"Mac users assume their safety in the face of trojans, worms, keyloggers and other malware."
I distinctly remember my first virus way when the computer was still a bit of a novelty and the 200MB disk was considered godly (I distinctly remember my Day saying that we'd never fill it up in our lifetime). When my family got our first Mac Plus, I thought I was in heaven - I could draw using MacDraw and write up reports, but most importantly I could play all sorts of cool games like Dark Castle and Dungeon of Doom. Of course it didn't take me long to figure out that my friends and I could swap games, stretching our very limited allowance. Everything was great, until one day I accidentally infected our computer with one of the nVIR viruses. That was an experience I'll never forget - my dad feared for his computer, I feared for my life. The computer survived, and so did I (barely), but it's safe to say that I've been paranoid about viruses ever since.
Any experiment has something you are seeking to prove. Of course, you can fail to prove it.
This is absolutely incorrect, and the type of thinking that the parent was concerned about. An experiment simply tests a hypothesis - a scientist should never be seeking to 'prove or disprove' a hypothesis.
Spouses of Everquest (and now WoW I'm sure) addicts have had to deal with this problem for quite some time. Hopefully you'll find the following two resources useful:
I tend to agree. However, I've been lied to, stolen from, and taken advantage by plenty of people who I did not assume to be stealing or lying. I've since learned that in order to survive, one must trust others a little bit less and protect one self just a bit more.
Fool me once, shame on you - fool me twice, shame on me.
Forget the checker - with the prevalence of the self-checkout line I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often.
Six? Make that Seven.
on
MMORPG Evolution
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
MMORPGs simply aren't friendly to the casual player.
Way back, when the dinosaurs still roamed the earth, I used to play muds religiously - Sanctuary, Armageddon, 3K, I loved them all. Lucky for me, my roommate failed out of college due to mudding, which caused me to take a hard long look at my life and come to the realization that while I wasn't failing, muds were certainly keeping me from excelling. I dropped them cold turkey, which was probably one of the best things I've ever done. I've always followed the MMORPG scene quite closely and have always wanted to get back into it (especially since I had a number of friends who played Everquest). Finally when WoW came out, I decided that I was at a good place in my life and career and, after a long talk with my wife, I bought the game. At first it was great - the quests didn't take too long, I could play an hour or two a night without any problems, and I had a great time. Unfortunately, I quickly got to a point that if I wanted to accomplish anything at all in the game, I'd have to sit down for a solid three to five hour stretch (sometimes for several days in a row depending on the raid dungeon). That simply isn't practical. Additionally, while I enjoyed the social element, you simply can't walk away at any time - to an extent the game dictates when you can quit. I finally quit WoW when it became clear that I'd never see the new content that was being released as all of it was catered to the hard core player.
Is it possible to appeal to the casual player? I believe so. For example in Guildwars, you can hire henchmen which allow you to play by yourself when needed and still progress in the game. The MMOs out there demand that I work my schedule around them; instead I need the games to work around mine.
The problem is now those of us who had found our niche in videogames are being pushed out. Gaming is quickly becoming just another thing that "cool" people do.
What's wrong with gaming becoming 'just another thing that "cool" people do'? If you enjoy gaming, great - why is your enjoyment so dependent on how other perceive gaming? If gaming becomes "cool", are you all of a sudden not 'counter culture' enough? Are you afraid that you're friends are so shallow that they'll abandon you for, in their eyes, 'trying to be cool'?
Way back when I was still in high school I had a friend that was a huge Nirvana junkie and owned all of their albums (and tons of bootlegs) prior to the band hitting the mainstream. The day my friend heard a Nirvana song on the radio, he tossed out all of his Nirvana tapes and gave up on the band. It's funny really - he was trying so hard to be counter cultural that he ended up being more of a slave to the culture than the people he was fighting against. If you enjoy gaming, then enjoy gaming. Don't let others dictate what you like and who you are.
Personally, I'm glad Slashdot had a blurb pointing to the Origen site - I've never heard of the site before, the site will provide some entertainment as I watch it grow, and I'm enjoying the Slashdot discussion. Besides, the Xbox360 has been so well covered, and will continue to be well covered, that everyone on Slashdot is pretty familiar with the Xbox360 as it is.
