Quote from nitro:
Nice idea!
But this would not legitimize it nearly as much as having the broker act not only as an execution broker, but as an HONESTY broker.
I could, with some effort, foil your suggestion by faking a screen that made it look like IB, but in fact it was not. Not to mention that the mentors machine would get bogged down by say, 100 spectators. This app was not meant for this.
But it was a valiant try...
nitro
I don't understand why it shouldn't be a 3rd party software. IB should care less really, and rather focus on the trading aspects of the software.
Here's a solution:
1. install VNC or TightVNC -
http://www.realvnc.com/ -
http://www.tightvnc.com/
2. check the advanced options -
http://www.realvnc.com/winvnc.html
3. Disable AllowShutdown on windows machines, setup AuthHosts if applicable, InputsEnabled and Disable Remote Keyboard and Pointer.
This solution works on most platforms like windows, linux - and maybe a Mac OS X port will come from the unix source.
If someone would be faking this VNC server with their elite programming skills, then they are elite enough to fake any protocol, viewer feature that IB could come up with. Period.
You can even make the VNC connections user+password enabled, as well as SSH-enabled etc. Read the FAQs.
Not trusting your mentor will only get you short-changed anyway; and get some paranoia medication before it's too late.
Quote from ElectricSavant:
Only under ONE condition. That I can watch your trades...Nitro.
Michael B.
P.S. I just got a idea....could I charge people to watch me....without licensing myself again?
P.S.S. next question would anybody pay me a nickle.....? Hey its for charity!
Quote from nitro:
ES,
You have a deal. IB implements this, you get to watch me trade for a week tradin the ES and NQ.
nitro
So, I don't see why you shouldn't be able to hook up, except if nitro is really an elite hacker and programmer.
If you'd like 100+ viewers you need to use some broadcasting service anyway, like Shoutcast or other type of webcasting. That kind of mass service will normally run up some costs anyway.
Recording the session, and having some "viewers" confirm the authenticy of the recording is a cheaper solution for mass distributing the sessions, although not live.
Having some mass broadcasting service from within TWS is just ridiculous; and the same goes for any such hub-service for watching user-sessions from InteracteBrokers server parks as well. Even with IPv6 tunneling over IPv4 networks, or true IPv6 networks - it's so far fetched still with current bandwidths - caching problems etc.
Recording into XVID/DIVX/MEPG-4 and having a select few watch live sessions is the only feasible way to go. Even then there will be a lot of glitches with the tickers changing at a blasting pace, and perhaps tick-charts racing away will make the viewing unbearable in some instances.
True recording&playback with changes in marketdepth, time&sales etc, requires humongous amounts of data in itself. Detaching this kind of data from the trader's actions is also not possible, because of varying network and platform lags, and imperfect data sources - basically giving you no other way of knowing true data the trader was acting upon. You need it all, and then the recording movies is the best way - although "lossy" with regards to some details in the underlying data. If you have access to historical data, you can still replay for yourself with greater detail to underlying data.