For me, the breakthrough into near-fluency in Spanish (I say near becuase my vocabulary was never as complete as that of a native speaker) was when I began to think in Spanish. I would look at a chair and think "silla" instead of "chair". Once I achieved a certain level of competence with the language, I found that I began to express some ideas in Spanish becuase they were easier to think about in that language/context. These days, I haven't had the opportunity to speak or even listen to Spanish, and I am soooo out of practice. I do kind of miss that "spanish" part of myself. Now, when I turn to Univision I can only comprehend maybe 1/4 of what is being said.... now I'm rambling...
Then perhaps I have been misinformed... in which case I feel like a total ass.
"DAEMON Tools is frequently updated when Macrovision for instance brings out an update of their SafeDisc 2 protection blacklisting this program." -- http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/52/2
Far Cry actually uses Safedisc 3.something, so I'm guessing that my friend was using an older version of Daemon Tools that was on the current blacklist. I was unaware that Daemon Tools had been updating their software to get around these "blacklists." Nevertheless, I still stand by my decision not to purchase the game on principle.
That is the information that I have been given. I was even told that you have to remove Daemon Tools from your system entirely in order to be able to play the game. I haven't tested it, but I would be willing to guess that simply stopping the Daemon Tools service would be sufficient to play the game. If I ever feel like wasting $50 then maybe I will test it... Either way, a simple NoCD crack probably won't work.
This is the total truth. I so wanted to buy Far Cry. It sounded like an awesome game... and then I found out that it won't run if you have Daemon Tools on your system. That's absolute bullshit that they should be able to dictate what other software I am allowed to have on my PC. I use Daemon Tools for legitimate purposes. The only.isos on my computer are either linux.isos or legitimate software that I have purchased. I have never once ran a cracked game from Daemon tools. But you know what? Far Cry's copy protection made me want to do just that. I never bought the game because of this copy protection and the only reason that I didn't find a pirated copy was becuase I'm too lazy to search the warez sites for it. I make enough money to buy all of my games these days, and I always do just to try to support the developers that make good games. Now, if only there were some way that I could let Far Cry's publishers know that I didn't buy their game and why. Oh, and make them care.
For $100 I could buy a decent P-II system used. That's not too bad for something which I can use to help me get a job. Heck, it's less than some unemployed people I have known spent on beer in a month.
Bah! Amatures! When I was unemployed last summer I had a month where I probably spent over $100 a week on alcohol. Anybody that spends less than that just isn't trying hard enough.
Most people don't realize this, but it's hard work being an unemployed bum living off your savings and feeling sorry for yourself. I mean, you actually have to get up out of bed every once in a while, there's only good stuff on TV for maybe half of the day, and that beer and porkrinds isn't going to buy itself. You actually have to go to the store to buy that stuff. You may even need to shower before doing so! I tell you, last summer was hard on me, being a recently unemployed recent college graduate.
Without a doubt, the worst movie that I have ever seen was Biker Boyz. The plot made no sense and seemed to have no continuity. Not to mention, the race at the end where Larry Fishburne and the other guy drag race on a dirt road. You've got to be an idiot to drag race a bike on a dirt road!
So, uh, yeah. Biker Boyz. (Although, I do have to admit that it was better the second time around while completely loaded up on Jack Daniels and watching it with several similarly drunk friends.)
Re:of course there is always life after doom
on
Life After Doom
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· Score: 1
Until I bought Doom III I played all of my games at 1600x1200, 32 bit color, and highest detail possible. My monitor handles that resolution at a refresh rate of 75Hz, which is plenty comfortable to me. I can't honestly say that I can tell the difference between 75Hz and 85Hz. (Well, that's not entirely true, many of the monitors at work emit a very high pitched squeal when turned up to 85Hz, but I am apparently the only one here with ears good enough to hear it.) I don't know about you, but I for one can tell the difference in the smoothness of the polygons when switching between 1024x768 and 1600x1200. As long as the frame rate is still acceptable to me, I will gladly sacrifice a few frames per second for that extra bit of visual clarity.
Get on thing straight. Insurance companies are in the business of making money. Period. End of story. They most certainly will not lower the rates of good drivers. If the insurance company got their hands on this data, the data will only be used to increase the rates of those drivers who have incidents. They have no reason or motivation to lower the rates of the rest of the drivers. That would decrease their potential profit margins and big corporations aren't big on those kinds of actions.
