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Technology Review Launches Futures Market
prostoalex writes "MIT Technology Review launched a futures market, allowing people to bet on ideas. A similar concept was at some point introduced by the Pentagon, but later the project was shut down. Currently you can bet on major stock indices, on answers to yes/no questions ('Will Oracle acquire PeopleSoft Inc before March 31st, 2004?') and technological achievements ('When will there be a commercially available electronic device using ultrawideband technology?')" Although the game doesn't use real money, the prizes are pretty swell. I like to think of it as the nerd's version of sportsbook.
I think the poster was misremembering a classic stock scam. What he *really* meant was this:
(1) Identify 2^n gullible people as "marks."
(2) Send each mark an email predicting the outcomes of the next n successive events (I'm assuming the outcomes are all yes/no). Each mark gets one of the 2^n possible sets of predictions.
(3) Wait for the n events to unfold.
(4) Identify the one mark who got an email with all correct predictions, and persuade him to subscribe to your "amazingly accurate" prediction service for a hefty fee.
(5) Abscond.
In the original version of the scam, the events were that a particular stock would go up or down on each of a succession of days.