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Information about Thinkgeek

ThinkGeek
Subsidiary
Founded1999
HeadquartersFairfax, Virginia, USA
IndustryRetail
OwnerSourceForge, Inc.
WebsiteThinkGeek


ThinkGeek is an electronic commerce company based in Fairfax, VA and a subsidiary of SourceForge, Inc.. It sells items that mostly cater to PC enthusiasts and other 'geeky' social groups. Their merchandise consists of clothing, computer hardware, toys for around the office, caffeinated drinks, and candy.

History

Three out of the four founding members started an ISP based in Northern Virginia in 1995. A short while later, the founders had the idea of publishing an online retailer which sold merchandise targeted to electronic enthusiasts, such as programmers, engineers, students, open source developers and the fast growing Internet culture. After a few months of operation, the website was Slashdotted. Promptly thereafter, ThinkGeek was acquired by Andover.net.

Website Features

Products

The navigational panel on every ThinkGeek page contracts and expands in branch format to display subcategories of products.
  • T-shirts
  • Other Apparel
  • Geek Toys
  • Gadgets
  • Home & Office
  • Computing
  • Caffeine
  • Electronics
  • Books
A majority of products sold on ThinkGeek are heavily related to (and sometimes only understood by) Internet culture. Some T-Shirt designs include stick figure with a detached buttocks, with "LMAO" as the caption, a ROFLCOPTER (an ASCII drawing of a helicopter comprised of internet slang), the Intel Pentium Processor logo replacing "Intel" with "Geek", and a pixelated 1up Mushroom from the Super Mario Brothers games series.

Customer Action Shots

Think Geek allows, and encourages its customers to send in pictures of a product in use, or used in some humorous or otherwise interesting way. Examples include: Pictures of creations made with the popular Smart Mass Thinking Putty, long exposure photographs of laser pointers, and photos of customers wearing the various T-Shirts the company sells.

Geek Points

ThinkGeek runs a points for reward system. The more products a customer purchases from ThinkGeek (provided they're enrolled in the Geek Points program and meet the qualifications), the higher quality of rewards they can claim. The requirements to join this program state participants must be at least 18 years old, must live in the U.S. or Canada, (mainly because the laws regarding reward programs vary in different countries) and must have a ThinkGeek account to accumulate and use Geek Points. Geek Points will expire after 3 years for active customers and cannot be transferred for money, or to other accounts.

April Fools Day Humor

On April 1st every year, a fake homepage complete with at least four fictional, and generally absurd products are posted, such as: "Surge Stix", cigarette-esque high potency caffeine delivery systems that, when bent like a glow stick till a snap is heard, deliver 18mg of caffeine per pull, with a capacity for ten puffs, amounting to as much caffeine as five cans of Coke. Also, the site's characteristic subheading "Stuff for Smart Masses", has its M crossed out, so that it reads "Stuff for Smart Asses"

System

Software

ThinkGeek runs Linux -- mostly Debian and Gentoo Linux with some Red Hat -- servers using Apache (with mod_perl, mod_SSL and custom modules). Their system was developed primarily in Perl and their "WarpSpeed checkout" is based heavily on the AJAX framework OpenThought.

Hardware

ThinkGeek utilizes five front-end servers with dual processors for serving content to customers, and a single dual processor web server for administrative tasks. They also run a pair of quad Xeon processor Linux systems for their database servers. A few miscellaneous servers exist to do various testing and to stage content before going live on the site.

Network

There are dedicated firewalls (mixture of Linux and OpenBSD systems) in front of all the servers. ThinkGeek has access to dual 100 Mbit/s pipes served from the West Coast. ThinkGeek also shares a 1.6 TB SAN with other OSDN websites for near-line backups.

