Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with ask

How do Bid and Ask work on Intrade?

wastelands — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:55:56 -0800

How exactly does the Bid/Ask work on Intrade.com? So last night I bought a bunch of shares of "Dow down at least 25 points by close on Monday" with my remaining play money. I was excited this morning when I saw the markets were way down. I was about to quadruple my money. But then on Intrade, no one had sold me the shares I requested. I bought them last night when there was no Ask price. Other people had bid 25 points ($2.5/share?), so I did the same.

How does that work? Do all contracts start off at 50 points when they go live? Had that one not started until opening bell?

If anyone could clarify the whole Bid/Ask thing, I would appreciate it. Intrade's help pages only talk about the bare minimum. I googled on the terms and get the general idea, but obviously I don't get it enough. I'm missing out on a huge (virtual) payday today. :-(

Are there other sites on the web like ask.metafilter?

waxboy — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:29:37 -0800

Are there other sites on the web like ask.metafilter, where you can ask/answer questions on pretty much any topic? I'm thinking there might be a way of doing this a little better, and well, maybe it's already been done.

How to best communicate the data about which I will later AskMefi?

vanoakenfold — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 15:11:37 -0800

Question-Asking-Filter: What would be the best way to ASK a question on AskMeFi that I want to ask? Pre-question question-answers within. So I'm sort-of asking it now, but I want to pose it again using the answer(s) this question reaps. So anyway.

I've got more than a hanfdul of wooden cubes stuck face-to-face together in oddball configurations that, together, form a mystery number of x-by-x-by-x cubes, that I made many years ago and have since forgotten the solutions. How should I present the spectrum of the piece configurations, in a text-based setting like Ask-Mefi?

(a) Is there a freeware PC/web-based program I could use to build a visual representation of them, take screenshots and post for MeFites to mentally assemble?

Would the question be too much to ask, considering I don't know how many x-by-x-by-x cubes the pieces actually form total?

(b) should I instead type out a series of..
XXX // XOX // XXX
XOX // OOX // XOX
XOX // XXX // XXX
..whereas O is the wood and X is absence of wood, for each piece?

I'm truthfully not even certain all of the available pieces are even present, given that I don't know their solution(s), but they were all found in a sealed baggie so I might presume they were the complete set(s).

Things I do know: some of the pieces are shorter in overall cube-length than the entire assmbled-cube's max width. I did make a 4x4x4 cube and a 5x5x5 cube at some point. I am the originator of the puzzle and the solution has not ever been posted on the web by me or anyone else to my knowledge (although the gnomes who often scamper about and hide my keys in random places may have at some point posted the solution). There are 25 pieces, with a maximum piece-length of no more than 5 cubes across.

The question though -- how I could I best communicate the configurations of these pieces, and perhaps secondarily, would anyone even bother answering it, and perhaps tertiarily, would providing a non-MeFi-based incentive for answering it encourage someone to answer it?

Do guys really mean "just be friends?"

ShadePlant — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:37:28 -0800

I'm in my early 20's and asked a guy in my cooking class to hang out via email. The guy said we could but added, "I want to be clear that if we do hang out it will only be as friends." Does this mean I am on the "would not hit it" list? An internet profile say's he's into girls, single and looking for "friendship."

Is there an open course codebase similar to ... Ask Metafilter?

clango — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:53:46 -0800

Is there an open course codebase similar to ... Ask Metafilter? I have a fun idea for a specialized group Q and A blog, but I'm not much of a coder.

AskMe do answer me!

markesh — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 06:18:36 -0800

What is the most intellectually challenging question you have ever been asked that is not knowledge specific? There are many difficult questions in the world, but most of them require prior knowledge to answer. So the challenge then comes from synthesizing the knowledge into a coherent answer.

What about the other questions? What questions are there that are just very difficult to figure out (without being puzzles), but don't require domain specific knowledge?

For example : If a boy James grew up always seeing green as blue, and was told all his life that green was blue, how could he possibly ever figure out that the color he is seeing is not the same as the color everyone else is seeing?