Despite the myth that teachers on;y work 9 months a year bit get paid for a full year, teacher salaries, like any job's, are set based on expected work hours. Just as there really isn't such a thing as paid vacation since it is already factored into a salary theaters don't get paid while not working over the summer. Some districts even give them the choice of 12 or 9 monthly pay periods. If the school year is expanded by 25% then it is not unreasonable for teachers to be paid accordingly; it's no different than any other job all of a sudden saying they've decided to increase the work day from 8 to 10 hours but not pay you any more because they all already paying you for a full year.

The authors stated they were looking at the ability of a plant to displace CO2 emissions and using the net benefits to see which is the most cost effective. Wind and solar simply do not have the capacity factors to match hydro/nuke/gas plants and high capacity costs and thus are lees cost effective in reducing CO2. Nuclear decommissioning costs were included in their numbers. In short, solar and wind cost to much per KW to build and generate too little electricity to be cost effective in reducing CO2 emissions relative to other non-carbon energy sources.

Once they get it, all will be forgotten

My comments come from working with execs at a number of public utilities. As I pointed out, political considerations often trump "cheapest rates." Many of them do not operate plants but buy power, often subsidized federal power that can't be sold to other markets at such rates.

You missed my point in your rush to label my response. I pointed out, in response to the OP, that "cheapest amount possible" are not necessarily the goal of a public utility given their political nature; not that they can't be cheaper than private power companies. Also note that many people confuse Rural Electrification Cooperatives and their brethren as public power when in fact they are not.

Possible, but my experiences with politicians around the world its the "do what I have to to stay in power" gene tends to be dominant and the "work together for the good of the country even if it means I may lose" gene is recessive.

While that is a laudable goal the reality is government owned utilities rarely view "cheapest amount possible" as a primary goal. Rather, they become tools for politicians to use to maintain themselves in office by providing jobs, subsidies , etc to please their voters and donors. That is not to say government owned utilities cannot provide lower cost services just that cost is often secondary to politics.

whatever you do do not let the techies run the project. This isn't a technical solution but a business solution. The techies may think a fit gap tells them what they need to know to build a system but the reality is unless someone one really understands Hal the system is used and what the LOB need you will wind up with a mess. The IT folks will focus on the IT aspects and forget there is a whole organizational component that can derail them even if the system works.

I've seen to many projects where the focus is on getting the system to work and when the users finally get involves it's " we don't do things this way and that's not what we need." The project points to the fit gap and or requirements and it's "that's how x does it be we do it this way. The requirement says that you just didn't do it right." At that point senior LOB management starts complaining IT is replacing a working system with a piece of crap. The order then comes down to fix it and you are stuck.

The more you mod the ERP the more likely you will have to pay again to incorporate you mods in the next major ERP release. While developing your own solutions isn't cheap at least once they are working you will just (a big just) have to ensure your data feeds and APIs are still functioning properly.

They can go about their business. Move along...

just over half of the Air Force military officers put in charge of U.S. Air Force nuclear launch facilities

The Navy maintains a reasonably large fleet of FBMs that are not manned by the Air Force.

It is. If AdWords fail to provide a reasonable return people will stop using them and the price will drop significantly, cutting into Google's revenue. It's definitely in Google's best long term interest to stop this kind of thing.

Oh, I realize that quite well. Government employees are required to take leave as well in many such situations unless they can work from home. The contractors are actually hourly employees of a company that then contracts with the government. Since government contracts, on a T&E basis, cannot pay for time not worked no matter the reason the contractor gets no money and doesn't pay their employees (who are actually employees not contractors so despite your employer / employee assertion there is no requirement to pay them) either. Sure they may realize that but that still doesn't change there is an often forgotten human side to such events.

He's an economist. That's his job.

Actually, the data was gathered to see if the professor's view that his phone had slowed down was also shared by other iPhone users; they found an interesting correlation between search spikes and new iPhone models but were careful to say that doesn't prove anything other than people perceive a slowdown when a new phone comes out. He points out some valid reasons why the Samsung / Apple data differs, primarily that Apple releases a new version of IOS with the new iPhone and thus the new iOS may not be optimized for older hardware while many Android users remain on an older version. In addition, since the Andriod device makers don't control Android they may find it cheaper not to spend a lot of time on the OS and rather invest in hardware improvements as the differentiator.

Not really, the concept had been around a while, and pilots had been using them long before the first pair of Bose QCs hit the market. Bose, while he did a lot of research into ANR, popularized them for use outside of the cockpit. IMHO Bose are way overpriced, you can get a set of Audio Technica, or a if you prefer an open ear design, Sennheisers that cancel noise quite well for half the price of the Bose . A Sennheiser BT for about the same price but with BT. Al of them also work as regular headphones when the battery dies, unlike the Bose QCs.