SCDC talk, etc.

Today Luke and I gave a CS lunch talk about Free Culture, and rose_garden took excellent notes on our talk, which resulted in me posting way too much on her livejournal entry about it. Why don’t you join in the discussion and post your thoughts?

I also came across some other cool things, such as Nutch, a project to build an open-source search engine. I think this is VITAL, and I’m shocked that nobody has done it before. The Open Directory Project is wonderful, but we really need an open source search engine to go with it, otherwise we are at the mercy of Google, or even worse maybe Microsoft someday (shudder). I found this while reading up on search engines on technologyreview.com, which has a fantastic article called Search Beyond Google.  This also mentioned Mooter, which tries to break down search results into categories that it refines for you as you continue searching.

Finally, I discovered the Roadmap to Online Music Fun, which is kind of cute, but unfortunately leaves out some efforts like Magnatune, which is the awesomest online music label in existence. I really intend to write up something comparing all of the online music services, but I need to do homework first…

weird movie, rocking ending

So I just saw the best ending to a movie EVER!  It was the ending to Dead or Alive, “A full-gore gangster story! Takashi Miike is the Japanese Tarantino…only much faster” -Jeffrey M. Anderson, San Francisco Examiner.  I don’t actually recommend this movie, because the rest of it was largely a waste of time, but the ending more than made up for it!  Which doesn’t mean that I’ll ever watch it again…

Read on for spoilers

My bike is missing!

If you have seen my bike, please contact me! I believe that it was stolen somewhere between 11PM and 2AM this morning from in front of McCabe Library. I was flyering for the SCDC movie tonight with Luke, and when I went back to get my bike, it was gone! Either somebody took it or I left it some other place that I don’t remember. So please, keep your eye out for a red bike with a black squishy seat, with a white LED headlight and a red LED taillight. This is the bike that was in the NY Times. The headlight has changed since that picture was taken, to a small tubular headlight, but it is otherwise exactly the same. The brand name is “Giant”, and it has a silver cord-thing for a bike lock.