Tag Archives: Midas Oracle

How to set Reverse IP Lookup to anything that you like (or dislike, should I say, in this case)… including a NewsFutures server that does not exist in reality…!!!…

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Dear readers,

Now is time to give you some background information about last week&#8217-s incident. As you all know, somebody was irked by what I said about the EPM software vendors and set up, not one, but two websites denigrating moi.

#1. I don&#8217-t care if someone makes a fool of moi. I am fair game. Plus, it gives a laughing opportunity to the Chief Economist of Midas Oracle, because it is revenge for my making fool of him when he is so wrong about the article in The Economist or else (follow the HubDub link given by Mike Linksvayer).

#2. My big concern with that attack is that it might well come from somebody I know &#8212-and who has always had the kindest words for me (including last week). So, that person might well be a hypocrite, and my trust in him (and his prediction market company, if any) will be wiped out, if my suspicion is confirmed.

#3. My secondary concern is that that attacker (who might well be a prediction market software vendor or a disgruntled employee) tried to put the blame on NewsFutures (both a prediction market software vendor and a public prediction exchange) for the 2 websites (&#8221-Chris F. Masse is a Fraud&#8221-, and &#8220-Overcoming Midas&#8221-). Just after that the 2 websites were discovered (by one innocent reader, who simply followed the web link posted by a commenter, &#8220-The Colonel&#8221-), many people e-mailed me to tell that I should do a &#8220-reverse IP lookup&#8220- to find out who is behind&#8230- I did&#8230- The result was &#8220-dev24.newsfutures.com&#8221-. I was very surprised to see NewsFutures involved in this attack, and I sent the link to Emile Servan-Schreiber, who, first, expressed astonishment, and then forwarded the link to his CTO (Maurice Balick, some of you know him very well), who is a computer whiz and a master of &#8220-The Internets&#8221- &#8212-as would say former president George W. Bush. :-D

It turned out that:

– NewsFutures sent a &#8220-cease and desist&#8221- letter to the webhost of these 2 websites. Here is a very short excerpt of the NewsFutures letter:

That IP address provides a Reverse-ARP record containing dev24.newsfutures.com. However, we own the domain newsfutures.com and we have never authorized anyone to setup this fake RARP record.

– In the meantime, following the brouhaha made on Midas Oracle when the IP address of The Colonel was revealed, the attacker cleared the RARP record during the night so that it no longer pointed to NewsFutures (the non-existent dev24.newsfutures.com address).

– There are other technical and legal developments to this case, but I am not at liberty to talk further.

– However, I would like to explain to you how it was possible to put the blame on NewsFutures&#8230- even though Emile and his team had nothing to do with this attack.

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The Reverse IP Lookup is so easy to fudge that it&#8217-s totally meaningless. It&#8217-s something that prediction market people should know about, so that, in the future, they would not be fooled into drawing conclusions from this kind of &#8220-evidence&#8221-.

To understand how one could fraudulently make a reverse IP lookup point to a newsfutures.com domain, Emile and Maurice bought a $20 slice on the webhost where the chrismasse.com and overcomingmidas.com websites were hosted. The hosting service then lets you set the &#8220-reverse DNS&#8221- to any URL that you like, and within a few seconds the Reverse IP Lookup tool on iWebTools will point to the URL that you chose. As an example (and as a blink-blink sign to Mike Giberson and Mike Linksvayer), Emile and Maurice made the IP point to &#8220-dev24.midasoracle.org&#8221-.

Try it: http://www.iwebtool.com/reverse_ip?domain=67.23.8.251

midas-oracle-defamer

CONCLUSION: Someone tried to incriminate NewsFutures (and fuck with our readers&#8217- mind) by setting up these agressive websites and having the Reverse IP Lookup point to a fake NewsFutures URL.

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UPDATE:

Did the attacker try to pin it on, not just one, but *two* prediction market software vendors?
http://www.midasoracle.org/2009/03/13/did-the-attacker-try-to-pin-it-on-not-just-one-but-two-prediction-market-software-vendors/

Niall is not happy…

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Niall O&#8217-Connor:

Cowardly bastards …if this can be confirmed I will pass the story on to one of my contacts at the Guardian. And I will ensure that the other cowards who received emails last Friday about the websites, but chose to keep quiet are also exposed- by informing their companies of this obscene example of corporate bullying.

Who is behind?

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IMPORTANT UPDATE REGARDING THE INCIDENT.

Somebody did set up a website making a fool of me. Searching who is behind this turned out the IP address of the NewsFutures server &#8212-but Emile Servan-Schreiber is as innocent as a lamb because this data was in fact fudged by the attacker (so as to wrongly put the blame on NewsFutures). It might well be the same thing for the IP that connected to comment here.

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UPDATE:

Did the attacker try to pin it on, not just one, but *two* prediction market software vendors?

http://www.midasoracle.org/2009/03/13/did-the-attacker-try-to-pin-it-on-not-just-one-but-two-prediction-market-software-vendors/

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the-colonel

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nashville

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chrismasse-com-1

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chrismasse-com-2

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overcomingmidas-com-1

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overcomingmidas-com-2

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Do you have a blog?