External links

A subsidiary, in business, is an entity that is controlled by another entity. The controlled entity is called a company, corporation, or limited liability company, and the controlling entity is called its parent (or the parent company).
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Industry (from Latin industrius, "diligent, industrious"), is the segment of economy concerned with production of goods. Industry began in its present form during the 1800s, aided by technological advances, and it has continued to develop to this day.
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Retailing consists of the sale of goods or merchandise, from a fixed location such as a department store or kiosk, in small or individual lots for direct consumption by the purchaser.[1] Retailing may include subordinated services, such as delivery.
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Ownership is the state or fact of exclusive rights and control over property, which may be an object, land/real estate, intellectual property or some other kind of property. It is embodied in an ownership right also referred to as title.
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SourceForge, Inc.

Public (NASDAQ:  LNUX )
Founded 1993
Headquarters Fremont, California

Key people Ali Jenab, CEO
Industry Software & Programming
Products SourceForge
Revenue $43.632 million USD (fiscal year 2006)
Net income $10.
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A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN.
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Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks.
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Fairfax, Virginia

Seal
Nickname: nova, the 703rd
Location in the Commonwealth of Virginia
Coordinates:
Country United States
State
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SourceForge, Inc.

Public (NASDAQ:  LNUX )
Founded 1993
Headquarters Fremont, California

Key people Ali Jenab, CEO
Industry Software & Programming
Products SourceForge
Revenue $43.632 million USD (fiscal year 2006)
Net income $10.
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personal computer (PC) is a computer whose original sales price, size, and capabilities make it useful for individuals.

It is unknown who coined the phrase with the intent of a small affordable computing device but John W.
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geek is a slang term, noting individuals as "a peculiar or otherwise dislikable person, especially one who is perceived to be overly intellectual".[1] Formerly, the term referred to a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the
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Internet service provider (abbr. ISP, also called Internet access provider or IAP) is a business or organization that provides consumers or businesses access to the Internet and related services. In the past, most ISPs were run by the phone companies.
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programmer or software developer is someone who programs computers, that is, one who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software.
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engineer is someone who is trained or professionally engaged in a branch of engineering.[1] Engineers use technology, mathematics, and scientific knowledge to solve practical problems.
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Open source is a set of principles and practices that promote access to the design and production of goods and knowledge. The term is most commonly applied to the source code of software that is available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent intellectual property
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Internet is a worldwide, publicly accessible series of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government
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Slashdot effect is the term given to the phenomenon of a popular website linking to a smaller site, causing the smaller site to slow down or even temporarily close due to the increased traffic.
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For the cyber subculture, see Cyber (subculture)


Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computers for communication, entertainment and business.
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LOL (also written lol) is a common element of Internet slang used, historically, on Usenet but now widespread to other forms of computer-mediated communication such as Yahoo and MSN Messenger, and even spread to face-to-face communication.
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Pentium
Central processing unit

75 MHz classic Pentium processor
Produced: From 1993 to 1999
Manufacturer: Intel
CPU Speeds: 60 MHz to 300 MHz
FSB Speeds:
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Super Mario Bros. (スーパーマリオブラザーズ
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T-shirt (or tee shirt) is a shirt, usually buttonless, collarless, and pocketless, with a round neck and short sleeves, that is pulled on over the head and covers most of a person's torso.
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Caffeine is a xanthine alkaloid compound that acts as a psychoactive stimulant in humans. The word comes from the French term for coffee, café.
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Coca-Cola cola (a type of carbonated soft drink) sold in stores, restaurants and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO ) and is often referred to simply as Coke.
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Linux (pronunciation: IPA: /ˈlɪnʊks/, lin-uks) is a Unix-like computer operating system. Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free software and open source development; its underlying source code can be
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Debian is a free operating system. Its primary form, Debian GNU/Linux, is a popular and influential Linux distribution.[1]

Debian is known for its adherence to the Unix and free software philosophies, and for its abundance of options — the
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The Gentoo Linux operating system (pronounced IPA: /ˈdʒɛntuː/) is a Linux distribution named after the Gentoo penguin.
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Red hat or Red Hat may refer to:
  • Red Hat, a company dedicated to open source software such as Linux
  • Red Hat sect, a classification of schools of Tibetan Buddhism
  • Red Hat Society, a woman's social organization

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Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to simply as Apache, is a web server notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. Apache was the first viable alternative to the Netscape Communications Corporation web server (currently known as Sun Java
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