A lot of people here forget that the rest of the world (you know, the one outside of Slashdot) is not composed of technophiles. Sure, when I lived in Seattle and most of my friends were technogeeks, everyone listened to internet radio and many had XM. Since moving to Dallas two years ago, I've only encountered one individual with XM and most individuals listen to the airwaves instead of internet radio (which surprised me since the average income of the people I know in Dallas significantly exceeds those I knew in Seattle). Sure, iPods are huge, but the music I find people listening to tends is the same as what's popular on the radio!
To those who say "No one listened to my ad" as proof that no one listens to the radio, I have to ask when was the last time you actually listened to an ad? Radio tends to be background noise; I certainly don't make an effort to listen to an ad. Shoot, in the car I'll often quickly switch the station for the duration of the ads in my primary station (I find radio in the car much easier than swapping out CDs, XM receivers, or hooking up an iPod - besides, sometimes I enjoy listening to NPR).
Radio may have diminished since its heyday, but it's certainly far from dead.
I couldn't agree more - I truly wish that more companies out there would focus on the casual gamer. I absolutely love my Xbox, however my wife finds all the games to be too complicated, becomes frustrated within a few minutes of playing them, and never touches them again. It's a shame too since she adored the original NES and loves watching the Xbox games.
Just over a month ago we picked up a copy of Super Monkey Ball Deluxe (SMBD) and have fallen in love with the mini-racing game (think Mario Kart, but you're a monkey in a ball). The game is wonderful! My wife and I can play together (or more accurately, against each other), the controls are very simple to learn, and we can play in short bursts. We've played SMBD every night since we got it, and we're still having a blast.
So here's the problem, we can't find any other games like it - racing games are too focused on photo-realism and don't support the under-dog (it sucks if you're in second place and have to wait for the person in first to make a mistake - missiles and bombs make the game much more interesting for everyone involved), FPSs tend to have a high learning curve and shooting people tends to turn off potential gamers, and fighting games tend to go overboard on the gore and have an extremely high learning curve. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm seriously considering putting my Xbox in the closet and replacing it with a Game Cube (and Revolution when it comes out). I want to play games with my wife. My wife wants to play games with me. I want to have people over and be able to play games with them, even if they've never touched a console before. Seems to me, Nintendo is the only company that gets this.
Seriously. While I'm not a programmer, I'm an immunologist so I'm very familiar with long hours at the office. The one thing that would always drive me home would be hunger. I learned long ago that stocking a refrigerator / freezer with Slim-Fasts, microwaveable dinners, and Gatorade not only allowed me to work much longer, but I was also much happier. Along the same lines, my rice cooker has been a godsend and I wouldn't give it up for anything. My only other advice is to stock up on relatively healthy food - things that fill you up. Chips, soda and cookies are worthless.
That would be buying the optional subscription service.
I'd personally much prefer opt-ins to opt-outs.
In general I tend to agree. However, there are definite times and places where opt-outs are more appropriate. For example, long, long time ago I was once a resident advisor in college - I was responsible for helping out the other students on the floor, that people followed the community rules, and providing information. My first year, I established an email list to facilitate with communication. That year the email list was opt-in and only a small handfull of individuals signed up (~5 or so out of 100). Everyone kept saying that they'd sign up and several asked why they didn't get emails, it's just that they kept forgetting to actually sign up. The following years I automatically signed everyone up and offered an opt-out option. Only one person opted out, and he rejoined after a month. The listserv was one of the best things that ever happened to the floor as it greatly enhanced communication between the members of the floor.
I vastly prefer opt-in options as I think many businesses abuse (and ignore) their opt-out clause. Sometimes, however, the opt-out philosophy is the way to go.
For Pete's sake - let's cut the propaganda for once. I've been helping out at the Dallas convention center for the past five days and I can tell you first and that, for the people I've encountered anyway, they have very, very limited computer skills. Most of them were very poor prior to Katrina and owning a computer was never truly an option. It's not like they're sitting there, pulling out their self-built box, and saying "Ah shit - Damn FEMA for forcing me to install IE". I'd be shocked if more than a handful have even heard of Linux or Firefox, nevermind using it. The people that are affected by FEMA's choice certainly have the skills, knowledge, and ability to handle this very, very minor situation. The rest of us, quite frankly, don't really care.
