Google Loses Right to Use “Gmail” Name

My friend Frank just showed me this over at slashdot. Apparently Google has lost the right to use the name “Gmail” for their e-mail service.

Daniel Giersch, a German-born 32-year old entrepreneur, has just announced that his company received a positive ruling last week from the Harmonization Office supporting his claim that “Gmail” and his own “G-mail” are confusingly similar. G-mail is a German service that provides a “gmail.de” email address, but also allows for a sort of “hybrid mail” system in which documents can be sent electronically, printed out by the company, and delivered in paper format to local addresses.” It looks like “Google Mail” from here on out, at least in the Old Country.

I guess this means they will have to change the name. This is probably going to cause alot of confusion and possibly some backlash. I have a Gmail account and I guess the domain (the ‘@gmail.com’ part) will be automatically changed. I’m not quite sure how this will work for people who are subscribed to mailing lists, this is where I see the most frustration arising. It will obviously be a pain to let everyone know that your email address has slightly changed. Should be interesting to see how Google handles this.

I’m forseeing a buyout. Google has enough money to buy out a small country, I think they’ll be able to handle one German guy.

The Number 23

I don’t know if everyone has heard of this movie, but it looks really cool. I’m into conspiracy theories and all that stuff. I’ll even give those “Loose Change” 9/11 conspiracy movies the time of day, even though I do not believe them one bit.

The Number 23 stars Jim Carrey. He begins to read this book called “The Number 23″ and starts recognizing all these connections in his life to that number. From the looks of the trailer, not everything he encounters regarding 23 is a good thing.

Check out the trailer here:

Windows Vista Released!

I don’t know why I put that exclamation point in there, because I’m not all that excited about this release, since I’ve been using an Apple for about a year now, but, I am looking forward to see how this version of Windows does. There are alot of “new” features in this version and it will be interesting to see how they play out. I say “new”, because they are only new to Windows users, OS X users have had these things available to them since the release of Tiger.

Visually, Vista is appealing. The glass interface and the black taskbar seems to go nicely together (although, I still do prefer OS X’s interface). For Windows, this is a big improvement to prior user interfaces.

Although Vista looks prettier, I’m still wondering if Microsoft was able to truly fix many of the problems that arose with previous versions of Windows. Security flaws are always a big issue with Windows, primarily because that is which OS hackers target most, but nonetheless, these issues needed to be addressed. I’m also wondering if they did anything to fix how windows handles memory. On a Mac, you can leave your machine running for days without ever even needing to restart because OS X handles processes and allocation very well. On a Windows machine, if you’ve been running for twelve hours without needing a restart, I’d say that’s pretty good.

I really am hoping Microsoft got alot of things right this time around. I truly like Bill Gates (even though he’s pulled some shady moves in the past) and know he has high hopes and intentions for Windows. Over the next few weeks I’ll keep you guys updated on my impressions.

Unreal Tournament III Heads to XBOX 360

That’s right, it’s no longer PC/PS3 exclusive so if you are a 360 owner this is good news for you. I love the Unreal Tournament series and their new engine is amazing so I’m glad we will get to see this game on the 360, since that is what I own.

I know that UT2007 is supposed to be released this year as well, but I guess UT3 is the console equivalent to that. This is being developed by the same people who made Gears of War, so not only are they a talented bunch, but they also have some extensive experience with the Unreal engine. The screenshots and videos that are available are pretty impressive. I also heard that the single player campaign will be more in-depth and have an actual story. If you have played any of the Unreal Tournaments before, you know that the only single player mode available is deathmatch against bots.

TeamXbox.com has some nice high definition footage of the game, so if you are interested, head over and check out the videos.

Duke Nukem Forever Screenshot Spotted

Someone stumbled across a screenshot on 3D Realms’ website that has been confirmed as an in-game shot from Duke Nukem Forever.

I played the original Duke Nukem’s and don’t know exactly what the big fuss about this is. The game has been in “production” for about ten years now so no one but the people over at 3D Realms know what is happening with it.

The President of 3D Realms had this to say about it:

I guess I’ll reconfirm what I said last night. That’s an in game, real-time shot of Duke standing in a random hallway. It was really done as a small teaser for a job ad on Gamasutra.com. Nothing more.

Adriano Knock Out & Soccer Fights

I stumbled across this video on YouTube the other day when I was looking for clips of Adriano. I was looking for highlight clips but I found a compilation video of soccer fights that starts off with him rocking some skinny dude’s jaw.

Adriano is a beast of a man. He’s about six feet tall and around 180 lbs. which is a pretty good size, and he’s no push-over. You’ll see in the video that his opponent threw the first punch (more like a slap), Adriano then looks at him with a “What the fuck do you think you are doing?” look on his face, and drills him.

Grindhouse

Grindhouse is a film that both Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriquez have been working on since the Spring of 2006. It consists of two segments, Death Proof, a slasher film written and directed by Tarantino, and Planet Terror, a zombie film, written and directed by Rodriguez.

Both segments are two completely different films that will be seperated by trailers for fake movies. It sounds like an interesting idea. I’m not sure if anything like this has ever been done so it will be cool to see how it turns out. Both directors have great styles and alot of talent so I’m expecting these to turn out pretty good. I’m not a huge fan of either genre but I think they may be able to do it right. I mean, I wasn’t a fan of middle aged white women ninja assassins until I saw Kill Bill, so I will give it a shot. Tarantino should be a pretty recognizable name for most people but if you haven’t heard of Rodriguez, he directed Sin City. If you haven’t seen that, do yourself a favor and go see it.

