Copy and Paste

One very valuable tool for determining where we are in the economic cycle is the 10-Year/2-Year U.S. Treasury yield spread. To create this chart (see chart below), the current two-year Treasury note yield is subtracted from the current ten-year Treasury note yield and plotted over time. When the spread is between 0 percent and 1 percent, it is in the “recession warning zone” because it signifies that the economic cycle is reaching maturity and that a recession is likely to occur within a few years. When the spread falls into negative territory, that’s when the yield curve is inverted, which means that a recession is imminent within the next year or so. The yield curve inverted before every U.S. recession in the past half-century, which is why it is worth paying close attention to. (Read my piece about the Treasury yield spread to learn more.)

According to the 10-Year/2-Year U.S. Treasury bond spread, we are currently in the “recession warning zone,” but not the “recession zone” just yet.At the rate the yield curve is currently flattening, the yield curve may actually invert as soon as late-2018. According to my research, during the last six economic cycles that culminated in a recession, an average of 9.7 months elapsed between the time that the yield curve first inverted and the peak of the stock market. Recessions began an average of 5 months after the stock market peaked or 14.7 months after the yield curve inverted. According to this logic, if the current cycle follows the average of the past six cycles, the yield curve would invert in December 2018, the stock market would peak in September 2019, and the recession would begin in February 2020.

The CBOE Volatility Index or VIX is a popular fear gauge that is derived from the sentiment of stock option traders. The VIX is usually viewed in a contrarian manner: when fear is very high (typically over 30 to 40), it is often a good time to buy stocks. When fear is very low (usually under 20), however, it is a sign of dangerous market complacency or even euphoria that tends to occur during a bubble. The VIX often remains in complacency territory for a long time before the stock bull market or bubble ends.

SCS 2010 (EX SOPDS)

I am co-organizing a track on Self-Organization Complex Systems at the SAC 2010 Conference.

2010 ACM SYMPOSIUM ON APPLIED COMPUTING Special Track on Self-Organization in Pervasive Distributed Systems. Sierre, Switzerland, March 21–26, 2010

http://polaris.ing.unimo.it/scs2010/

SOPDS 2009

I am co-organizing a track on Self-Organization in Pervasive Distributed Systems at the SAC 2009 Conference.

2009 ACM SYMPOSIUM ON APPLIED COMPUTING Special Track on Self-Organization in Pervasive Distributed Systems. Waikiki Beach, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. March 8-12, 2009.

http://polaris.ing.unimo.it/sopds2009/

Upcoming Talks....

Perada Summer School, 7-13 September 2008 , Rimini (Italy). I will give a talk on Spatial Programming for Pervasive Computing

Bertinoro International Summer School of Natural Computation, 20-27 September 2008, Bertinoro (Italy). I will give a talk on Bio-inspired and spatial abstractions for pervasive computing

IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems, 20-24 October 2008, Venice (Italy). I will give a tutorial on Spatial Approaches to Pervasive Computing

How to run Nokia SDK S60 in Eclipse - EclipseMe

We had some difficulties running Nokia SDK S60 applications under EclipseMe. Basically, there are two ways of running Midlets in EclipseMe:

• Directly from the JAR, specifying the main class (Midlet option in EclipseMe)
• Referencing a JAD file, that links to the JAR

Both these two options seem to have bugs:

• Running from the JAR, Nokia SDK complains about a mismatch in the JAR size dimension
• Running form the JAD, NOkia SDK complains about a file not found exception for the JAD

We found a workaround for the latter (JAD) approach.

1. Create the package
2. Modify the JAD file under the 'deplyed' folder and add your midlet in the 'midlet' tab
3. Select the JAD file under the 'deployed' folder
4. Remove the 'file:/' prefix in the JAD URL
5. EclipseMe at this point blocks the run button, apply the change anyway and close.
6. Run the application from the main control panel
   

At this point the application runs without problems. The only glitch is that S60 Emulator is VERY slow. You can consider using the S40 Emulator which is much faster.

SOPDS 2008

I am co-organizing a track on Self-Organization in Pervasive Distributed Systems at the SAC 2008 Conference.

2008 ACM SYMPOSIUM ON APPLIED COMPUTING
Special Track on Self-Organization in Pervasive Distributed Systems
March 16-20, 2008.
Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil

http://polaris.ing.unimo.it/sopds2008/index.html

Geospatialweb book

The book Geospatialweb containing a chapter from our research group will be out on 17th of May. Get some information from http://www.geospatialweb.com/

Google Bombing WiMax

La fortissima attesa per il WiMax, tecnologia wireless che molto potrebbe fare per portare la banda larga in quell'Italia che la sogna da anni, potrebbe essere tradita dal modo in cui il Governo intende gestire le frequenze necessarie.
Le frequenze del WiMax saranno assegnate tramite un'asta pubblica che le consegneranno nelle mani dei soliti grandi operatori, togliendo al WiMax quelle potenzialità di pervasività che potrebbero aggredire al cuore il divide digitale italiano. Il costo delle licenze, poi, si ripercuoterebbe sui costi finali del WiMax per l'utente, esattamente come avvenuto con UMTS, tecnologia promettente che tutt'oggi, ad anni dalla sua introduzione, rimane frequentata da una piccola percentuale dell'utenza, quella che se la può permettere.