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If yes, you could help by linking to our post:

– The truth about prediction markets

Thanks. Appreciated. I will make up to you.

These bloggers have already linked to it:

– Professor Mike Giberson-

– Professor Andrew Gelman-

– Barry Ritholtz (the #1 Wall Street blogger)-

– JusTrade Blog-

– BetFair Predicts-

– Betting @ BetFair.

The truth about prediction markets

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Come to the wonderful world of collective intelligence, wisdom of crowds, and prediction markets!&#8230- The sun shines bright, the market-generated predictions are vastly superior to the polls as election predictors, and the track record of the public prediction markets stretches as far as the eye can see. There are opportunities aplenty in the field of prediction markets, and the trading technology is cheap. Every working enterprise can have its own internal prediction exchange, and inside every exchange, a set of enterprise prediction markets that correctly predicts the future of business, which their happy, all-American CEO listens to. Life is good in the magic world of prediction markets&#8230- it&#8217-s paradise on Earth.

Ha! ha! ha! ha!&#8230- That&#8217-s what they tell you, anyway&#8230- &#8212-because they are selling an image (just as Bernie Madoff did). They are selling it thru their vendor websites, vendor conferences, vendor-inspired articles in blogs, newspapers and magazines, and interviews of vendor data-fed professors in the media.

The prediction market technology is not a disruptive technology, and the social utility of the prediction markets is marginal. Number one, the aggregated information has value only for the totally uninformed people (a group that comprises those who overly obsess with prediction markets and have a narrow cultural universe). Number two, the added accuracy (if any) is minute, and, anyway, doesn&#8217-t fill up the gap between expectations and omniscience (which is how people judge forecasters). In our view, the social utility of the prediction markets lays in efficiency, not in accuracy. In complicated situations, the prediction markets integrate expectations (informed by facts and expertise) much faster than the mass media do. Their accuracy/efficiency is their uniqueness. It is their velocity that we should put to work.

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Here&#8217-s now our definition of prediction markets:

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A prediction market is a market for a contract that yields payments based on the outcome of a partially uncertain future event, such as an election. A contract pays $100 only if candidate X wins the election, and $0 otherwise. When the market price of an X contract is $60, the prediction market believes that candidate X has a 60% chance of winning the election. The price of this event derivative represents the imputed perceived likelihood of the partially uncertain future outcome (i.e., its aggregated expected probability). A 60% probability means that, in a series of events each with a 60% probability, the favored outcome is expected to occur 60 times out of 100, and the unfavored outcome is expected to occur 40 times out of 100.

Each prediction exchange organizes its own set of real-money and/or play-money markets, using either a CDA or a MSR mechanism &#8212-with or without an automated market maker.

Prediction markets enable us to attain collective intelligence. Prediction markets produce dynamic, objective probabilistic predictions on the outcomes of future events by aggregating disparate pieces of information that the traders bring when they agree on prices. The event derivative traders are informed by the primary indicators (i.e., the primary sources of information), like the polls, for instance. These informed speculators then execute their transactions based on their anticipations about the future &#8212-anticipations that will be either confirmed or infirmed.

The value of a set of prediction markets consists in the added accuracy that these prediction markets provide relative to the other meta predictive mechanisms, times the value of accuracy in improved decisions, minus the cost of maintaining these prediction markets, relative to the cost of the other meta predictive mechanisms. A highly accurate set of prediction markets has little value if some other meta predictive mechanism(s) can provide similar accuracy at a lower cost, or if very few substantial decisions are influenced by accurate predictions on its topic.

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PS: I am updating a bit the content of this webpage, over time &#8212-so as to finesse the message.

The Open Institute Of Prediction Markets

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I am (finally) finished writing up the mission statement of The Open Institute Of Prediction Markets.

I have asked Mike Giberson, Mike Linksvayer, and (of course) David Pennock, to give me feedback, so I can see whether I am on the right track or not. If it&#8217-s the case, and once I have integrated their feedback, I will show it to 3 other prediction market luminaries, and so forth, until an ethereal sense of perfection emerges out of it. (Could take weeks.)

Stay tuned.

PS: Google is forbidden to snatch that &#8220-mission&#8221- webpage, don&#8217-t ever think of trying to read the cached webpage.

UPDATE: Got feedback. Need to work on it.

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The Open Institute Of Prediction Markets

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research

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A short post to thank all the people who e-mailed me to assure me of their support for this long-term endeavor.

There are so many luminaries and organizations who have said they were &#8220-interested&#8221- by this institute project that I am starting to think that this idea just can&#8217-t fall apart &#8212-the expectations are now too high, and our duty to the next generations is to succeed.

That said, I don&#8217-t have yet the first cent for this institute, and 2009 will undergo the worst economic recession in our lifetime &#8212-but who cares about the harsh reality, as long as we have sweet dreams. :-D

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mindbrain