I really think a lot of people here have forgotten (or never experienced) what it's like to be a non-technical savy individual. As far as most people are concerned, IE has been the only browser that they've ever known, probably even heard of, for as long as they've been introduced to the internet. IE is the standard. So when this new broswer, Firefox, doesn't work with 10% or so of the webpages, for the vast majority of the people out there it's not a 'lazy web-developer' issue, it's a 'Firefox is broken' issue. Not a great way to gain marketshare. Right or wrong, Firefox absolutely must work with the standards that IE has set.
I'm all for open government and the freedom of information, but there certainly comes a point where it can harm the individual.
Where I live now, anyone and their mom's dog can look up the tax records of my property. This database is searchable by either name or address and returns how much a given property has been accessed for (plus the five year history), how much the current taxes are, a picture of the property (which is often the front of the house), and sometimes the floorplan of the house. Not only would I never provide this information to any of my friends (much less a stranger), but I'd consider it rude if they were to ask.
Another invasive database, which has been mentioned several times here on Slashdot, is Fundrace. I work very hard to make sure that my political views are not know at the workplace. However Fundrace allows anyone to search by name or address who gave how much to a given political candidate or party. I understand the value of tracking political donations, I really do. Should my employees or peers have the capability to track me specifically? It somewhat defeats the point of the secret ballot. I'd love to contribute money to those candidates which I support, but I won't.
My colleagues don't need to know how much I make, pay in taxes, or contribute to a given political organization. At best the information simply satisfies some misplaced curiosity, but more likely this information is used to judge (often incorrectly) without any opportunity for a rebuttal or explanation on my part.
Before you all run out and start munching on Kudzu, you should note that the study had the participants take 1000mg of concentrated Kudzu extract containing 25% isoflavones twice per day over a period of one week. In contrast, the article reports that when they tested over-the-counter preparations of kudzu, "none of the preparations contained more than 2% isoflavones, and most contained less that 1%". In order achieve the same dose used by the researchers, one would have to consume a minimum of 12.5 grams of over-the-counter preparations twice per day. Researchers tried using over-the-counter Kadzu in the past but didn't see any effect until the isoflavones were concentrated.
The use of herbal plants to treat alcohol-related diseases dates back to 600 AD. One such Chinese herbal medicine XJL (NPI-028), has long been used to reduce the inebriation that results from alcohol consumption. NPI-028 contains the extracts of several plants including Pueraria lobata (kudzu) and Citrus reticulata, which were recorded in an ancient Chinese materia medica entitled Ben Cho Gang Mu (li, 1590-1696 AD) and have long been used to lessen alcohol intoxication (antidrunkenness) (Sun, circa 600 AD). However, it is difficult to assess the real efficacy of kudzu based on these writings because they are primarily anecdotal in nature.
The scientists were very well aware of the ancient literature. However, the article continues to site sources showing that Kadzu has been extensively tested and no antidrunkenness effect was found. What makes this study new is that they isolated and concentrated the active ingredient that causes the effect (isoflavones). The study used an isoflavones concentration of 25% - in contrast the highest concentration that you can buy on the market is 1-2%, with the ranges varying widely within samples from the same manufacturer.
This study doesn't state that the sun rises in the east; it suggests that perhaps the earth revolves around the sun.
Surveys like this one cull fear in IT shops, fear of insider attacks, of competitive disadvantage brought about by unscrupulous employees.
My God, have you been reading some of the comments being posted here on Slashdot? I'm reading comment after comment after comment about how people are 'protecting themselves' 'just in case' and how others 'got even' with 'that evil company'. It seems to me that surveys aren't really needed to generate fear; a good number of IT people are doing a pretty good job of doing that on their own.
Like it or not, pathogens are constantly evolving and will continue to keep selective pressure on us.
The most polymorphic genes in our (actually most any) genome are the MHC genes - genes that are central to the adaptive immune response. These genes are under extreme selective pressure, to the point that we can track how peoples migrated by monitoring how haplotype ratios changed or new ones emerged over time.
New diseases are emerging all the time - as a prime example, HIV is a brand new disease that made the species jump to humans less than 100 years ago. As an immunologist, I fully expect another 'Black Plague' to emerge and wipe out 25% of the world's population within my lifetime.
Evolution by disease clearly isn't as flashy as evolving wings or gills, but it's evolution none the less.
It's pretty clear that the environment has been dysgenic for intelligence in the modern world for at least a century. The more intelligent you are, the better education you get, and the more education you get, the less children you have.
