There was an early episode of SG-1 that inverted this trope.

Daniel: "Senator, we have reason to believe the Goa'uld are about to land and attack on ships."
Kinsey: "Then I think they'll regret taking on the United States military!"
O'Neill: "Oh, for God's sake..."
Daniel: "Oh, you're right. We'll just upload a virus into the mother ship."

Of course they have a magic ring that lets them travel to other planets so we have to put up from QQing from overly precious physicists instead of pompous compscis/IT professionals/etc.

"Let them eat Minecraft!"

It's like Shadownet. "Taste the Rainbow."

I label you 'unique', just like the rest of us.

You wouldn't want to typo that.

I know that there's occasionally some concern about fitting into a wedding dress, but I agree that resorting to the dark arts is a bit extreme.

'Er, but what are we going to do with all the people who just don't "have" the brains? They get a free ride?'

They can exercise their creativity, an attribute not directly related to systems engineering. Or pursue careers of compassion - caring for the ill or socially disadvantaged; or other areas of excellence - art, literature, science. Everything other than systems engineering, in other words.

The biggest enemy in the 'rise of the geeks' are, as always, the geeks themselves. This temptation to think of ourselves as special because we 'know computers', 'know science' or enjoy 'intellectual' past times like sci-fi, computer games, tabletop and live action roleplay, etc. I hate to break it to you, but being a geek does not make you special - it just means you have a better chance than average of some specialist knowledge and some non-mainstream past times. It's not an excuse for being rubbish with the wimmins/mans/both, having failed to acquire social skills, or believing that it is acceptable to play MMOs up until a few hours before you need to go to work.

Relative success and awesomeness in life is down to the properties of the individual, not their (often self-granted) label or sense of self-entitlement. I am all for self-empowerment, but the generation that worked out to program the VCR had better realise that their mum can send e-mails and stop being quite so impressed with themselves.

I'm in a seeming minority that enjoyed the old show that, admittedly, I grew up with and BSG 2004.

The former was a product of the times but suffered the same sort of flaws that would happen in similarly targeted family-friend shows of today - it had it's own Annoying Kid/Jar Jar (Boxy and Muffet the robot-ape-dog-thing), shocking techno-blags, appalling support actors (not to mention somewhat teak-like main actors). But there was always a sense of prevailing optimism, and heroes were heroes as opposed not dysfunctional man-children, an obligatory alcoholic main cast member, or psychotic nymphomaniacs.

Whilst the latter sometimes degenerated into misery TV - the point often missed in dark series is that against a background of apparent despair hope shines all the more brightly, increasing the poignancy of the moment. There was more of a sense of life aboard a naval vessel than the flying plastic city of the 1970s complete with pastelles.

My hope is that the new motion picture aims somewhere between the optimistic heroics, campness and suspciously Mormon-like super-aliens of the original; and the grim, dystopic, occasionally rapetastic recent series.