The tech industry just doesn't get it.

Folks from everyday consumers to corporate chieftains stopped buying technology. Traders still dump tech stocks.

All the tech industry can do is moan. Accounting rules don't fit our entrepreneurial style. Writing off bum investments is a burden. Expensing the largest cost, the human capital that takes stock options instead of salary, is wrong, too.

And the business climate is just too harsh.

Take a new report from a Los Angeles think tank, Larta. The report warns if Orange County isn't careful, it might damage, "one of the most successful technology clusters ever developed."

While Larta says the local hurdles for tech are as much socio-economic as they are raw science, the report seems to find far more wrong with county government and local education than??? errors within an industry that's imploded.

The lack of humility doesn't surprise regional economist Jack Kyser, who notes, "techies are largely divorced from the real business world."

Larta's report, done with backing from some O.C. tech heavyweights, bemoans the difficulty that local tech companies have finding executive talent in O.C.

Hello! A shortage of skilled, ethical managers was a problem in many industries in the past decade -- especially in a business like tech, which usually sees no benefit from leaders outside its cliquey cocoon.

Some local tech execs complain that it's difficult making educational partnerships with UC Irvine, considered to be tech's local intellectual hub. UCI, the report adds, doesn't graduate enough engineers.

Excuse me! Who said UCI should be an engineering mill? Does an industry that squandered billions in investment dollars now need a handout from the state?

Also, a shortage of affordable housing in the county ??? is also an impediment to the tech business, Larta says.

Duh! It's a challenge to every business here. Yet Larta has the nerve to hint that Orange Countians may be too fond of their ???open space that limits new housing, and that, "residents need to embrace the emerging character of the county."

Plus, Larta argues there's not enough transportation alternatives in Orange County and turning the El Toro air base into a park is a mistake. ???

Really? Maybe the local communications chip wizards could perfect video-conferencing and other telecommuting technologies instead of lecturing on what constitutes a decent quality of life in a neighborhood.

Don't get me wrong. Tech is solid business to have.

Larta claims there are 100,000 tech jobs in the county, liberally borrowing 40 percent of that sum from biomedical and defense industries. Even allowing that broad definition, tech's no bigger than the local restaurant or financial services industries. I don't hear those groups whining as loudly.

Tech execs need to stare themselves in the mirror. Nobody's buying into new technologies because the mainstream audience was burnt before by overhyped gizmos.

It's not the Orange County landscape, folks.

It's the products.