Still, if you've made it this far, you're either a "geek" (in a "geek culture" sense), or you're not, and you're not letting it bother you that much.
Even so, you should be aware of geek websites. Even if you don't go to the websites that often, it's good to check it out once in a while. It allows you to see what others are seeing. (Sort of like watching "Survivor" so you can see what all the buzz is about.
Perhaps the most famous of the geek websites is slashdot. The origin of the name of the website is supposedly due to someone who wanted to create a name that would confuse a typical UNIX person (or a person using URLs). Thus, since slash and dot are commonly used in directories and filename extensions, people might mistype it.
However, slashdot has been around for so long, most people don't misspell it.
slashdot is a web-site where users can send in articles they've written. I believe the web-site has some kind of moderator who helps decide what articles are worth posting or not. Like a newsgroup, other people can add follow-up opinions to slashdot.
Unlike a newsgroup, you generally need to register with slashdot (which is free) to post articles.
The "news" that appears can be anything. While there's usually a technical angle to many posts, people also contribute political opinions, cultural opinions, and so forth. In a sense, it's a very democratic website (both in good and bad ways).
A similar site to slashdot is kuro5shin, which is also difficult to spell because of the 5 in the middle. The two have similar purposes, though kuro5hin fans claim the user-sent articles have less "noise" and are more well-thought out.
As time passes, I will list out more and more geek websites. If you let me know of some, I will add it to the list.
The "mother" of all user-contributed news websites. People abbreviate the name as /. (slash, then dot). Recent articles posted. Basically a user-generated newspaper where readers can contribute follow-ups.
Similar to slashdot, though some say its articles are more well-thought out, and the flames are less. slashdot tends to be more up-to-the-minute.
ArsTechnica is neither slashdot nor kuro5hin. Instead, it's a website mostly devoted to recent hardware. Hardware sites are almost the domain of serious PC gamers, who want to build their own PCs and get the latest on hardware info.
Of all the hardware websites, ArsTechnica seems the most friendly to beginners. There are basic articles on how computers work, that could serve in a computer organization class. While it may be difficult to get all the ideas of modern PC hardware, the website is a good first place to try.
This website has a lot of reviews on PC hardware. Probably more challenging to understand for the beginning hardware enthusiasts.
Similar in content to AnandTech.
This is a "blogging" (web-logging) website. Blogging websites are basically online diaries or journals. They provide webspace and templates to allow you to jot your thoughts for everyone to see.
Most blogging websites require minimum technical skills. You need to be able to edit files (possibly HTML, often, not), and upload them and work with a web interface. Blog websites do a lot of the work for you, depending on how much you want to customize your site.
Some blog websites charge money to get stuff set up.
Is there a person who goes online that doesn't use Google? I mean, I shouldn't have to put the website up, except as deference to its status.
Google wasn't the first search-engine, but it's become the search engine of choice (I used to use AltaVista, but now it's Google all the way).
Google was co-founded by Sergey Brin, an ex-UMD student. As a search-engine, it determines the relevance of webpages based on the number of links to that webpage. The more links, the more important that webpage must be.
It has a minimum interface (unlike the g**-awful ICQ website, which gives cluttered website new meaning), which hasn't changed too much over the time it's been up.