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.
If they really want to be concerned about "Cyber Security", why don't they nuke all the computers running Bot nets?
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.
Why don't they go after the jerkoffs running the C&C servers? Why don't they set up Honeypots acting as spam traps and go after
all those spammers clogging up the pipes?
I think that is the idea of this whole thing actually.
Why don't they go after the RBN equivalents out there?
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)
Nobody would dare to sue a military unit, would they? Am I missing something here?
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.)
Sci-Fi lost the last of its steam when it switched from being Science Fiction to being Sci Fi. It's been part of a continuing downward spiral where while there have been more offerings recently, especially in mainstream culture, these offerings are increasingly more and more derivative and uninspired.
Give me media that is challenging, that is new, that is alien, give me speculative fiction, good writing, things that make me go hmmmmmm. Or get off my fucking lawn and go make your garbage elsewhere.
*Disclaimer: I know science fiction was never as great as I'd like to think it was. But I've read things and seen movies that really were great for their time, and for ours. This is what should have driven the direction of Science Fiction. Call an action movie in space what it is, an action move in space (or the future, or an alternate reality, or any other tired setting.)
There is not a mod category for "I believe you are incorrect, but we are arguing definitions that have not been standardized".
To my understanding, and I actually work in the computer security field, a zero-day exploit is one in which the target currently does not have a patch. So a zero-day exploit can last for one day (if the security hole is fixed and a patch released that same day) or many months. This currently is a zero-day because there is no way to fix this. This seems to be the universal agreement between people actually working in the computer security field.
Like all security exploits, this one only works if the attacker can get to the potential victim. From the summary it appears that this would only work over the SMB ports, so an attacker would either need to find a improperly configured firewall that was passing this traffic from the cloud into the intranet, or would need to have first exploited a machine inside the intranet. It limits the possibilities for attack, but that has nothing to do with it being a zero-day or not. If you can attack a system and there is no way at present to patch the vulnerability, then it is a zero-day exploit. That is my understanding. Obviously there is disagreement on the meaning.
I was once obese, 300 lbs. I lost 100 pounds over an 18 month period by going on a low carb diet, with no significant extra exercise. My thoughts on that are that if your body is capable of going into ketosis (the mode where it gears up for using fat as energy, both from food in the stomach and fat stores throughout the body) then it is effective for weight reduction. Also, eating a low carb diet got very boring for me, and I found myself eating less because of this (was never hungry or starving myself though). This of course is different for everyone.
Next major body change was when I joined the Navy. I went into boot camp weighing 199, I got down 8 weeks later weighing 199 but with vastly less body fat. My physical structure changed significantly. I started off not eating to much, but ending up consuming pretty large amounts of calories (and drinking tons of water, that is very much forced on new recruits to avoid dehydration problems which are very common when you are exercising in one form or another for most of the day.) Most of the people in my division did not lose weight, some gained a few pounds, all were in vastly improved physical condition. Not big body builder type musles, but lean endurance muscles.
The best method of weight control/weight loss I know is to not eat until I feel full. If I am hungry I will eat until the hunger stops, and then wait 15 to 30 minutes. Sometimes I find there is more room, usually I find that I am full. It seems to take food some time to settle in and for my stomach to give the feedback to the brain that it is doing alright. The stomach is actually a pretty small organ and the digestive system seems to operate best when working on small loads. Full loads both have the effect of stretching and enlarging the stomach (thus making it more difficult to feel full) and diverting energy to digestion (alot of energy is consumed for digestion, thats why people go on health fasts, to give the rest of the body a period of time where the body's energy can be continuously applied to other systems for repair and maintenance. Thats the idea anyway) that could be used for other things, like keeping one alert and full of energy and providing for the immune system to do its job.
I first started reading the books when I was a senior in high school, I thought the series was amazing at first, especially after the first book, and then the next two or three. Then after that it started to drag. Alot. Nothing significant was happening. Or seemingly random significant things were happening to stir up the plot. I gave up halfway through book 6 or 7 out of boredom and a sense of futility.
High school was a long time ago, and since then I've broadened my reading interests, read more genres, literature, poetry, more diverse offerings in the "Fantasy" genre, and I took a stab at reading the Wheel of Time again. Read the first book.
It sucked. Hard. All the way through.
Just my opinion, I'm not right or wrong but thats how I feel about it. If you enjoy these books thats great, different strokes for different folks, but this is a big non-story to me, except about milking a cow thats been on life support for dehydration for years and years.
I can't believe I got first post 2 hours after I saw this story. Is something broke? Does noone care about random videogame music?
Getting sorta back on topic, Xenogears is one of my favorite console RPGs. Mindblowing story, I was floored by the complexity of it and themes. The second disc is a letdown though after 30-50 hours of buildup on the first disc.