Back when I was still in college I had this old Compaq with a 200MHz Pentium MMX processor, 64MB RAM, etc. that I kept around for light file serving duties and Instant Messaging between rounds of Counter Strike and Day of Defeat. (Being a Compaq, it wasn't good for much else.) Anyway, one day I'm sitting at my desk playing Soldier of Fortune 2 and drinking apple juice straight from the bottle, as any real man would. I'm playing one of the stealth levels, so as I'm watching the screen waiting for this guard to pass me by, I reach out with my right hand to pick up the bottle of apple juice and take another swig. Only, instead of picking the bottle up, I end up knocking it over and spilling 3/4 of a gallon of apple juice on, and in my old Compaq. I quickly grab some towels and soak everything up on the outside of the case and the floor surrounding the case. I then move the mouse on the computer, expecting the worst, and see that it's still running and that somebody had in fact messaged me some time while I was running for some towels.
I figured "Hey, if it's still running, why bother opening it up to survey the damage." I didn't even shut the thing down. I just responded to the IM and went back to my game. In fact, the computer actually seemed to be more stable after the apple juice incident. Sure, the floppy drive wasn't working, but I hadn't used the thing in years anyway, so there's no telling if it was even working before spilling apple juice in the computer.
Almost two years later, after moving a couple of times and leaving the computer in my closet for a couple of months after moving into my current apartment, I decide to open the case up to scavange one of the hard drives for a project. It wasn't until then that I realized just how much apple juice actually made it inside the case. There was brown, sticky apple juice residue everywhere. On, maybe in, the CD drive, on the motherboard, on the SIMMS... practically every where. The processor itself was OK, however, being shielded by a support that held a daughter board for the expansion cards. Although, the support itself was generously splattered by the apple juice. After finally opening the case, I was very surprised that the PC was running all that time. Electronics can certainly take more abuse than I thought possible.
These days the PC still sits in pieces in my closet. I'm not sure what to do with it any more as I don't have much of a need for it these days. Part of me wants start it up and pour more apple juice on it, just to see how much would be enough. For a while, I did think about putting the case in my fridge and trying to see how far I could overclock it before condensation or heat killed the PC, but after some research I found that 200MHz is as high as the board would go. (FSB and Bus speed are already set to max on the jumpers...)
Anyway, I know that I'm posting this so late that it will most likely just get lost among the shuffle. Still, it was fun to "tell" the story to a group of people who hadn't heard it before.
One year when moving back to college, I decided to fly down and have most of my stuff shipped to me. We decided that it would work out better for my and my parent's schedules that way if they didn't have to take off work to drop me off 8 hours away. Anyway, when I went to pick up my computer I found the box all smashed up and heard things rattling around when I picked it up. "Uh-oh."
When I opened it up I found the cpu partially unseated, the heatsink/fan swinging by the power wires that connect it to the motherboard, a cracked plastic bezel, and my stick of RAM lying on the bottom of the case. I put everything back in its place and the computer ran... well, ran as well as it ever did. (The SiS chipset it used was very unstable.) I still have the computer to this day and occasionally use it.
That experience did, however, sour me on UPS for a while. I had to make an insurance claim on the box containing my VCR and whatever was packed with it. The VCR would have been repairable, but the chasis was bent so badly that a couple of gears didn't mate up anymore.
Although it is a common myth, VW does not own Porsche and Porsche does not own VW.
I was pretty sure of that fact, but I have seen it misstated so much recently that I had begun to wonder if I wasn't mistaken. I think the rumor was also helped along during Piech's years as chairman of Volkswagen due to his relations to Ferdinand Porsche.
I had forgotten about SEAT and didn't even know that Volkswagen owned Skoda, though. Bentley I do remember due to the controversy over the Bentley/Rolls Royce name licensing when Volkeswagen purchased the company...
I may be wrong on this one, but I don't think that Vokswagen actually owns a stake (or a major stake, anwyay) in Porsche. I know that they will occasionally partner to develop some vehicles together (Cayenne/Toureg being the most recent) due to Porsche's limited R&D abilities in non-sports car markets, but despite the fact that Ferdinand Porsche created the original Volkswagen, I don't think Volkswagen (the parent company of Audi, which in turn is now the parent company of Lamborghini) owns any major stake in Porsche.
It's guerilla marketing, plain and simple, just like Sci-Fi's recent attempt with M. Night Shyamalan's new movie. You're reading about it, so it's working.