If you want to learn more you can check out the Grindhouse site.

American Idol Season 6: ATTACK OF THE INBREDS

I could never really get into American Idol because I’m not into pop music. I also can’t see myself respecting an artist who is hand picked by just singing songs that are handed to them. Don’t get me wrong, I respect people who have good voices, but there is something that sets apart singers from great artists. Great artists write their own music, maybe even play an instrument, and to top it off, they can sing as well. American Idol is what it is, a reality show, and to me, once the season is over, it shouldn’t go anywhere after that. The person who is declared winner may have a great voice, but the way they got their contract has to be the most absolutely generic path they could have chosen.

Anyway, although I do not follow American Idol, I watch the first three or four episodes religiously. I love seeing these clearly delusional sociopaths embarass themselves on television every Wednesday night. Sometimes I question if it is an act or not because some of these people are clearly terrible and have no place even auditioning. I know I have a horrible voice, therefore I would never pitch a tent on the streets of Manhattan, piss in a bucket for a week, and eat thirty half cooked hot pockets, for Simon Cowell to tell me that I should go home and put the barrel of a gun in my mouth. Honestly, that guy is a fucking prick, but the shit that comes out of his mouth is hilarious. He could do stand up by just ripping on the audience for an hour and I would watch every second of it.

So far, the first few episodes of this season have been hilarious. I don’t know where some of these people crawl out from or what parts of the back woods of West Virginia Fox finds them in. The producers are getting really crafty with the shitty auditions this season too which makes it that much more comical. They are putting dramatic music behind the contestants little pleas after they are brutally shot down to make it seem like a soap opera. The judges this season have just gotten so fed up with some of these people for wasting their time, they just don’t give a fuck what they say to them. I’ve never seen Paula Abdul so cold.

If you haven’t seen any of the auditions you can check them out here:

Windows Vista and Gaming

Peter Moore, corporate vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business of Microsoft, issused a letter in which he talks about the future of gaming on Windows Vista, which is scheduled to release on January 30th.

Moore says that with Vista, gaming on a PC will be extremely easy, which I don’t quite get. I guess the graphics will be much better, but that’s pretty obvious, since to run Vista I believe you need a 256mb video card minimum. Moore also talked about LIVE and how they will intergrate it into the PC gaming environment as well. I don’t know if he means that XBOX 360 and PC gamers will face off against each other, but I’m guessing that’s not where he was going with that comment.

As for the rest of the letter, he just goes on about how easy it will be to organize your games and see all of your accomplishments in one place. Nothing seems too impressive here, but I guess if you love “Gamer Cards” and you don’t have XBOX Live yet, you’ll have it soon enough…if your computer can handle Vista.

If you are interested in reading the rest of the article, you can read it over at TeamXbox.com

Colts and Bears; Belichick is a Dick

I left my house for Delaware last night at about 7:30 PM, knowing that the Saints had already lost to the Bears. I was disappointed that the Saints didn’t make it to the Superbowl this year, but the Bears are a good, deserving team, and Chicago has waited a while for this opportunity. I also left knowing that the Colts were down to the demon spawn Patriots at the end of the first quarter. It seemed that they were getting worked over quite early and the Patriots were on their way to another Superbowl appearance, which being from New York, of course I didn’t want.

At about 9:30 I got a call telling me that the Colts had come back and taken the game from the Patriots in the final minutes of the fourth quarter.

Since I didn’t see the game, I won’t go into much detail about it, but I have to say I am very happy for Peyton Manning. He’s obviously one of the best and classiest quarterbacks to ever play the game and he deserves this more than anyone else in the NFL right now, in my humble opinion.

I hate the New England Patriots and Bill Belichick, so it was even better to see the Colts beat them, than if it had been another team. My hate towards New England stems from the same innate feelings all New Yorkers are born with, which is our natural hate for Boston and their teams. Belichick started out with a clean slate in my book until he pulled his little stunt with the Jets. I think he was head coach for them for about a day, and then left for New England, probably for more money. Even so, that’s something most people, like myself, would be able to get over, but Belichick didn’t stop there.

Not only was Belichick classless then, but he’s classless now. Look at how this retard dresses:

You’re an NFL coach, not a homeless drunken bum. Put on a sweatshirt that fits and doesn’t look like you found it in a dumpster. You have enough money to wear a different Armani suit to every game of the season. I’m not saying that he should do that, but at least take a shower and put on a clean shirt. Cutting off your sleeves is not badass and it doesn’t look cool, Cindy Lauper.

I’ve been a Jets fan since I can remember and the way Belichick handled Mangini leaving him for the Jets really pissed me off. He barely even touched Mangini’s hand after the first time the Jets and Pats met this season and it was made public knowledge that Belichick was unhappy that Mangini left New England. If you expect ssomeone to turn down a head coaching job in the NFL, you’re an idiot. You might not want the guy to leave, being in the same conference and all, but get over it and wish him luck. Belichick is a classless prick and nothing made me happier than seeing a talented and deserving player like Peyton Manning and the Colts take away his chance at getting another superbowl this year.

I hope the Colts pull through and win this one for Manning, but even if they don’t, Urlacher is a monster, and the Bears are just as deserving as Indianappolis.