I have to disagree - I find that social pressures play as much of a role in eduction as does intelligence. I certainly know of 'uneducated people' who I would consider to be brilliant - just not trained. Some of the individuals are there due to economic / immigration reasons (my janitor is Smart, with the capital S), while others either have difficult dealing with authority, are apathetic, or just plain lazy. On the flip side, I can think of several people who are incredibly book smart but can't think themselves out of a paper bag. On of my highschool classmages (way, way back when) is about as smart as a rock - but has an incredible job and makes tons of money thanks to his dad (must be nice).
OK, that little useless thing on your foot commonly referred to as "the pinky toe" has to go. Other than ramming it into doors and such (causing great pain on colorful metaphors) I have found no practical use for it, so, according to Darwin. It has to go.
Does that pinky toe hinder your ability to breed? If not, then why should 'evolution care'?
Slashdot Mirror
I distinctly remember my first virus way when the computer was still a bit of a novelty and the 200MB disk was considered godly (I distinctly remember my Day saying that we'd never fill it up in our lifetime). When my family got our first Mac Plus, I thought I was in heaven - I could draw using MacDraw and write up reports, but most importantly I could play all sorts of cool games like Dark Castle and Dungeon of Doom. Of course it didn't take me long to figure out that my friends and I could swap games, stretching our very limited allowance. Everything was great, until one day I accidentally infected our computer with one of the nVIR viruses. That was an experience I'll never forget - my dad feared for his computer, I feared for my life. The computer survived, and so did I (barely), but it's safe to say that I've been paranoid about viruses ever since.
This is absolutely incorrect, and the type of thinking that the parent was concerned about. An experiment simply tests a hypothesis - a scientist should never be seeking to 'prove or disprove' a hypothesis.
EverQuest Widows Discussion Board
On-Line Gamers Anonymous
Best of luck.
Fool me once, shame on you - fool me twice, shame on me.
Forget the checker - with the prevalence of the self-checkout line I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often.
Way back, when the dinosaurs still roamed the earth, I used to play muds religiously - Sanctuary, Armageddon, 3K, I loved them all. Lucky for me, my roommate failed out of college due to mudding, which caused me to take a hard long look at my life and come to the realization that while I wasn't failing, muds were certainly keeping me from excelling. I dropped them cold turkey, which was probably one of the best things I've ever done. I've always followed the MMORPG scene quite closely and have always wanted to get back into it (especially since I had a number of friends who played Everquest). Finally when WoW came out, I decided that I was at a good place in my life and career and, after a long talk with my wife, I bought the game. At first it was great - the quests didn't take too long, I could play an hour or two a night without any problems, and I had a great time. Unfortunately, I quickly got to a point that if I wanted to accomplish anything at all in the game, I'd have to sit down for a solid three to five hour stretch (sometimes for several days in a row depending on the raid dungeon). That simply isn't practical. Additionally, while I enjoyed the social element, you simply can't walk away at any time - to an extent the game dictates when you can quit. I finally quit WoW when it became clear that I'd never see the new content that was being released as all of it was catered to the hard core player.
Is it possible to appeal to the casual player? I believe so. For example in Guildwars, you can hire henchmen which allow you to play by yourself when needed and still progress in the game. The MMOs out there demand that I work my schedule around them; instead I need the games to work around mine.
The problem is now those of us who had found our niche in videogames are being pushed out. Gaming is quickly becoming just another thing that "cool" people do.
What's wrong with gaming becoming 'just another thing that "cool" people do'? If you enjoy gaming, great - why is your enjoyment so dependent on how other perceive gaming? If gaming becomes "cool", are you all of a sudden not 'counter culture' enough? Are you afraid that you're friends are so shallow that they'll abandon you for, in their eyes, 'trying to be cool'?
Way back when I was still in high school I had a friend that was a huge Nirvana junkie and owned all of their albums (and tons of bootlegs) prior to the band hitting the mainstream. The day my friend heard a Nirvana song on the radio, he tossed out all of his Nirvana tapes and gave up on the band. It's funny really - he was trying so hard to be counter cultural that he ended up being more of a slave to the culture than the people he was fighting against. If you enjoy gaming, then enjoy gaming. Don't let others dictate what you like and who you are.
Personally, I'm glad Slashdot had a blurb pointing to the Origen site - I've never heard of the site before, the site will provide some entertainment as I watch it grow, and I'm enjoying the Slashdot discussion. Besides, the Xbox360 has been so well covered, and will continue to be well covered, that everyone on Slashdot is pretty familiar with the Xbox360 as it is.