Actually, the guerilla marketing campaign for M. Night Shamalamadingdong's new movie kind of pissed me off. Last saturday I spend an hour and a half washing my new car. It's new and I wanted it to look all pretty with no smudges. Then, I go to see a movie and come out to see a big stupid red sticker on my window. Now there are smudges all over my window and fingerprints all over the car door. I know I'm overreacting, but why do people have to mess with other people's cars. I know I'm over protective of my new car, but I've never liked coming out to find handbills and shit on my car. You just shouldn't mess with another man's car.
Anyway, I didn't think I would see the movie in the first place, but now I'm just barely mad enough to make up my mind not to see the movie.
Well... maybe I'll see it if somebody comes out and washes my car for me...
Re:Nobody tell the Norfolk Southern railroad...
on
By Road and Rail?
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· Score: 1
The Union Pacific service trucks also use a variation on this idea. I couldn't find any links to pictures, though. Basically, their service vehicles are pickup trucks with rail wheels that they can raise and lower while on the tracks.
Aside from some issues in getting the opening cinematics/splash screens to display correctly, and having to update to the latest drivers for everything on my PC, I didn't have any more issues with the game that appeared to be related to video driver instability. I did have some issues with the game occasionally not loading saved games correctly, but I'm not sure that was video driver related. I think the game in general just has a few instabilities...
I can't say for sure which version of the catalyst drivers I'm using, but they were the most recent about 4 months ago when I played through the game. I also have an AIW 9800 Pro, but all of the video rendering capabilities should be handled the same on our two cards. Have you tried updating your chipset drivers maybe? Perhaps your problems are tied to some other issues? Maybe I was just damn lucky?
Hmm... mine are JC as well. What's that mean for me?
(And on an aside my latest and greatest computer is actually named Carmack, as I purchased it with the knowledge that Doom 3 would be coming out some time this year. I started naming my Windows boxen after game developers a while back after naming one of my computers Romero at the suggestion of somebody on IRC. The PC was a piece and I was wondering if there was a god of sucking, and Romero was suggested.)
Your post actually reminded me of when Quake III came out. I never thought the game would run on my computer, and so only bought it when I started using Linux as my primary OS, just becuase there weren't many games at all for Linux, but I wanted something to play when I was booted into Linux.
Anyway, I never could get the game to run under Linux (issues with getting X to recognize my Voodoo3 3000), but I did go ahead and install it in Windows as well. I was amazed at how well the game ran and how good it still looked, despite running it at the lowest levels of detail. The game just seemed to scale very well, and I had no problems engaging in network and/or internet games with my friends. I couldn't even say the same for Counter Strike at the time. (Although with CS I was able to artificially compensate some by generous use of smoke grenades which, for some reason, seemed to cause slow down for my friends running nVidia based cards.:)
Actually, the current Optiplex desktop cases are even easier to take apart, IMHO. There seem to be fewer steps required to replace a drive than the consumer class sytems. I.E. I don't have to remove the drive cage for a hard drive or the front bezel for a CD Drive. They both will just drop down into their respective slots quite easily. I had one instance where one of our higher end users's (meaning non-standard apps) motherboards went bad. In about 60 seconds flat, I swapped her hard drive into a spare PC and her back up and running. Her manager was duely impressed. Everything in the case is so modular and designed so that no tools are needed. It is for this reason that corporate decided to standardize on Dells with these cases.
I vote New Orleans. Mostly becasue I live there, but also because it is a fun conference town. There is plenty to do after hours... as long as you like to drink and eat good food. I'm not sure about how cheap it may be though. It's not a major hub so flights may be a little more expensive. Also, hotel fares fluctuate wildly throughout the course of the year, depending on what else may be going on. But on the plus side (for male geeks, anyway) there are plenty of boobs to go around at all times of the year. That should count for something with this crowd... right?
Although your idea may help prevent PCs from becoming infected, it will still clog up networks with all of its traffic, possibly causing network outages and lost money for the business. In the end, your "solution" really isn't much better than the problem.
I don't really remember Fanne Fox, but in Arkansas we had the Wilbur D. Mills Memorial Freeway. Although I think most people just call it the Fanne Fox Freeway. Or I-540(640?).
