There's a saying:
When you owe the bank a hundred dollars, you're fucked.
When you owe the bank a hundred billion dollars, the bank is fucked.

It's sad that some people consider 2007 to be "back in the day."

But saying "laptops are useless in high school" sounds a lot like someone 50 years older saying "ball-point pens are useless in high school".

You really think so? Every tool has its place, but schools in general have failed to use this kind of technology in any useful way.

HD output? Really?
I never poked around very much but for me XBMC only ever produced a bog-standard 480i signal. How did it push 1080p over component cables? Was there an xbox with digital out that I missed?

I have yet to see this tested/demonstrated.

I know that before anyone discovered keyboard-and-mouse a lot of people were playing Doom with the gravis gamepad. IIRC it was Thresh who popularized pwning n00bs with WASD and since then nobody even thinks of playing a PC shooter with a joystick.

Keep in mind this was 1994.

Yeah, I have a weird setup...all my movement keys are laid out from SHIFT to B and the A-L row is for options (flashlight on/off, reload, whatever).

Where were you stationed? TCOM gives me (reliably) 16 down/3 up right now. Kabel BW has a 32/6 package I think, and I know that's also consistent.
This to me is way better than anything I ever got from Comcast, Verizon, Cox, etc.

Caveat: I am not an expert.

In my opinion there is very little to "doing IT" beyond a series of low-level to mid-level jobs: helpdesking, laying cable, basic administration, etc. It's not clear to me that there is a way for you to gain experience by doing new tasks or to move up into management, even project management.

In your position, it sounds like you need to do more education outside of work--get into architecture and engineering and work your way up into consulting gigs. Or drop $3k of your own money to get a cert (you can consider this an investment). Very few companies seem to bother with education benefits (minimal investment in employees usually equates to high turnover and is a sign of a crap working environment IMO).

As for dream jobs, I work in network security. I started on the lowest of low rungs and made sure that everyone knew I was the reason why our investigations succeeded...I wrote whitepapers and I got as much customer facetime as possible. Along the way I was lucky enough to get some certs which are good for getting your foot in the door with HR but no replacement for hands-on. Now I'm doing consulting and the pay and benefits are really good, but I'm not sure I would call this a "dream job."

Are you suggesting that the economy can always grow?
This sounds like a terrible idea. I don't want to spend my entire career job-hunting.

I live in Europe and the trains seem to work a lot better here. Planes are faster and the price is the same but they're a lot less comfortable.

The same is true of the other vendors. Symantec and Mcafee are both largely acquisitions companies with great enterprise stuff and crappy consumer stuff.

Trivial for FBI to get a warrant for the guy's login details from Yahoo.

Of course, if he's using TOR, then they're hosed.

Well, having an opinion and having any creative ability are surely divorced, in any case.