Entries Tagged 'videos' ↓

This shit just got serious. Now the DOJ wants a piece of breadpig. If you’re not familiar with the breadpig band, educate yourself and return to this post – we won’t hold it against you.

A breadpig ally at Harmonix (they make our instruments) named Matt kindly brought this to our attention in early March. We would have brought this to your attention sooner, breadpig loyalists, but we needed our legal experts to analyze this before we proceeded. This ruling makes “the Court” seem rather out of touch — as if they hadn’t downloaded our debut album When Will Then Be Now? from iTunes. Maybe they’re the one who gave us a 2-star review (our only one in a parade of 5-star glory).

Here’s a blurb. Read the entire damning PDF:

It is clear to any reasonable reader that the patent term “musical sounds” has a narrower meaning than that proposed by Gibson’s expert. Electric guitars and acoustic guitars are capable of producing some variety of sounds that are distinguishable, without additional processing, to the naked human ear. Gibson’s own expert admits that this is an important feature. Gibson’s expert also states that musical sounds have identifiable qualities such as “timbre” and “pitch.” Indeed, Gibson’s expert discusses at length various characteristics that “musical sounds” might have. Freeman Depo. at 31-40.

Gibson concedes that the guitar-shaped controller does not literally produce “musical sounds.” Gibson must concede the point because, for example and without limitation, the clacking of buttons as they are struck are (1) insufficiently varied or distinct; and (2) no reasonable person could say that any musical sounds heard during standard operation of a Guitar Hero controller come from the controller itself. Cf. Cl. Const. at 11 n.11 (discussing a hypothetical stereo button). Gibson’s concession on this point, however, is in tension with Gibson’s position on the drum-shaped controller. Gibson contends that the surfaces of the drum-shaped controller produce “musical sounds” even though they create, at most, thuds little more distinct than those one could produce by tapping a pen on a table. Summ. J. Hearing Tr. at 45:9-46:16, 56:22-57:6; Freeman Depo. at 40:15-41:10. There is no principled distinction between the clacking of a button and the dull thud produced when a plastic or rubberized drum-shaped controller is struck. True, striking a table or drum-shaped controller at different locations will produce somewhat different sound waves because the vibrations will differ based on where on the controller’s surface the force originates. True also, the degree of force should have some effect on the surface’s vibrations. But the same holds for striking a button at one position on a controller’s handle versus a button at another position; and for striking the same button at different velocities.

From the foregoing, the Court concludes that musical sounds must have more articulable characteristics than a button’s clack or the thud produced from striking a table, piece of rubber, or piece of plastic. A musical instrument must be capable of making, without additional processing, some variety of distinct sounds that can be sensibly described as having some or all the characteristics Gibson’s own expert discusses in his deposition. The Court observes, but does not conclude, that musical sounds may not need to be as complex as those the ’405 Patent’s only examples—guitars—and that musical sounds may not need have every characteristic discussed by Gibson’s expert, such as “timbre” and “pitch.” There is no reasonable dispute of material fact that Guitar Hero controllers do not themselves make musical sounds within the meaning of the patent. In fact, Gibson concedes literal noninfringement on the guitar-shaped controller. Even the recordings submitted by Gibson—where a player seems to exert some effort to strike the drum-shaped controller at different velocities such that the volume will correspond to features of the music the game console plays—cannot be musical sounds within the meaning of the patent. Vosburg Exh. 4.

The hungry in Toronto are a little better off thanks to #HoHoTo. What’s most remarkable about this event isn’t just everything they raised, but how quickly they assembled it all together. Here’s the recap, but the quick & dirty facts are impressive nonetheless:

All in, we’ve raised more than $25,000 and people brought about 3,000 lbs of food for our drop off bins at the party. w00t!