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For me, the breakthrough into near-fluency in Spanish (I say near becuase my vocabulary was never as complete as that of a native speaker) was when I began to think in Spanish. I would look at a chair and think "silla" instead of "chair". Once I achieved a certain level of competence with the language, I found that I began to express some ideas in Spanish becuase they were easier to think about in that language/context. These days, I haven't had the opportunity to speak or even listen to Spanish, and I am soooo out of practice. I do kind of miss that "spanish" part of myself. Now, when I turn to Univision I can only comprehend maybe 1/4 of what is being said. ... now I'm rambling...
Then perhaps I have been misinformed... in which case I feel like a total ass.
"DAEMON Tools is frequently updated when Macrovision for instance brings out an update of their SafeDisc 2 protection blacklisting this program." -- http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/52/2
Far Cry actually uses Safedisc 3.something, so I'm guessing that my friend was using an older version of Daemon Tools that was on the current blacklist. I was unaware that Daemon Tools had been updating their software to get around these "blacklists." Nevertheless, I still stand by my decision not to purchase the game on principle.
That is the information that I have been given. I was even told that you have to remove Daemon Tools from your system entirely in order to be able to play the game. I haven't tested it, but I would be willing to guess that simply stopping the Daemon Tools service would be sufficient to play the game. If I ever feel like wasting $50 then maybe I will test it... Either way, a simple NoCD crack probably won't work.
This is the total truth. I so wanted to buy Far Cry. It sounded like an awesome game... and then I found out that it won't run if you have Daemon Tools on your system. That's absolute bullshit that they should be able to dictate what other software I am allowed to have on my PC. I use Daemon Tools for legitimate purposes. The only .isos on my computer are either linux .isos or legitimate software that I have purchased. I have never once ran a cracked game from Daemon tools. But you know what? Far Cry's copy protection made me want to do just that. I never bought the game because of this copy protection and the only reason that I didn't find a pirated copy was becuase I'm too lazy to search the warez sites for it. I make enough money to buy all of my games these days, and I always do just to try to support the developers that make good games. Now, if only there were some way that I could let Far Cry's publishers know that I didn't buy their game and why. Oh, and make them care.
For $100 I could buy a decent P-II system used. That's not too bad for something which I can use to help me get a job. Heck, it's less than some unemployed people I have known spent on beer in a month.
Bah! Amatures! When I was unemployed last summer I had a month where I probably spent over $100 a week on alcohol. Anybody that spends less than that just isn't trying hard enough.
Most people don't realize this, but it's hard work being an unemployed bum living off your savings and feeling sorry for yourself. I mean, you actually have to get up out of bed every once in a while, there's only good stuff on TV for maybe half of the day, and that beer and porkrinds isn't going to buy itself. You actually have to go to the store to buy that stuff. You may even need to shower before doing so! I tell you, last summer was hard on me, being a recently unemployed recent college graduate.
Without a doubt, the worst movie that I have ever seen was Biker Boyz. The plot made no sense and seemed to have no continuity. Not to mention, the race at the end where Larry Fishburne and the other guy drag race on a dirt road. You've got to be an idiot to drag race a bike on a dirt road!
So, uh, yeah. Biker Boyz. (Although, I do have to admit that it was better the second time around while completely loaded up on Jack Daniels and watching it with several similarly drunk friends.)
So, does that make me proof of life after doom?
Until I bought Doom III I played all of my games at 1600x1200, 32 bit color, and highest detail possible. My monitor handles that resolution at a refresh rate of 75Hz, which is plenty comfortable to me. I can't honestly say that I can tell the difference between 75Hz and 85Hz. (Well, that's not entirely true, many of the monitors at work emit a very high pitched squeal when turned up to 85Hz, but I am apparently the only one here with ears good enough to hear it.) I don't know about you, but I for one can tell the difference in the smoothness of the polygons when switching between 1024x768 and 1600x1200. As long as the frame rate is still acceptable to me, I will gladly sacrifice a few frames per second for that extra bit of visual clarity.
But if they jack up the rates of bad drivers maybe they can lower my rates.
h ah ahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahha
Get on thing straight. Insurance companies are in the business of making money. Period. End of story. They most certainly will not lower the rates of good drivers. If the insurance company got their hands on this data, the data will only be used to increase the rates of those drivers who have incidents. They have no reason or motivation to lower the rates of the rest of the drivers. That would decrease their potential profit margins and big corporations aren't big on those kinds of actions.
