Category Archives: Information Technology

The Midas Oracle readers use Mozilla FireFox 3.

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Previous blog posts by Chris “GadFly” Masse:

  • PROF TOM W. BELL, PLEASE, DO SKIP THE PAGAN CELEBRATIONS, AND, PLEASE, DO RETURN TO YOUR DESK TO FINISH THE DRAFT OF YOUR COMMENT TO THE CFTC. THANKS FOR YOUR PRAGMATIC (NOT ‘ETHEREAL’) CONTRIBUTION TO “THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY”. (There is a hidden slam to Robin Hanson in this title. I wonder whether people will get the joke.)
  • The CFTC is going to close the comments in 3 days. We have 3 days left to convince the CFTC to accept FOR-PROFIT prediction exchanges (e.g., InTrade USA or BetFair USA), and counter the puritan and sterile petition organized by the American Enterprise Institute (which has on its payroll Paul Wolfowitz, the bright masterminder of the Iraq war).
  • TOM W. BELL: “Thanks, Chris. Thanks, too, for being such an effective gadfly. I might well have blown off the whole exercise if you had not kept blogging about how you were awaiting my comment!”
  • What to think of HedgeStreet’s comment to the CFTC
  • The freshest comments sent to the CFTC
  • “To someone like me who trades professionally and also ran for Congress a few years back, InTrade is a marriage made in heaven.”
  • HOW TO DESTROY INTRADE, TRADESPORTS AND BETFAIR: a betting application for FaceBook

Commenting on Midas Oracle

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As you know, some people commenting here told me they went into trouble, even when they were logged in. I found out why. The anti-spam plugin &#8220-WP Spam Free&#8221- does not exempt registered blog users from its anti-spam checking. It only exempts the administrator (me). That&#8217-s absurd. (See the WP forum.) The registered users of Midas Oracle should be trusted a priori.

I didn&#8217-t know that. When some commenters complained to me, I thought they were completely drunk. Sorry for that, folks.

Which is why the plugin &#8220-WP Spam Free&#8221- is out (until its author comes back to his sense), and &#8220-Bad Behavior&#8221- is in.

Commenters, let me know whether the problems you got while trying to comment on Midas Oracle have disappeared. Thanks. I promise I&#8217-ll trust you, this time. :-D

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Our previous post on the topic of registration (which is recommended).

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UPDATE: Bad Behavior proved to be good for my blog users, but lately, I endured an attack of spam comments (60 last night). So, I did disable Bad Behavior and re-enable WP Spam Free for a while&#8230- I&#8217-ll see what to do next&#8230- If you encounter problems, e-mail me. I think you should accept cookies and have JavaScript enabled in your browser&#8230-

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Nigel, your very nice poll widget cant be seen within my feed reader (Google Reader). Put it in the trash can, will you.

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Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • The FaceBook profiles of the 2 most important men of the field of prediction markets
  • THE HUMAN GADFLY WHOSE OBJECTIONS ROBIN HANSON IS DUCKING…???…
  • Google now considers Midas Oracle as a major blog.
  • Horizon 2015: A long-term strategic perspective for the real-money prediction markets
  • Join our group at LinkedIn to have your “Prediction Markets” badge on your profile. It’s ‘chic’. (“Groups” info should be set as “visible”, in your profile options.) We are 63 this early Saturday morning —keeps growing.
  • If you have been using PayPal to fund your InTrade, TradeSports or BetFair account, please, check that horror story.
  • 48 hours after the launch of the “Prediction Markets” group at LinkedIn, we have already 52 members —both prediction market luminaries and simple people (trading the event derivatives or collecting the market-generated probabilities).

How to optimize your prediction market blog (e.g., Midas Oracle, Caveat Bettor) or prediction exchange website (e.g., InTrade, TradeSports, BetFair, NewsFutures, HubDub) for Google Web Search -and all the other search engines out there.

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Interview of Google&#8217-s Matt Cutts by USA Today.

The basic SEO tips.

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Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • The FaceBook profiles of the 2 most important men of the field of prediction markets
  • THE HUMAN GADFLY WHOSE OBJECTIONS ROBIN HANSON IS DUCKING…???…
  • Google now considers Midas Oracle as a major blog.
  • Horizon 2015: A long-term strategic perspective for the real-money prediction markets
  • Join our group at LinkedIn to have your “Prediction Markets” badge on your profile. It’s ‘chic’. (“Groups” info should be set as “visible”, in your profile options.) We are 63 this early Saturday morning —keeps growing.
  • If you have been using PayPal to fund your InTrade, TradeSports or BetFair account, please, check that horror story.
  • 48 hours after the launch of the “Prediction Markets” group at LinkedIn, we have already 52 members —both prediction market luminaries and simple people (trading the event derivatives or collecting the market-generated probabilities).

