Does this mean Apple is not shutting down iAd fully, but its shutting down iAd app network which allows developers to advertise their own apps through iAds?
Does it mean you can ship your apps with iAds, but you cannot advertise your app as a developer with iAds now onwards?
In the article I find these two statements, from Percival, contradicting:
"Percival talked about what the company might have done differently, and admitted that by the time he arrived in 2009, it was possibly unsaveable – not least because by that time, it was difficult to hire the most talented engineers against competition from Facebook, Google and other rising tech companies."
“There are companies that do not get social and they never will. Apple’s one of them, Google is the other: they’ve failed with Google+. When your culture is engineering-focused, you do not understand social. Social is a very emotional experience. Engineers are not so much, in a lot of cases,”
Try interpreting "most talented engineers" and "understanding social" as orthogonal categories. Success in this market required both, but they don't necessarily come together in the exact same people/companies.
In the first quote he basically says MySpace didn't have the engineers to save the company.
In the second quote he basically says engineers are not what make the social industry tick. Yes, he's talking about Apple and Google here, but he's contradicting what he said.
Regardless I'm not sure why he said the first quote in the at all. The problem they had, had nothing to do with Engineers, but had everything to do with the company culture.
The first quote is there for the benefit of people who aren't in the industry, and did not realize that Myspace wasn't hot among engineers in 2009.
You are misconceiving the second quote. That quote is the end of the article, where it has moved on from the topic of "What happened at Myspace", and is talking about the social networking industry at large. I do not interpret it as being a stab at Myspace specifically, nor about what happened there.
She can write an infinite amount of new music all day for free. People can't tell the difference between her and human composers when put to a blind test.
Emmy is not the same as Emily Howell; the Emmy Vivaldi was composed by a simpler program called EMI.
In either case, iirc, the music's composed by probabilistically combining key-signature-normalized snippets of existing compositions. EMI mostly just took the works of one composer and created a new work in that composer's style by Frankenstein-remixing snippets of the composer's actual works. Emily Howell, iirc, does the same, but uses multiple composers and/or original snippets by Dr. Cope.
btw: feed EMI Beethoven, and "she" produces Mozart. i.e., when probabilistically combining several key-signature-normalized Beethoven snippets, some of the results were identical to larger snippets of Mozart (who was, as you may have guessed, a big Beethoven fan).
also btw: Beethoven wrote algorithmic compositions for people to perform as a parlor game, with dice.
also also btw: my own drum-and-bass Ruby project from years ago will generate an infinite amount of new jungle riddims all day for free:
> btw: feed EMI Beethoven, and "she" produces Mozart. i.e., when probabilistically combining several key-signature-normalized Beethoven snippets, some of the results were identical to larger snippets of Mozart (who was, as you may have guessed, a big Beethoven fan).
I think you may mean the other way around; Mozart war 15 years older than Beethoven, and died before Beethoven's career took off.
ugh, how embarassing. you're right about the ages. I'd have to check my notes to be sure if I got the whole thing messed around, or just who was a fan of whom, but you're probably right about that part, too.
You'd be able to tell the difference between her and a human composer in a blind test when the "fugue" turns out to be a single melody wandering with no direction. I wonder who conducted these blind tests.
Presumably this music doesn't have a copyright as it's algorithmically generated and so has no human author? Similar to the case of a photograph taken by an animal (orangutan?) that made headlines a few months back.
That's like saying I can't copyright an image I made entirely within GIMP because it has no human artist. Cope's program may be more generative than a general-purpose graphics program, but the fact remains that Cope is still the creator.
>That's like saying I can't copyright an image I made entirely within GIMP because it has no human artist. //
Not if you created an algorithm that uses GIMP and runs independent of you. Copyright protects artistic works by natural persons.
Cope is the creator of the algorithm and has copyright protection of any artistic elements of that algorithm. Copyright does not protect technical effort no matter how skilled.
In the same way my camera's firmware writer, though skilled, has technical input in to all images created with that camera. But as they don't have artistic input in to any specific image they don't share the copyright - they may have made the image vastly superior with their technical ability (white-balance, focus, filters) but it was technical input and not "artistic".
I tried this today mixed with some other comments. Here are my results and where I currently stand. Any feedback would be great.
Me:
Sends preliminary project proposal based off of vague details to my referral.
Referral:
Sends me NDA and introduces me to the potential client.
Me:
"The 5 year NDA length is longer than I will agree to. Is there a reason for the excessive length? I will agree to a 1 year term." After doing this I did more research on what to do.
Potential Client:
Nice to meet you. The NDA of 5 years is very standard stuff. All of our partners do sign this agreement. Hope you can too. Thanks. I would like to discuss the estimate so that I do understand all. Thanks again. I would look forward to working with you.
Me:
"Why do you specifically need the NDA? I'm worried that it's written broadly and will restrict my creativity.
I'm going to have my lawyer take a look at it and get back to you in the next few weeks."
Me:
Sent another message after thinking a little more.
"I want my lawyer to make modifications based on the specific needs. I may require additional compensation to sign, especially a 5 year contract.
Please let me know your additional questions for the proposal. We can setup a time to talk tomorrow afternoon or I could answer the questions in more detail over email."
Potential Client:
Thanks for your feedback. We are in very preliminary stages on this. I wouldn't go any further until we have had more internal meetings and have a chance to to provide more specifics. Thanks for your time.
Oy vey. It seems like you're using many strategies at once, so I'm not sure what results I'd expect. For me, this kind of conversation needs to take place in-person, and needs to be framed as a "yes I'll do it, but..." not a "no I won't do it unless..."
I think, big picture, if you want to salvage this client (who seems to be moving on) you might wanna just get in the same room as them and start saying yes a lot. And you want to have this conversation last, after they're already super excited about the project and ready to get started.
I've tried to build in public many times, but it sucks.
1. Spend more time to make the project public.
2. Most of the time no one gives you any feedback.
3. People do give feedback, you make improvements, and they disappear. Once that happens you're back to #2.
It's painful talking to yourself, especially after iterating several times, and spending the extra time to make it public.
Does it mean you can ship your apps with iAds, but you cannot advertise your app as a developer with iAds now onwards?