Anybody here?

Is anybody reading this blog? I was just wondering, because I didn't tell my friends about it. So they might have discovered it, but it's more probable they haven't. And I didn't see any comments posted yet.

Autistic people

I read an extraordinary article in Guardian (via slashdot.org) about one autistic person that also can explain up to some point what happens to him. I got interested in this area after a professor of mine (Yiannis Aloimonos) sugested us to read about autistic people as part of a computer vision class. It seems that we all have similar capabilities (like doing complex arithmetics mentally), but we just can't access this layer in our brains.

Comments on the interview with Bill Gates

This interview reveiled an interesting person. He realizes the importance of education, and I strongly agree with him on this issue. As important as education is the health system. And he seems very active in taking and funding initiatives in these areas.

My question is why do you have to break the law so many times (as Microsoft did) if you are, after all, a good and sensible person? One possible answer is that one may prefere to get rich, and then spend his money on noble causes. If he would have paid more taxes to the goverment for example, those money would probably have been spent less eficient. This goes down to the Machiaveli saying that "the goal excuses the means", and I don't think this is the right way to go.

So I hope Microsoft will be pressured further to play fair in the market (I guess the open standards will play a huge role for this), and eventually we will get there. Of course that would lead to a loss of revenue for Mr. Gates, but I'm not worried about him.

Bill Gates and Microsoft

I just read this interview with Bill Gates. It's very interesting, and offers some good insights about Bill's personality beyond his work in the software industry. I actually have some comments, and I hope to get them posted tomorrow.

As I also love to read, I thought of posting here the books I read. The current book is:
Ion Ratiu - Note zilnice (Daily notes) 1991. In fact it's a serie of three books that covers 1989-1992 period. Ion Ratiu was a Romanian who lived 50 years in exile at London in the communist era, became a millionaire there, and then came back to Romania after the communism fell "to serve his country" as he himself says.

I just read about a Google employee who was fired because of blogging about "company internals" (read here). Mmm, what about me telling you how my workplace is? ;)

Is this a blog?

Bill Gates said recently that he is studying the possibility of writing a blog, if he considers will be able to write at least once a month. It seems I don't write that often (the reasons are different from those of Bill I guess :)), so maybe this is not a blog. Then what is it?