Do you still have trouble commenting on Midas Oracle?

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I deactivated the WP-OpenID plugin because WP Spam Free says it is the source of incompatibilities. I notified the WP forum.

Commenters, let me know whether the problems you got while trying to comment on Midas Oracle have disappeared. Thanks.

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Our previous post on the same topic.

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UPDATE: I deactivated WP Spam Free and installed Bad Behavior.

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Mozilla FireFox users, do you have trouble downloading academic papers (as PDF files) from SSRN?

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I do. I notice that PDF file downloads work fine with MicroSoft Internet Explorer. But when I download a PDF file from SSRN with my Mozilla FireFox, it says that the PDF file is corrupted when I try to open it with my Adobe Reader. Should I blame FireFox, or can&#8217-t SSRN handle FireFox well? Who&#8217-s to blame?

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Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • Conditional prediction markets about oil price and SegWay sales… Like the idea, Robin Hanson?
  • Justin Wolfers [*] is the most cited prediction market economist
  • The Orb @ Texas Tech University
  • IS IT SAFE TO LOCATE A PREDICTION EXCHANGE NEAR A RIVER???
  • RIVER RISING. POWER PLANT CLOSED. IOWA ELECTRONIC MARKETS AT RISK? DEVELOPING…
  • U.S. COAST GUARDS DEPLOYED TO SAVE THE IOWA ELECTRONIC MARKETS
  • VIDEO: The financial markets hacker who will impress Jason Ruspini

Suggestion for WordPress – Subscribers Capabilities

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The WordPress registered subscribers should have access, internally, to the &#8220-comments&#8221- page &#8212-so that they could read comments, and reply to comments from there. (With a little help from the &#8220-Absolute Comments&#8221- plugin.) That would be useful to the heavy commenters. Indeed, that &#8220-comments&#8221- page loads quicker than anything else.

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If you want to check the brand-new Midas Oracle comments every 10 minutes, dont use a Web-based feed reader like Google Reader, do use (for this purpose) a PC-based feed reader (like Sage on FireFox).

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Google Reader fetches our comment feed once an hour or so. Too long for some.

Scan this feed explainer, I have listed the PC-based feed readers. You can then decide exactly when to fetch our comment feed &#8212-every 10 minutes, every 20 minutes, etc.

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As for me, the blog administrator, I read comments and reply to them &#8212-from within the WordPress system, on the &#8220-comments&#8221- page.

I&#8217-ll log in as a simple subscriber, soon, and see whether one simple registered Midas Oracle reader could, from there, reply to other people&#8217-s comments. That would solve some of the problems of the guy linked to, above.

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FACEBOOK AND LINKEDIN: How to deal with unwanted friend requests, the ethics of de-friending, and other social networking etiquette predicaments.

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Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • Midas Oracle is only 6 times smaller than Fred Wilson’s blog, “A VC”.
  • The best blogs on prediction markets
  • The New Republic profiles the next Vice President of the United States of America —Jim Webb, maybe.
  • No Trades (other than at the start) —-> Not a reliable predictor, as of today
  • How you should read Midas Oracle
  • The best prediction exchanges
  • “There will be no media consumption left in ten years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.”

The simplicity and social utility of the gravatars explained to Tom W. Bell by blog guru Chris Pirillo.

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Tom W. Bell,

Please, watch this short video, and get yourself a gravatar. It&#8217-s easy and fun.

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The little difference between Midas Oracle and Chris Pirillo&#8217-s blog is that he set up things so that when somebody does not have a gravatar, a randomly-pixelized image appears, while on Midas Oracle, there&#8217-s a face pic of an anonymous person that appears.

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Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • How you should read Midas Oracle
  • The best prediction exchanges
  • “There will be no media consumption left in ten years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.”
  • Hillary Clinton won’t be on the Democratic ticket. — It’s not going to happen. — N-E-V-E-R. — Not a chance. — Period.
  • Suggestion for WordPress — Subscribers’ Capabilities
  • This is why I said that those who believe that Hillary Clinton has a chance to be on the Democratic ticket are “clueless”.
  • WEB EXCLUSIVE: — The annoted, historical, compound chart that those triple morons at the BetFair blog are hiding from their readers’ view. — It is located in a secret cache, linked to behind a picture of Hillary Clinton. — Curious place to locate a prediction market chart. — I bet nobody downloaded that chart. —