Geek Support: Can an iPod Classic be made to work on Ubuntu 7.10?

By Mark O’Neill and Mackenzie Morgan Geek Support has its first question from one of our readers! It comes from Flor in Mexico City : My best friend just made the switch to Linux. After much brainwashing from my part, she decided to switch to Ubuntu 7.10. We had tons of problems on her laptop, […]



Geek Support is now standing by to take your call

By Mark O’Neill I have been thinking for a while now about how to engage the GAS readers more and answering Melvyn’s question in the last post made me decide to bring this idea forward now. As a writer for GAS, I often wonder what you would like to read more about. What’s on your […]

Encyclopedia of Life: Cataloguing Earth’s Ecosystem

The Encyclopedia of life (EOL) is a new project that went online just a few days ago. Its goal is to create a free online database for every one of Earth’s 1.8 million known species. The site currently features 30,000 entries, but as time passes, the rest of our planet living organisms should appear. On […]



Too much wind makes turbine rip itself apart

Ever wondered what would happen to a wind turbine that is exposed to too much wind? Here’s exactly what happens: Quite spectacular, wouldn’t you say?

Is there really such a thing as a "geek defense"?

By Mark O’Neill A computer programmer is on trial accused of murdering his wife and the evidence against him is damning.   So his lawyer has uniquely resorted to what many have called "the geek defense". So what is some of the evidence against computer programmer Hans Reiser that his lawyer dismisses as weird geek behavior? […]

Spying or safety measure? TimeSnapper does both.

If you have children who browse the Internet daily, I’m sure you impose some type of restrictions upon their computer usage. Kids are very good at ending up in places they should not be and excel at installing spyware and viruses on your beloved system. As parents, it is our obligation to monitor their activities […]

Simple tricks for doing arithmetic in your head

Some of you geeks probably have a slide-rule in your head — there I go dating myself again (and we all know that dating yourself isn’t sexy), I should have said “math processor” or “calculator”.  Anyway, I am personally much better than average at math, but I still can’t do some of the bigger problems in my […]

New Indiana Jones movie trailer released

By Mark O’Neill This was going to be a good movie year for geeks but there has been one major set-back to ruin the party. The new Star Trek movie has been delayed from a Christmas Day 2008 release to a May 2009 release. God dammit Bones! But as usual, Indiana Jones rides to the […]