Things every computer geek should know intimately before death

• How double-entry accounting works and why,
• what each layer of the OSI 7-layer model is, and why,
• how recursive descent, LR (and LALR(1)) parsers work,
• if they use a Unix-type operating system, the filesystem layout standard for their OS,
• XML, including a little reading on the top-down document-type versus the bottom-up piecemeal-type debates,
• how to locate relevant W3C and IETF standards, drafts and intermediate documents,
• basic C, including how to include a header, how to write “Hello, World”, how to allocate and free memory, and how to link a simple program,
• how to use diff(1) and patch(1),
• how to use cvs(1) or svn(1), preferably both,
• basic SQL, and how the JOIN operator relates to the ⊂ operator,
• and how to speak basic POP3, SMTP, and HTTP.

More should probably be here, but there it is.