Pokerstars, Full Tilt Poker and one or two others were the only ones accepting accounts from US peoples the last I checked.

It is actually a little bit more complicated than that. I learned and played no limit holdem online for about two months, and the dynamics of the game are really intense, really deep, and really complicated. A bot that won every winning hand it was dealt would be easily spotted. Maybe not by the players that aren't that good, but those players generally play at the low stakes table, thus defeating the bot's earnings potential. It is undoubtedly in the interest of the poker site operators to find and eliminate all cheaters, and maintain their good reputation and cash flow, which comes from having people logged in, playing games, as much as possible. If poker site X is cheating, then I will go to poker site Y, which is no different except their table graphics are a little different, and the buttons to bet fold or call are in different spots on my screen.

Of course, at the present time, only a limited number of online poker sites offer accounts to people residing in the US, presumably because of the laws the US has in place. Meaning if you sign up for an account with one, you cannot cash out to a US bank account. You would have to have a foreign bank account or work with a friend, and then we get into the issue of money laundering and even bigger crimes and punishments.

You have obviously not done any gambling online. A large percentage, perhaps even the majority of online gambling, is poker. When you go to an online poker site, you are not playing against the house/online gambling site. You are playing against other players, and the gambling site gets its money by charging a fee, a percentage of the buy in in a tournament or a percentage of the pot.

Of course there is no 100% guarantee that the online gambling site is not putting an employee that can see the cards in on a table, but that would really net them so little money in comparison to hosting 100's or even thousands of tables simultaneously, and getting their little fee from each of them. Not the mention the damage to their reputation if it were discovered (there is great competition amongst online poker sites.)

Someone involved in any aspect of computer security, which can contain any of the following: penetration testing of systems to determine their vulnerabilites, network monitoring and analysis/intrusion detection, malware analysis, research into new exploits, analysis of botnet infrastructures and so on on the defensive side, and for the offensive side it is scanning target computer systems and networks, enumerating, exploiting, and pwning, either as a script kiddie with tools or as a more real hacker, creating your own tools for the particular system.

International law. They (the FBI) already goes after people operating the C2C servers inside the borders of this country (the USA). Most people don't know it when their computer is infected with a botnet, depending on the botnet.

I think that is the idea of this whole thing actually.

It is hard to find the ringleaders, and then even if the USA did, they would likely be in Russia, and Russia may not accept our evidence. (Begin rumors without citation) There are some that think the Russian government unofficially supports the RBN, as long as their activities do no mess with Russian interests.(/rumors)

Military action is never a good first option, or second, third or fourth option for that matter. There are serious consequences for violating a sovereign nation with an act of war, unless they are really weak and poor and have no friends.

If there is evidence that countries are beefing up their own cyber warfare capabilities, then it sorta the explicit and implicit responsibility of a government to its people to protect them. You don't see any countries in the world that can afford a military without one do you? Unless they can get it way with it some other way (think Switzerland of countries that are not allowed a sizable military as a condition of their surrender in a previous war by the winning country(ies).)

Welcome to the future. Its like Robot Jox but without the robots and just the software.

I still cringe that I forced myself to read all the way through the second sequel he wrote, because I had to know what happens.

What happened? Nerd rage, as I threw away the first book I've ever thrown away in my life. Its poo. It's worse than poo, poo has redeeming value as fertilizer and a place for flies to spawn their maggot babies. All the Brian Herbert milk-my-father's-work-so-I-don't-have-to Dune books (of which there are too too many) Are cut off. They no longer exist in my personal reality.

Yo dawg, I heard you like watching movies, so we made a computer powerful enough for you to watch a movie in hi-def, while you watch a movie in hi-def.

Off topic but Evangelion was the shit!

Whoosh. He'd be correct on some points though.

TFA has a nice pie chart with the heading "Value captured by country for $190 of captured value for $299 iPod sold in the U.S."

I am not an economist, can someone explain to me what "captured value" means and what happened to the $109 not mentioned on the pie chart? Where did that go? If China got it, then its more than the $4 mentioned in the article.

1. Make claim that defies common sense and knowledge (but could be correct, common sense and common knowledge are not infalliable)

2. Back it up with mysterious pie chart.

3. ????

4. Profit?

Yes they were.

This plum brandy I am thinking of is a Romanian thing, and also a Hungarian thing I am told. The romanian name is Pálinka. It sounds almost exactly like sljivovica. Its high proof liquor made from plums, usually made at home in someone's personal still, and aged in wood barrels. Lots of people make it, and everyone, EVERYONE, has a bottle of it in their home. And many people sip a shot of it (sip, not shoot) with lunch and dinner.

Time to reconsider considering quitting smoking....

It seems to have been forgotten. I don't know if its because my parents immigrated from another country, but they have a different view on health than the average American. Growing up, medicine from the pharmacy was the last resort to treat anything, with some important exceptions.

If I had a headache, lay down, don't read or play a video game, go to sleep if you can, wait it out.

A stomach ache - Some toast and tea, and then see if you can go poopie.

Sore throat - My mom makes this stuff out of egg yolks, lemon and sugar. Maybe its a placebo. Also, every blue moone she would aslo give me a half shot or quarter shot of this high proof plum brandy/whiskey, "to kill the gems"

A cold - Hot tea, garlic toast, bedrest.

Chest congestion - Vicks vapor-rub type hing applied to my chest left on overnight.

When things were real bad, like being sick and not getting better, or having high fevers, then I would go to the doctor, get examined, and be given penicillin. Thats about the only thing I got regularly as a child.

Flash forward to adulthood. I am 30 now. I haven't been sick since I was 23 or 24, and before that it was some time in high school. I don't get seasonal flus. I don't get colds. I get a headache two or three times a year. I get a runny nose a few times a year (usually at the same time people are getting really sick with whatever is going around at the moment). I get sore throats and congestion, but I'm never sure if that is the cigarette smoking or something else.

All in all, for someone that does not live a particularly healthy lifestyle, I'm doing pretty damn good. Knock on wood.

One more thing, home cooked food was the norm, eating out was the exception. Soup almost every day. Lots of vegetables, lots of weird tasting/smelling vegetables. I'm also not allergic to anything that I know of.

Grrrrrr.

I've heard Verner Vinge come up more than once now in positive reference to his writing (as opposed to him coming up in reference to his ideas) I will check him out. I like reading the kinds of things that are too "out there," do you have any specific recommendations? My favorites that I've read recently include Samuel R. Delaney (even though he has been around for a long time and his last book was written in the 80's, somehow when I was growing up reading science fiction he never came up) and Gene Wolfe for his Book of the New Sun series (Fantasy, not science fiction, but done extremely well and not in a Conan/Tolkien derivative way, and also not exactly new.)