Duh. Don't play against the house, ever, if that is a concern.
Oh, and the point is moot really. If card counting became some sort of protected thing by law or regulation or anything else, all the casino has to do is use more decks and shuffle after every hand. there goes the entire advantage offered by card counting. There goes your chance to even count cards for a day or a week or months (and make at least some money) before being detected and being blacklisted.
One final thought, if you think cheating by the casino is wrong, start your own casino that plays by your ethical gambling rules. Don't tell me you can't compete against the big casinos, I'm positive you will have more customers than they do soon enough.
I don't know what you mean by a misguided "Libertarian." I think what I think from my conclusions I've drawn and fuck whether it is or is not in line with any other group's point of view.
These games are heavily regulated. There doesn't even need to be a law - the gaming commission can just say "if you kick out players who count cards using only their minds and no other device, we will shut you down". And this is the way it should be. Without regulation, this becomes a crazy thing called "fraud".
The gaming commission can say that if they want. They can make any rules for the way a casino can be run (within existing Federal, State and County law.) That has nothing to do with the original post I was replying to, which was asking for the government to step in and make this illegal. If enough gamblers decided to boycott playing blackjack until this change was enacted, maybe this would change. I think either a) not enough gamblers give a fuck or b) the lost revenues from blackjack would be made up at all of the rest of the games, and the blackjack tables would be converted to other games.
Since you have no legal "right" to be allowed to play a gambling game that a privately owned company is legally offering, your proposal of a law makes no sense. You being allowed to gamble in a casino is a privilege the casino confers on you, not a right granted by the constitution or other laws.
If you are upset that the casino offers no games where they do not have an advantage and thus lose money, then don't go to the casino. If you want to make money gambling, play poker. You don't play against the house, you play against other players (so its purely skill vs skill.) You pay the casino a relatively small percentage of each pot (called the rake) for basicly "renting" the table you play on and the safety (try coming up a few tens of thousands of dollars in a game at Bob's house downtown and not getting robbed on your way home.) Also casinos attract people who want to play, so you are paying for the ability to always have people to play against, many of which have huge bankrolls for you to win (or to lose to. Depends on your level of skill at the game).
Slashdot Mirror
Pokerstars, Full Tilt Poker and one or two others were the only ones accepting accounts from US peoples the last I checked.
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.
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.)
Can someone tell me WTF a "Cyber-Warrior" is?
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.
If they really want to be concerned about "Cyber Security", why don't they nuke all the computers running Bot nets?
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.
Why don't they go after the jerkoffs running the C&C servers? Why don't they set up Honeypots acting as spam traps and go after all those spammers clogging up the pipes?
I think that is the idea of this whole thing actually.
Why don't they go after the RBN equivalents out there?
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)
Nobody would dare to sue a military unit, would they? Am I missing something here?
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.
Hasn't Brian Herbert done enough damage already?
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.)
Yes.
Sci-Fi lost the last of its steam when it switched from being Science Fiction to being Sci Fi. It's been part of a continuing downward spiral where while there have been more offerings recently, especially in mainstream culture, these offerings are increasingly more and more derivative and uninspired.
Give me media that is challenging, that is new, that is alien, give me speculative fiction, good writing, things that make me go hmmmmmm. Or get off my fucking lawn and go make your garbage elsewhere.
*Disclaimer: I know science fiction was never as great as I'd like to think it was. But I've read things and seen movies that really were great for their time, and for ours. This is what should have driven the direction of Science Fiction. Call an action movie in space what it is, an action move in space (or the future, or an alternate reality, or any other tired setting.)
There is not a mod category for "I believe you are incorrect, but we are arguing definitions that have not been standardized".
To my understanding, and I actually work in the computer security field, a zero-day exploit is one in which the target currently does not have a patch. So a zero-day exploit can last for one day (if the security hole is fixed and a patch released that same day) or many months. This currently is a zero-day because there is no way to fix this. This seems to be the universal agreement between people actually working in the computer security field.
Like all security exploits, this one only works if the attacker can get to the potential victim. From the summary it appears that this would only work over the SMB ports, so an attacker would either need to find a improperly configured firewall that was passing this traffic from the cloud into the intranet, or would need to have first exploited a machine inside the intranet. It limits the possibilities for attack, but that has nothing to do with it being a zero-day or not. If you can attack a system and there is no way at present to patch the vulnerability, then it is a zero-day exploit. That is my understanding. Obviously there is disagreement on the meaning.
I'm going to go write a new language, or app, or something right now...
