Check the sign in forms for the Hotel, unless otherwise stated or a refund is issued, let them kick you out then join together in a class action law suit. Now tell me that wouldn't be hilarious.

A compusurve email address would be hilarious but I don't think I'd ever use it professionally, though I would most certainly give it out to all my "tech" friends if nothing else than to get reactions from them every time they had to use it. AOL email on the other hand hasn't quite reached that status (mainly because they're still in business). A yahoo address is acceptable, but I always question why they don't have a gmail account.

Ah so Maybe one day we can live in the Future of Robot Jox http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102800/

Every School I've been to that uses this also have an omission for Linux/Unix, so run that. There's never support or much need for scanning on Linux systems so its an easy way around their policy, but if you must use windows and a virtual box session won't cut it, you can setup firewall setting such that your computer appears to run Linux.

To be honest for a college level program I don't think it matters. I learned VHDL in school, but only use Verilog at work. Hasn't much impeded me. There's a mild learning curve but if you know one you know the concepts necessary to easily learn the other.

All good points, though there is engineering tools like cadence that really only function properly in a Unix/Linux environment, sure they can be run on windows but your really just emulating a Unix environment to do that which results in it running to slow to get anything functionally accomplished. Not trying to discount your point just mentioning that it is possible to develop Unix proprietary software and make a profit, it's not unheard of.

I used to work in a public school system, and that's exactly the case. The teachers often knew far less than the student's and thats not saying much; most of them just knew how to update a myspace page. The other main issue was this idea that donating a computer solves things. Often if they don't have the computers then they don't have the resources to upkeep them either.