If you pick the "Hot Topic" remember so will many others, also it's the "Hot Topic" now, not what will be hot when your looking for a job 3 - 5 years down the line. In IT this frequently seen hot topic "X" earning big money so loads of people train in it and it becomes a cheaper skill and now "Y" is the new hot topic as "X" is now mainstream. Go with what interests you but keep an eye on the horizon for new things and check them out and chase if they interest you. This will give you the best chance of being in the right place with the right skills. My personal opinion is if your interested in then "Financial Mathematics" do it and it may be a good chance of being "Hot", if because of current problems few people will take this problem so 3-5 years down the line this may be a scarce skill

There seems to be a lot of this type of thing around at the moment. But compare with IBM's AS400's single level storage (is it not the same - or so similar as makes no difference). Same with virtual machines - VM on the Mainframe anyone was there years before. Most of the new things seem to be old big iron software working on new chips. As someone who started on microprocessors then went to big iron (360), minis (AS400) back to pc and now back into unix big iron and now visualization is the big thing. It makes me laugh, - but then again as an on the ground techy no one listens and to change from centralized to decentralized and back again works wonders for consultants revenues. Where I work we have huge mainframes but no one thinks of putting "new stuff on them". We also have huge numbers of unix boxes with huge updating problems and so on and so on. What annoys me is so called "old tech" is rejected when it may be the best as what it can do is not understood management, also old tech is stuck to as management are unwilling to change. It's a lose, lose situation for business but a win, win situation for consultants. As most consultants maximize there revenue with partnership deals and generally rely on graduates that do not understand the capabilities of in place systems.

Minute traces of heroin in my water - I'm not worried. Minute traces of dioxin in my water - I'm very worried. What is the chemical, what is it's effect, what is it's in conjunction with effect with other chemicals - many of these questions do not yet have an answer especially when chemicals are considered in combination. As far as contamination of our water supplies goes, I'm more concerned about the hormonal effects on animals (including humans) than traces of medicines - and as for general bottled water (unless for portability, or carbonation) give me good quality tap water. The rubbish you read filtered by ice/volcanoes, purified n zillion times etc, etc - if you want pure water drink distilled water - it cheap and available from a pharmacist near you - unfortunately it does not taste of anything but water. You want carbonation - get a soda siphon! There are some unu8sual waters out there (generally with a high mineral content) that I could say could be sold on taste but the majority seem to be "pure" and in taste tests "Tap" water in London is always in the top three. Marketing - the curse of our generation