Back when I was still in college I had this old Compaq with a 200MHz Pentium MMX processor, 64MB RAM, etc. that I kept around for light file serving duties and Instant Messaging between rounds of Counter Strike and Day of Defeat. (Being a Compaq, it wasn't good for much else.) Anyway, one day I'm sitting at my desk playing Soldier of Fortune 2 and drinking apple juice straight from the bottle, as any real man would. I'm playing one of the stealth levels, so as I'm watching the screen waiting for this guard to pass me by, I reach out with my right hand to pick up the bottle of apple juice and take another swig. Only, instead of picking the bottle up, I end up knocking it over and spilling 3/4 of a gallon of apple juice on, and in my old Compaq. I quickly grab some towels and soak everything up on the outside of the case and the floor surrounding the case. I then move the mouse on the computer, expecting the worst, and see that it's still running and that somebody had in fact messaged me some time while I was running for some towels.
I figured "Hey, if it's still running, why bother opening it up to survey the damage." I didn't even shut the thing down. I just responded to the IM and went back to my game. In fact, the computer actually seemed to be more stable after the apple juice incident. Sure, the floppy drive wasn't working, but I hadn't used the thing in years anyway, so there's no telling if it was even working before spilling apple juice in the computer.
Almost two years later, after moving a couple of times and leaving the computer in my closet for a couple of months after moving into my current apartment, I decide to open the case up to scavange one of the hard drives for a project. It wasn't until then that I realized just how much apple juice actually made it inside the case. There was brown, sticky apple juice residue everywhere. On, maybe in, the CD drive, on the motherboard, on the SIMMS... practically every where. The processor itself was OK, however, being shielded by a support that held a daughter board for the expansion cards. Although, the support itself was generously splattered by the apple juice. After finally opening the case, I was very surprised that the PC was running all that time. Electronics can certainly take more abuse than I thought possible.
These days the PC still sits in pieces in my closet. I'm not sure what to do with it any more as I don't have much of a need for it these days. Part of me wants start it up and pour more apple juice on it, just to see how much would be enough. For a while, I did think about putting the case in my fridge and trying to see how far I could overclock it before condensation or heat killed the PC, but after some research I found that 200MHz is as high as the board would go. (FSB and Bus speed are already set to max on the jumpers...)
Anyway, I know that I'm posting this so late that it will most likely just get lost among the shuffle. Still, it was fun to "tell" the story to a group of people who hadn't heard it before.
One year when moving back to college, I decided to fly down and have most of my stuff shipped to me. We decided that it would work out better for my and my parent's schedules that way if they didn't have to take off work to drop me off 8 hours away. Anyway, when I went to pick up my computer I found the box all smashed up and heard things rattling around when I picked it up. "Uh-oh."
When I opened it up I found the cpu partially unseated, the heatsink/fan swinging by the power wires that connect it to the motherboard, a cracked plastic bezel, and my stick of RAM lying on the bottom of the case. I put everything back in its place and the computer ran... well, ran as well as it ever did. (The SiS chipset it used was very unstable.) I still have the computer to this day and occasionally use it.
That experience did, however, sour me on UPS for a while. I had to make an insurance claim on the box containing my VCR and whatever was packed with it. The VCR would have been repairable, but the chasis was bent so badly that a couple of gears didn't mate up anymore.
Although it is a common myth, VW does not own Porsche and Porsche does not own VW.
I was pretty sure of that fact, but I have seen it misstated so much recently that I had begun to wonder if I wasn't mistaken. I think the rumor was also helped along during Piech's years as chairman of Volkswagen due to his relations to Ferdinand Porsche.
I had forgotten about SEAT and didn't even know that Volkswagen owned Skoda, though. Bentley I do remember due to the controversy over the Bentley/Rolls Royce name licensing when Volkeswagen purchased the company...
Volkswagen = Audi = Porsche
I may be wrong on this one, but I don't think that Vokswagen actually owns a stake (or a major stake, anwyay) in Porsche. I know that they will occasionally partner to develop some vehicles together (Cayenne/Toureg being the most recent) due to Porsche's limited R&D abilities in non-sports car markets, but despite the fact that Ferdinand Porsche created the original Volkswagen, I don't think Volkswagen (the parent company of Audi, which in turn is now the parent company of Lamborghini) owns any major stake in Porsche.
But I could be wrong...
It's guerilla marketing, plain and simple, just like Sci-Fi's recent attempt with M. Night Shyamalan's new movie. You're reading about it, so it's working.