To those who say "No one listened to my ad" as proof that no one listens to the radio, I have to ask when was the last time you actually listened to an ad? Radio tends to be background noise; I certainly don't make an effort to listen to an ad. Shoot, in the car I'll often quickly switch the station for the duration of the ads in my primary station (I find radio in the car much easier than swapping out CDs, XM receivers, or hooking up an iPod - besides, sometimes I enjoy listening to NPR).
Radio may have diminished since its heyday, but it's certainly far from dead.
Just over a month ago we picked up a copy of Super Monkey Ball Deluxe (SMBD) and have fallen in love with the mini-racing game (think Mario Kart, but you're a monkey in a ball). The game is wonderful! My wife and I can play together (or more accurately, against each other), the controls are very simple to learn, and we can play in short bursts. We've played SMBD every night since we got it, and we're still having a blast.
So here's the problem, we can't find any other games like it - racing games are too focused on photo-realism and don't support the under-dog (it sucks if you're in second place and have to wait for the person in first to make a mistake - missiles and bombs make the game much more interesting for everyone involved), FPSs tend to have a high learning curve and shooting people tends to turn off potential gamers, and fighting games tend to go overboard on the gore and have an extremely high learning curve. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm seriously considering putting my Xbox in the closet and replacing it with a Game Cube (and Revolution when it comes out). I want to play games with my wife. My wife wants to play games with me. I want to have people over and be able to play games with them, even if they've never touched a console before. Seems to me, Nintendo is the only company that gets this.
Seriously. While I'm not a programmer, I'm an immunologist so I'm very familiar with long hours at the office. The one thing that would always drive me home would be hunger. I learned long ago that stocking a refrigerator / freezer with Slim-Fasts, microwaveable dinners, and Gatorade not only allowed me to work much longer, but I was also much happier. Along the same lines, my rice cooker has been a godsend and I wouldn't give it up for anything. My only other advice is to stock up on relatively healthy food - things that fill you up. Chips, soda and cookies are worthless.
That would be buying the optional subscription service.
I'd personally much prefer opt-ins to opt-outs.
In general I tend to agree. However, there are definite times and places where opt-outs are more appropriate. For example, long, long time ago I was once a resident advisor in college - I was responsible for helping out the other students on the floor, that people followed the community rules, and providing information. My first year, I established an email list to facilitate with communication. That year the email list was opt-in and only a small handfull of individuals signed up (~5 or so out of 100). Everyone kept saying that they'd sign up and several asked why they didn't get emails, it's just that they kept forgetting to actually sign up. The following years I automatically signed everyone up and offered an opt-out option. Only one person opted out, and he rejoined after a month. The listserv was one of the best things that ever happened to the floor as it greatly enhanced communication between the members of the floor.
I vastly prefer opt-in options as I think many businesses abuse (and ignore) their opt-out clause. Sometimes, however, the opt-out philosophy is the way to go.
For Pete's sake - let's cut the propaganda for once. I've been helping out at the Dallas convention center for the past five days and I can tell you first and that, for the people I've encountered anyway, they have very, very limited computer skills. Most of them were very poor prior to Katrina and owning a computer was never truly an option. It's not like they're sitting there, pulling out their self-built box, and saying "Ah shit - Damn FEMA for forcing me to install IE". I'd be shocked if more than a handful have even heard of Linux or Firefox, nevermind using it. The people that are affected by FEMA's choice certainly have the skills, knowledge, and ability to handle this very, very minor situation. The rest of us, quite frankly, don't really care.
Right. Because we all know that no American would ever pull a similar stunt. Damn Indians.
I really think a lot of people here have forgotten (or never experienced) what it's like to be a non-technical savy individual. As far as most people are concerned, IE has been the only browser that they've ever known, probably even heard of, for as long as they've been introduced to the internet. IE is the standard. So when this new broswer, Firefox, doesn't work with 10% or so of the webpages, for the vast majority of the people out there it's not a 'lazy web-developer' issue, it's a 'Firefox is broken' issue. Not a great way to gain marketshare. Right or wrong, Firefox absolutely must work with the standards that IE has set.
