re: xhypertensionx and traveler comments
with apple and other companies pushing devices more than networking or even desktop computers, a good field for a techie may be getting into designing these devices or programming for these devices
at westtech job fair in silicon valley, just before the tech slowdown, the hot jobs were electronic engineers and web page designers and i am sure the web page designer thing is definitely out
i have rarely met someone with a computer science degree in silicon valley or anywhere else and this is, in my opinion, for two reasons
1) no college is practical and up to date and especially in such a fassssst moving field...look at the IT industry's leaders...jobs, dell, gates, and ellison...the four legs that hold up the table of high tech...and all college dropouts...and its not just them, there was the woz (who later got a teaching degree), some founders of sun, and that billionaire napster kid who is not old enough to drink even though his platinim parachute could buy budweiser
and yes, there are college degreed ceo types and five come to mind... the 2 founders of yahoo, the 2 founders of cisco, and the head of hp...i would say these 5 were involved in losing more money than any five people in the history of man, or at least high tech in the valley
2) by the time my programmer friends get through 4 or even 5 years of coding, they are ready to get naked and join a nudist colony in santa cruz...too many ex-programmers out there, and the ones i know in the field studied art and spent years starving or something like that and they are yet to get burned out from endless coding
and maybe studying farsi and asian economics could land a steady job since that area of the world will need some restructuring after we bomb it the same way we bombed and rebuilt germany and japan (who some say, tongue in cheek, really won the war...i mean, what would you rather have... a ford or a lexus or a bmw ?)
...but back to the digital devices thing, i think there might be a future for techies in the hardware and software sides of making these devices, but for how long nobody knows
i would not stake apple's future on desktop computer production forever and maybe this new device will become one of many and represent apple's main source of income for years to come
...so i will just sit here and enjoy the infighting between us all on the tech speculations of what this groundbreaking device will be and now i have to admit, i can't wait to see what steve has for us