Actually, the guerilla marketing campaign for M. Night Shamalamadingdong's new movie kind of pissed me off. Last saturday I spend an hour and a half washing my new car. It's new and I wanted it to look all pretty with no smudges. Then, I go to see a movie and come out to see a big stupid red sticker on my window. Now there are smudges all over my window and fingerprints all over the car door. I know I'm overreacting, but why do people have to mess with other people's cars. I know I'm over protective of my new car, but I've never liked coming out to find handbills and shit on my car. You just shouldn't mess with another man's car.
Anyway, I didn't think I would see the movie in the first place, but now I'm just barely mad enough to make up my mind not to see the movie.
Well... maybe I'll see it if somebody comes out and washes my car for me...
The Union Pacific service trucks also use a variation on this idea. I couldn't find any links to pictures, though. Basically, their service vehicles are pickup trucks with rail wheels that they can raise and lower while on the tracks.
Aside from some issues in getting the opening cinematics/splash screens to display correctly, and having to update to the latest drivers for everything on my PC, I didn't have any more issues with the game that appeared to be related to video driver instability. I did have some issues with the game occasionally not loading saved games correctly, but I'm not sure that was video driver related. I think the game in general just has a few instabilities...
I can't say for sure which version of the catalyst drivers I'm using, but they were the most recent about 4 months ago when I played through the game. I also have an AIW 9800 Pro, but all of the video rendering capabilities should be handled the same on our two cards. Have you tried updating your chipset drivers maybe? Perhaps your problems are tied to some other issues? Maybe I was just damn lucky?
Hmm... mine are JC as well. What's that mean for me?
(And on an aside my latest and greatest computer is actually named Carmack, as I purchased it with the knowledge that Doom 3 would be coming out some time this year. I started naming my Windows boxen after game developers a while back after naming one of my computers Romero at the suggestion of somebody on IRC. The PC was a piece and I was wondering if there was a god of sucking, and Romero was suggested.)
Your post actually reminded me of when Quake III came out. I never thought the game would run on my computer, and so only bought it when I started using Linux as my primary OS, just becuase there weren't many games at all for Linux, but I wanted something to play when I was booted into Linux.
:)
Anyway, I never could get the game to run under Linux (issues with getting X to recognize my Voodoo3 3000), but I did go ahead and install it in Windows as well. I was amazed at how well the game ran and how good it still looked, despite running it at the lowest levels of detail. The game just seemed to scale very well, and I had no problems engaging in network and/or internet games with my friends. I couldn't even say the same for Counter Strike at the time. (Although with CS I was able to artificially compensate some by generous use of smoke grenades which, for some reason, seemed to cause slow down for my friends running nVidia based cards.
I never got suspended for it. I was always smart enough not to let the teachers know what I was doing. :-P
(Actually, there was this one guy in some of my classes who wasn't smart about it. He bragged too much and was suspended.)
Actually, the current Optiplex desktop cases are even easier to take apart, IMHO. There seem to be fewer steps required to replace a drive than the consumer class sytems. I.E. I don't have to remove the drive cage for a hard drive or the front bezel for a CD Drive. They both will just drop down into their respective slots quite easily. I had one instance where one of our higher end users's (meaning non-standard apps) motherboards went bad. In about 60 seconds flat, I swapped her hard drive into a spare PC and her back up and running. Her manager was duely impressed. Everything in the case is so modular and designed so that no tools are needed. It is for this reason that corporate decided to standardize on Dells with these cases.
You left out Insurrection (at number 9). That makes Nemesis number 10, and Nemesis sucked muchly.
Yes. It should be:
9. The Search for the Fountain of Youth
10. The Search for Little Picard
You know, that last one sounds kind of like a pr0n parody flick...
I vote New Orleans. Mostly becasue I live there, but also because it is a fun conference town. There is plenty to do after hours... as long as you like to drink and eat good food. I'm not sure about how cheap it may be though. It's not a major hub so flights may be a little more expensive. Also, hotel fares fluctuate wildly throughout the course of the year, depending on what else may be going on. But on the plus side (for male geeks, anyway) there are plenty of boobs to go around at all times of the year. That should count for something with this crowd... right?
Although your idea may help prevent PCs from becoming infected, it will still clog up networks with all of its traffic, possibly causing network outages and lost money for the business. In the end, your "solution" really isn't much better than the problem.
I don't really remember Fanne Fox, but in Arkansas we had the Wilbur D. Mills Memorial Freeway. Although I think most people just call it the Fanne Fox Freeway. Or I-540(640?).
NanoGator, you are officially the man. Thanks again.