in a ratty t-shirt for comfort? He won’t care. He does too! They won’t get pissy if you don’t wear make-up or don’t want to bother primping your hair. If you gain a few pounds, they won’t try their best to make you feel like crap.
13. They’re usually very well educated. Physics majors and the like. See #5. You won’t have to listen to him blathering on about his car (ok maybe a little), he’ll have loads of other interesting things to talk about. Politics, world events, how much the chicken burgers down at the local place rock, so long as you douse them in hot sauce…
14. You’ll almost never have to hear, “Yaw dawg whazzap!!” plop out of their mouths. Unless it’s in jest. They spell properly, use correct punctuation, and are able to tell the difference between the toilet and the floor. They almost never get “wasted”, so you won’t have to worry about coming home to find him and his friends passed out on the floor amidst a pile of beer bottles. Mt. Dew cans, perhaps…
15. And the final reason why geeks and nerds make great boyfriends: They actually give a damn about you. Not how you look (though that’s a plus), not how skinny you are, not how much make-up you primp yourself up with, but they like you for you. That kind of thing lasts longer than “DaMN baby you got a fine ass!!!” Believe me.

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Harvard and MIT Researchers…?

I saw an article on Slashdot today which lead me to an NY Times article titled Study Finds Web Antifraud Measure Ineffective.  In the article, an experiment was conducted where the researchers brought 67 Bank of America customers in Boston and asked them to conduct day-to-day online banking activities.  To give you a background, Bank of America's online banking site uses SiteKey, a simple yet padded layer of authentication for its users.  The idea is that you select an image to represent your account as a visual key so that you know the site that you are logging into is the legitimate site and not some phishing site before you enter in your password to log in.  Here's a snippet from the article that best summarizes the study:

The premise is that site-authentication images increase security because customers will not enter their passwords if they do not see the correct image,” … “From the study we learned that the premise is right less than 10 percent of the time… He added: “If a bank were to ask me if they should deploy it, I would say no, wait for something better,” he said.

… the study demonstrated that site-authentication images are fundamentally flawed and, worse, might actually detract from security by giving users a false sense of confidence.

The study found that 60 out of the 67 subjects in their experiment still entered in their password even when the experimentation website did not display a sitekey at all.  Apparently, from this result, the researchers concluded that features like sitekey only gives everyone a 'false sense of confidence' because their experimental subjects neglected the security layer altogether.

Now, I certainly hope that I am not the only one here that can't make logical sense of how they went from result to conclusion.  Not to take any credit away from these researchers but by completely neglecting their conclusion and focusing on the results, the conclusion I make for myself is that people don't understand the risk of neglecting security measures such as this.  I think that instead of degrading such features and recommending institutions to "wait for something better," researchers either need to find how best to make people aware of security risks and/or find that "something better" that will resolve this issue altogether (if there is such a thing).  It is as if the study was about one problem with two variables but on the other side of the equation, the 'solution' only refers to a single variable.  Meaning?  It's not a flaw in such systems, it's a flaw of human judgment.

Arguably, let's adopt the conclusion of the experiment.  From that, we can generalize that any security scheme that is dependent on a human being is flawed because… well, because of the human inability to make absolutely correct judgments.  So for example, PIN numbers and passwords are all flawed because people give them away while being victimized in a phishing scheme.  Likewise, the idea of ATM cards is flawed because people get them stolen.  A bit far-fetched but theoretically, a 256-bit RSA encryption scheme is flawed because it can be decrypted by an intellect (artificial or not) eventually as time approaches infinity.

I wonder how many man hours and money was spent carrying out and studying this experiment.  Certainly, all those resources could have been better spent on research into how security can be improved and not to undermine a measure to thwart phishing.  I would consider this experiment incomplete until "something better" comes out of it.

In other news, tomorrow, we're probably going to see the result of a study that concludes that the idea of cars is flawed because humans who drive them cause accidents.  So everyone should walk while twiddling their thumbs until "something better" comes along.

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Frank Caliendo Impressions.

I don’t believe there is anyone else in the world who can do impressions as well as Frank Caliendo. I dare you to prove me wrong.

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