A lot of the paranoia is just that--paranoia. Still, there are a lot of people messing around on the wifi and some playing with cell stations, so some caution is justified.
If you're going on the company dime and thus have a rental car, the best thing to do is stay at a hotel somewhere else. I haven't gone since they changed venues, but I used to stay at a chain hotel on the other side of the Strip from the Rio. I'd use their hotel wifi but push all my communications over an ssh tunnel, which is what you should be doing anyway on ANY public wifi.
When I got to the conference, I tended to just put my phone in airplane mode and leave it like that. I'd bring a spare laptop and boot Linux off a USB stick so I could take notes; I sometimes turned on wifi but never signed in to anything online, just looked up wikipedia articles and such. You're probably not at such a great risk because security is a lot better these days (SSL and whatnot), but you'll pay more attention to the talks if you don't have your usual set of distractions available.
Go see the Strip, but after you've seen it once I've never felt much draw to go back. If you have a car, drive over and see Red Rock Canyon in the evening, it's just outside of town and very beautiful. Lots of good restaurants around, just pick what you're interested in. I had some pretty authentic and tasty Chinese food about a mile off the strip last time I went.
I still recommend a rental car if you can afford it; walking around in the August heat is awful. Go check out the strip after dark, when it's cool enough to walk a lot without getting heatstroke.
If you're going on the company dime and thus have a rental car, the best thing to do is stay at a hotel somewhere else. I haven't gone since they changed venues, but I used to stay at a chain hotel on the other side of the Strip from the Rio. I'd use their hotel wifi but push all my communications over an ssh tunnel, which is what you should be doing anyway on ANY public wifi.
When I got to the conference, I tended to just put my phone in airplane mode and leave it like that. I'd bring a spare laptop and boot Linux off a USB stick so I could take notes; I sometimes turned on wifi but never signed in to anything online, just looked up wikipedia articles and such. You're probably not at such a great risk because security is a lot better these days (SSL and whatnot), but you'll pay more attention to the talks if you don't have your usual set of distractions available.
Go see the Strip, but after you've seen it once I've never felt much draw to go back. If you have a car, drive over and see Red Rock Canyon in the evening, it's just outside of town and very beautiful. Lots of good restaurants around, just pick what you're interested in. I had some pretty authentic and tasty Chinese food about a mile off the strip last time I went.
It's a lot of fun, relax and enjoy!