Actually, one of the interesting things about the subscription model is not what you pay, it's what is paid to the copyright holders (ie, the record companies).
The information about what songs you play gets sent to Yahoo/Napster/whoever who track this information and send an appropriate check to the copyright holders for each time the song was played.
This is one of the reasons why the copyright holders like the subscription model--if I play a song ten years from now, they get some money.
So saying the the copyright holders are getting $5 per month is wrong. Yahoo is getting $5 per month. What they are paying depends on how much music their customers listen to.
As an aside, if I had a PC running Windows, I'd be really tempted to download a bunch of songs and leave the thing running 24/7 with the volume turned down just to cost Yahoo money.
There's also the question of whether the copyright holders get paid depending on how much of the song is played. If they get paid as soon as the song starts, I could just keep hitting the "Next" button and ring up quite a few charges. Let's see...there's something like 2.6 million seconds in a month times, say, one-tenth of a cent per song, that's be $2600 bucks they'd have to shell out and $5 that they brought in. Hmm...
I'll admit, I was surprised at some of the allegedly "qualified" people I've seen on interviews.
I've never done much in the way of interviews (the one person I interviewed was basically guaranteed the job anyway), but a company I used to work for had a very simple interview process.
Pretty much everybody who made it past HR got a first "interview." This was with our build engineer who sat them down at a preconfigured development machine and they were given an assignment. They were told about this in advance, they were pretty much allowed to pick the time that they came in, but they had to be done by 6:00PM when the build engineer went home. If they wanted to come in at 9:00AM, that was fine. They could bring whatever books they wanted, dress however they wanted, it didn't matter because they weren't going to be meeting with anyone.
The assignment was to create a program in straight C using a pre-built Metrowerks project which would allow the user to enter names and numbers and sort using the names and numbers. The user was given a linked-list data structure to use.
I was constantly amazed at how many people just could not do this. There was one poor guy who came in with a bunch of books and he still couldn't do it--and he spent about 8 hours on the project.
That said, here's a few suggestions, comments, and such.
First, have you considered a recruiter? I will agree that some recruiters aren't worth squat, but there are lots of good ones out there. Sometimes a good recruiter who can understand your needs can help separate the knowledgeable from the resume-padders.
Next, where are you advertising? Throwing a want-ad in the local newspaper may not get you in front of your intended audience. A posting on Dice, Monster, or some other Internet site might be a better place.
Third, consider your real needs. As the parent pointed out, I've seen lots of buzz-words in job advertisements that are not necessary for the position. For example, a company I used to work for advertised for a person with C++ experience. It wasn't necessary for the position, but it would be nice for some possible work that might be done sometime in the future. Needless to say, the candidate was less than pleased when he discovered this. Lots of companies use buzzwords to try to intimidate the posers, but the posers just add the buzzwords to their resume and send it in. Meanwhile, the qualified--and honest--people go "Oh, gee, I've never used Ruby so I guess I won't apply."
Finally, as some others have pointed out, where are you and what are you doing? If you're in Idaho, you may indeed have a problem finding lots of people with intimate knowledge of device-driver development and real-time video encoding. If you were in the Bay Area, you might have an easier time. In other words, your expectations might be unrealistic for the area where your company is. You might consider widening your search area and either relocating or allowing the employee to telecommute.
"You forget, these are government contracts. $14,000 hammers, and the whole mess."
Back when I was a kid, I remember seeing a piece on "60 Minutes" about financial irregularities with the lead contractor that built the Shuttle, Rockwell International.
Again, it was a long time ago but I remember that Rockwell was building F-16s for the Air Force on a fixed price per plane contract. Whenever there was an overrun, they would bill it to the Shuttle contract.
The other one was that various people at the contractor were "consultants" for the James Bond movie "Moonraker". This involved various trips--on the Concorde--to London. All billed to the Shuttle contract.
I'm not an expert on this stuff, but even I'm reading this and going "Come on now..."
We're talking about, say, five tons falling from five kilometers. First, I would imagine that it would fall straight down from whatever it's position is. We'll also assume it's at sea.
As to it landing on the base of the thing where the crew was working, here's a novel solution--Don't put anyone there! I think we could safely have the base of the cable a good half mile from where all the people are and still manage to control it. It's not like the launch facilities of NASA are right under the Shuttle. Heck, once it clears the tower, the Shuttle is controlled in Houston--several thousand miles away from Florida. I don't think we absolutely have to put the people controlling the thing right next to it.
As for it landing on the poor hapless ship unloading it's cargo, we institute a simple rule: No ship can approach the base until the cargo is high enough that there would be sufficient warning so that the ship could get out of the way. I don't know how much air-resistance might affect the lifting abilities, but you could probably fashion the cargo containers in such a way that you would have a "low" terminal velocity which would allow anything underneath it extra time to get out of the way.
I don't know how fast something would move up the space elevator from it's starting point on the ground--from what I've read, that's sort of a question of "how fast do you want it to go?" So if it takes 8 hours to move it to the point where they would have one hour of warning--which is deemed long enough to "drop everything and get the heck out of there"--that still gives them 16 hours to fill up the next container if they want to launch one per day (Something LiftPort would like to do).
Again, I'm not an expert on this stuff, but even I came up with those answers.
"Thinking, if only you could, will ruin this test."
Well, one of the more entertaining bits and pieces of the Patriot Act is the new powers that Law Enforcement has to ferret out terrorism and money laundering.
Slashdot Mirror
Reference here.
Now there's a show that needs to come back.