Where I live now, anyone and their mom's dog can look up the tax records of my property. This database is searchable by either name or address and returns how much a given property has been accessed for (plus the five year history), how much the current taxes are, a picture of the property (which is often the front of the house), and sometimes the floorplan of the house. Not only would I never provide this information to any of my friends (much less a stranger), but I'd consider it rude if they were to ask.
Another invasive database, which has been mentioned several times here on Slashdot, is Fundrace. I work very hard to make sure that my political views are not know at the workplace. However Fundrace allows anyone to search by name or address who gave how much to a given political candidate or party. I understand the value of tracking political donations, I really do. Should my employees or peers have the capability to track me specifically? It somewhat defeats the point of the secret ballot. I'd love to contribute money to those candidates which I support, but I won't.
My colleagues don't need to know how much I make, pay in taxes, or contribute to a given political organization. At best the information simply satisfies some misplaced curiosity, but more likely this information is used to judge (often incorrectly) without any opportunity for a rebuttal or explanation on my part.
Before you all run out and start munching on Kudzu, you should note that the study had the participants take 1000mg of concentrated Kudzu extract containing 25% isoflavones twice per day over a period of one week. In contrast, the article reports that when they tested over-the-counter preparations of kudzu, "none of the preparations contained more than 2% isoflavones, and most contained less that 1%". In order achieve the same dose used by the researchers, one would have to consume a minimum of 12.5 grams of over-the-counter preparations twice per day. Researchers tried using over-the-counter Kadzu in the past but didn't see any effect until the isoflavones were concentrated.
The use of herbal plants to treat alcohol-related diseases dates back to 600 AD. One such Chinese herbal medicine XJL (NPI-028), has long been used to reduce the inebriation that results from alcohol consumption. NPI-028 contains the extracts of several plants including Pueraria lobata (kudzu) and Citrus reticulata, which were recorded in an ancient Chinese materia medica entitled Ben Cho Gang Mu (li, 1590-1696 AD) and have long been used to lessen alcohol intoxication (antidrunkenness) (Sun, circa 600 AD). However, it is difficult to assess the real efficacy of kudzu based on these writings because they are primarily anecdotal in nature.
The scientists were very well aware of the ancient literature. However, the article continues to site sources showing that Kadzu has been extensively tested and no antidrunkenness effect was found. What makes this study new is that they isolated and concentrated the active ingredient that causes the effect (isoflavones). The study used an isoflavones concentration of 25% - in contrast the highest concentration that you can buy on the market is 1-2%, with the ranges varying widely within samples from the same manufacturer.
This study doesn't state that the sun rises in the east; it suggests that perhaps the earth revolves around the sun.
I wonder what the ESRB rating will be.
My God, have you been reading some of the comments being posted here on Slashdot? I'm reading comment after comment after comment about how people are 'protecting themselves' 'just in case' and how others 'got even' with 'that evil company'. It seems to me that surveys aren't really needed to generate fear; a good number of IT people are doing a pretty good job of doing that on their own.
Source?
Doing a quick Google search, the only sources I could find were those devoted towards Aryan beliefs and the book "The Bell Curve"
Now unless your calling everyone in a third world country stupid, I fail to see your point.
Perhaps because there are a whole lot of church going, very religious people who believe in evolution.
The most polymorphic genes in our (actually most any) genome are the MHC genes - genes that are central to the adaptive immune response. These genes are under extreme selective pressure, to the point that we can track how peoples migrated by monitoring how haplotype ratios changed or new ones emerged over time.
New diseases are emerging all the time - as a prime example, HIV is a brand new disease that made the species jump to humans less than 100 years ago. As an immunologist, I fully expect another 'Black Plague' to emerge and wipe out 25% of the world's population within my lifetime.
Evolution by disease clearly isn't as flashy as evolving wings or gills, but it's evolution none the less.
I have to disagree - I find that social pressures play as much of a role in eduction as does intelligence. I certainly know of 'uneducated people' who I would consider to be brilliant - just not trained. Some of the individuals are there due to economic / immigration reasons (my janitor is Smart, with the capital S), while others either have difficult dealing with authority, are apathetic, or just plain lazy. On the flip side, I can think of several people who are incredibly book smart but can't think themselves out of a paper bag. On of my highschool classmages (way, way back when) is about as smart as a rock - but has an incredible job and makes tons of money thanks to his dad (must be nice).
Let's just say, I'm not too worried.
Does that pinky toe hinder your ability to breed? If not, then why should 'evolution care'?