Michael O’Connor Clarke helped organize this, the biggest charitable holiday party for Toronto’s geek community. He asked for a brief “hello” video from Alexis (whose full-time job is still reddit) to rally the geeks in attendance. Happy to oblige, Alexis also used the opportunity to announce breadpig’s donation of US$100 to the Daily Bread Food Bank.

It turns out that was actually CAD$100. The breadpig owes them a few loonies and toonies, but strongly supports the efforts of food banks — even when bread and pig products are included in the banked food.

They’re sold via ThinkGeek, but having LOLmagnetz on Amazon is still a thrill.

When I took that screenshot yesterday, LOLmagnetz were comfortably sitting at the number one spot. Too comfortably. Look at where that hubris has left us 24 hours later.

This is a task for the breadpig legions; put the breaded swine back in its rightful place — let’s not settle for #1 of “Refrigerator magnets.” At the time of this writing, we’re only 5,965 spots from #1 of all Kitchen & Dining.

Watch out, Elf on a Shelf. You’re going down.

Not only was the band doing studio work in NY, we also had a live gig. This time, a full camera crew from GameplayHD came out to document the rock.

Once you’ve arrived at Nikki the Knife’s page click on part II if you want to jump to the breadpig magic. He’s Gameplay HD’s “sharpest tool.”

There’s still 40minutes of our own footage that Jacob (of breadpig) videotaped, but it’s in need of some editing. Have no fear, the breadpig will have this matter resolved soon.

LOLmagnetz recently made some more appearances.

Bordom.net deigned the kit worthy of combating boredom. That’s when you know you’ve arrived, when you’re on a site that’s dropped the “e” Flickr-style for maximum Web 2.0-ness.

But the coolest appearance to date was on a Transformers forum. No word yet on whether or not it’s a favorite of Autobots or Decepticons, but my money is on the former. Or maybe these magnets are the one thing that can bring these two warring groups together at last…

Breadpig was invited to bring some LOLmagnetz and a shirt to and interview on Internet Superstar, hosted by Martin Sargent.

Both breadpig and the SF-SPCA (our partners in LOL) got some nice plugs and Martin was a gentleman and a scholar. I think we might see each other again over drinks and with candlelight.

And to top it off, LOLmagnetz got a nice shoutout on Gigababy’s Buffet. No, we at breadpig hadn’t heard of it either, but that’s OK. That sounds like a very big baby, which implies an even larger buffet — what could be wrong with that?

As you may have noticed, the breadpig was away for most of September. Soaring through Thailand and Cambodia, our winged porcine hero made some fascinating discoveries. One of which is an organization in Cambodia called FRIENDS (I’m not yelling, that’s just how they write it) that works to get street children into safe environments and teaches them skills for future careers in the process.

An easy way to support this organization (if you happen to find yourself in Phnom Penh) is simply by patronizing their restaurant, which is run by former street youths and serves tasty tapas. Once you’ve got a full belly, you may consider donating some money for a brick to be painted in your honor.

They’ll let you write just about anything — the breadpig proved that.

The children have painted what appears to be an 18 wheeler pulling a giant load of hope into a crowd of dots while three onlookers watch, mouths agape.

The breadpig band doesn’t take the stage until the very end, so you may want to just let it cache and then skip to the final 30 seconds or so. I’d say this appearance – albeit brief – is on par with the Beatles’ first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. The comments on GameTrailers.com were pretty grand, here’s a sample:

jonesy852: Wtf, Breadpig?
iLLViLLAiN: Breadpig FTMFW!!

I didn’t expect this interview, but Julia is busy launching her life-casting startup, NonSociety — I should have known everything is fair game. We’d met for coffee to catch up, but I also had to ask the new Wired cover girl about all the scorn that’s been heaped on her. Yes, she’s handling it well.

Oh, and I happen to be wearing the breadpig Dreaming of Androids shirt. Bonus exposure!

This was my first job moderating a panel and I must say, it was probably the best speaking-related thing I’ve done. Pay attention. You might learn something.

A big thanks to Respectably French for filming this and putting it online.