Actually, one of the interesting things about the subscription model is not what you pay, it's what is paid to the copyright holders (ie, the record companies).
The information about what songs you play gets sent to Yahoo/Napster/whoever who track this information and send an appropriate check to the copyright holders for each time the song was played.
This is one of the reasons why the copyright holders like the subscription model--if I play a song ten years from now, they get some money.
So saying the the copyright holders are getting $5 per month is wrong. Yahoo is getting $5 per month. What they are paying depends on how much music their customers listen to.
As an aside, if I had a PC running Windows, I'd be really tempted to download a bunch of songs and leave the thing running 24/7 with the volume turned down just to cost Yahoo money.
There's also the question of whether the copyright holders get paid depending on how much of the song is played. If they get paid as soon as the song starts, I could just keep hitting the "Next" button and ring up quite a few charges. Let's see...there's something like 2.6 million seconds in a month times, say, one-tenth of a cent per song, that's be $2600 bucks they'd have to shell out and $5 that they brought in. Hmm...
...and with global warming, the climate will be perfect all year 'round!
I'll admit, I was surprised at some of the allegedly "qualified" people I've seen on interviews.
I've never done much in the way of interviews (the one person I interviewed was basically guaranteed the job anyway), but a company I used to work for had a very simple interview process.
Pretty much everybody who made it past HR got a first "interview." This was with our build engineer who sat them down at a preconfigured development machine and they were given an assignment. They were told about this in advance, they were pretty much allowed to pick the time that they came in, but they had to be done by 6:00PM when the build engineer went home. If they wanted to come in at 9:00AM, that was fine. They could bring whatever books they wanted, dress however they wanted, it didn't matter because they weren't going to be meeting with anyone.
The assignment was to create a program in straight C using a pre-built Metrowerks project which would allow the user to enter names and numbers and sort using the names and numbers. The user was given a linked-list data structure to use.
I was constantly amazed at how many people just could not do this. There was one poor guy who came in with a bunch of books and he still couldn't do it--and he spent about 8 hours on the project.
That said, here's a few suggestions, comments, and such.
First, have you considered a recruiter? I will agree that some recruiters aren't worth squat, but there are lots of good ones out there. Sometimes a good recruiter who can understand your needs can help separate the knowledgeable from the resume-padders.
Next, where are you advertising? Throwing a want-ad in the local newspaper may not get you in front of your intended audience. A posting on Dice, Monster, or some other Internet site might be a better place.
Third, consider your real needs. As the parent pointed out, I've seen lots of buzz-words in job advertisements that are not necessary for the position. For example, a company I used to work for advertised for a person with C++ experience. It wasn't necessary for the position, but it would be nice for some possible work that might be done sometime in the future. Needless to say, the candidate was less than pleased when he discovered this. Lots of companies use buzzwords to try to intimidate the posers, but the posers just add the buzzwords to their resume and send it in. Meanwhile, the qualified--and honest--people go "Oh, gee, I've never used Ruby so I guess I won't apply."
Finally, as some others have pointed out, where are you and what are you doing? If you're in Idaho, you may indeed have a problem finding lots of people with intimate knowledge of device-driver development and real-time video encoding. If you were in the Bay Area, you might have an easier time. In other words, your expectations might be unrealistic for the area where your company is. You might consider widening your search area and either relocating or allowing the employee to telecommute.
"You forget, these are government contracts. $14,000 hammers, and the whole mess." Back when I was a kid, I remember seeing a piece on "60 Minutes" about financial irregularities with the lead contractor that built the Shuttle, Rockwell International. Again, it was a long time ago but I remember that Rockwell was building F-16s for the Air Force on a fixed price per plane contract. Whenever there was an overrun, they would bill it to the Shuttle contract. The other one was that various people at the contractor were "consultants" for the James Bond movie "Moonraker". This involved various trips--on the Concorde--to London. All billed to the Shuttle contract.
I'm not an expert on this stuff, but even I'm reading this and going "Come on now..."
We're talking about, say, five tons falling from five kilometers. First, I would imagine that it would fall straight down from whatever it's position is. We'll also assume it's at sea.
As to it landing on the base of the thing where the crew was working, here's a novel solution--Don't put anyone there! I think we could safely have the base of the cable a good half mile from where all the people are and still manage to control it. It's not like the launch facilities of NASA are right under the Shuttle. Heck, once it clears the tower, the Shuttle is controlled in Houston--several thousand miles away from Florida. I don't think we absolutely have to put the people controlling the thing right next to it.
As for it landing on the poor hapless ship unloading it's cargo, we institute a simple rule: No ship can approach the base until the cargo is high enough that there would be sufficient warning so that the ship could get out of the way. I don't know how much air-resistance might affect the lifting abilities, but you could probably fashion the cargo containers in such a way that you would have a "low" terminal velocity which would allow anything underneath it extra time to get out of the way.
I don't know how fast something would move up the space elevator from it's starting point on the ground--from what I've read, that's sort of a question of "how fast do you want it to go?" So if it takes 8 hours to move it to the point where they would have one hour of warning--which is deemed long enough to "drop everything and get the heck out of there"--that still gives them 16 hours to fill up the next container if they want to launch one per day (Something LiftPort would like to do).
Again, I'm not an expert on this stuff, but even I came up with those answers.
"Thinking, if only you could, will ruin this test."
Well, one of the more entertaining bits and pieces of the Patriot Act is the new powers that Law Enforcement has to ferret out terrorism and money laundering.
Because, as we know, drugs pay for terrorism.