I was once obese, 300 lbs. I lost 100 pounds over an 18 month period by going on a low carb diet, with no significant extra exercise. My thoughts on that are that if your body is capable of going into ketosis (the mode where it gears up for using fat as energy, both from food in the stomach and fat stores throughout the body) then it is effective for weight reduction. Also, eating a low carb diet got very boring for me, and I found myself eating less because of this (was never hungry or starving myself though). This of course is different for everyone.
Next major body change was when I joined the Navy. I went into boot camp weighing 199, I got down 8 weeks later weighing 199 but with vastly less body fat. My physical structure changed significantly. I started off not eating to much, but ending up consuming pretty large amounts of calories (and drinking tons of water, that is very much forced on new recruits to avoid dehydration problems which are very common when you are exercising in one form or another for most of the day.) Most of the people in my division did not lose weight, some gained a few pounds, all were in vastly improved physical condition. Not big body builder type musles, but lean endurance muscles.
The best method of weight control/weight loss I know is to not eat until I feel full. If I am hungry I will eat until the hunger stops, and then wait 15 to 30 minutes. Sometimes I find there is more room, usually I find that I am full. It seems to take food some time to settle in and for my stomach to give the feedback to the brain that it is doing alright. The stomach is actually a pretty small organ and the digestive system seems to operate best when working on small loads. Full loads both have the effect of stretching and enlarging the stomach (thus making it more difficult to feel full) and diverting energy to digestion (alot of energy is consumed for digestion, thats why people go on health fasts, to give the rest of the body a period of time where the body's energy can be continuously applied to other systems for repair and maintenance. Thats the idea anyway) that could be used for other things, like keeping one alert and full of energy and providing for the immune system to do its job.
My $0.02
I first started reading the books when I was a senior in high school, I thought the series was amazing at first, especially after the first book, and then the next two or three. Then after that it started to drag. Alot. Nothing significant was happening. Or seemingly random significant things were happening to stir up the plot. I gave up halfway through book 6 or 7 out of boredom and a sense of futility.
High school was a long time ago, and since then I've broadened my reading interests, read more genres, literature, poetry, more diverse offerings in the "Fantasy" genre, and I took a stab at reading the Wheel of Time again. Read the first book.
It sucked. Hard. All the way through.
Just my opinion, I'm not right or wrong but thats how I feel about it. If you enjoy these books thats great, different strokes for different folks, but this is a big non-story to me, except about milking a cow thats been on life support for dehydration for years and years.
I can't believe I got first post 2 hours after I saw this story. Is something broke? Does noone care about random videogame music?
Getting sorta back on topic, Xenogears is one of my favorite console RPGs. Mindblowing story, I was floored by the complexity of it and themes. The second disc is a letdown though after 30-50 hours of buildup on the first disc.
Why care about the music?
The casino is cheating.
Duh. Don't play against the house, ever, if that is a concern.
Oh, and the point is moot really. If card counting became some sort of protected thing by law or regulation or anything else, all the casino has to do is use more decks and shuffle after every hand. there goes the entire advantage offered by card counting. There goes your chance to even count cards for a day or a week or months (and make at least some money) before being detected and being blacklisted.
One final thought, if you think cheating by the casino is wrong, start your own casino that plays by your ethical gambling rules. Don't tell me you can't compete against the big casinos, I'm positive you will have more customers than they do soon enough.
These games are heavily regulated. There doesn't even need to be a law - the gaming commission can just say "if you kick out players who count cards using only their minds and no other device, we will shut you down". And this is the way it should be. Without regulation, this becomes a crazy thing called "fraud".
The gaming commission can say that if they want. They can make any rules for the way a casino can be run (within existing Federal, State and County law.) That has nothing to do with the original post I was replying to, which was asking for the government to step in and make this illegal. If enough gamblers decided to boycott playing blackjack until this change was enacted, maybe this would change. I think either a) not enough gamblers give a fuck or b) the lost revenues from blackjack would be made up at all of the rest of the games, and the blackjack tables would be converted to other games.
Since you have no legal "right" to be allowed to play a gambling game that a privately owned company is legally offering, your proposal of a law makes no sense. You being allowed to gamble in a casino is a privilege the casino confers on you, not a right granted by the constitution or other laws.
If you are upset that the casino offers no games where they do not have an advantage and thus lose money, then don't go to the casino. If you want to make money gambling, play poker. You don't play against the house, you play against other players (so its purely skill vs skill.) You pay the casino a relatively small percentage of each pot (called the rake) for basicly "renting" the table you play on and the safety (try coming up a few tens of thousands of dollars in a game at Bob's house downtown and not getting robbed on your way home.) Also casinos attract people who want to play, so you are paying for the ability to always have people to play against, many of which have huge bankrolls for you to win (or to lose to. Depends on your level of skill at the game).
For that kind of money I might as well get a mac.