silverpig

Virtanen. Nice

Crap. Sabres got him.

Bettman getting booed like crazy

I disagree. I think Canada does a great job of accommodating others. I've lived in Vancouver, Toronto, and now London (UK), and have spent time in NYC, Chicago, California, Texas, Paris, Dublin, and Amsterdam. Canada and the US do a pretty great job of welcoming and integrating immigrants, at least in the major cities. London does a good job too, but it doesn't seem quite as prevalent as in say, Toronto. Paris and Amsterdam are wonderful cities, but you walk around and you're a white dude amongst white dudes. I loved both places, but couldn't live in either one for long because of the lack of multiculturalism you see in Vancouver, SF, NYC, or Toronto. That said, there are plenty of pressures on immigrants to learn the language. Heck, I felt like a douche speaking english in Amsterdam where most people speak english well, or fumbling along in french in Paris. Those same pressures exist here. Don't think so? Try going to Quebec City and using only english.

I grew up in North Surrey and went to elementary school with a lot of East Indian immigrant kids. There were a lot who didn't speak english very well at all, and their parents definitely did not. The kids struggled through the first few years of school as they had a hard time socializing with the rest of us, and they didn't get any reinforcement of english at home. That was 20-25 years ago. Now, those kids are fully fluent in english, have university degrees, own Canucks and team Canada jerseys, and don't even have a hit of an accent. Their kids are going to enter school in a few years, and they'll be on the same footing as anyone else. They might not even know punjabi or hindi, other than a few stray words and phrases here and there. Heck, I'm a white dude born in Vancouver. My parents were both immigrants from Europe who didn't speak english when they came to Canada. The second generation are natives.

Before / during the great depression, the US was on the gold standard. That is, you could go to a bank with your paper money and exchange it for gold at a set price (I think it was just over $20/oz). The banks HAD to have this gold - it was their guarantee that the paper money was worth something real. In fact, that's what money actually was - a claim on a deposit of gold in a bank. This caused a lot of problems in the financial system (I won't explain them all - it would take too long and there are many better articles out there), so FDR decided to drop the gold standard. This caused the economists of the time to basically go apecrap. The assistant secretary of the treasury resigned. The recovery of the US economy started almost immediately. The fear was that you were converting the monetary system from something real (gold), to something that had no inherent value (paper). People wanted gold, prices were set in dollars backed by gold, and if things went nuts, you could always go to the bank and take out your gold. This sounds like a lot of the arguments against bitcoin right now. Prices set in dollars, BTC always being converted to dollars, what BTC needs is a set exchange rate so that it is linked to dollars. These are all the exact same arguments people were making against the dollar back in 1933. Now however, the vast majority of economists think going back to the gold standard is a stupid idea.

First, it is not completely unregulated. As you mention below, Mt Gox had to comply with standard fraud, money laundering, and theft laws. In fact, Mt Gox registered as an exchange to comply with these laws. So no, it isn't completely unregulated. Yes, what is your point? They have alerts on all sorts of topics, from ETFs and mutual funds, to stocks and bonds, to text message based pump and dump schemes on penny stocks. Right. And what's wrong with that? Operating an exchange isn't illegal. Forex is the largest market in the world, by far. If you lost money in a Japanese penny stock... If you're trying to say your BTC weren't covered by CDIC or FDIC insurance, that's because Mt Gox wasn't a chartered bank. It was an exchange. If your investment in Zimbabwean dollars goes tits up, you can try complaining to the Zimbabwean government, but that's about as far as you'll get. Okay, you should read more about how bitcoin works. New coins are being created all the time. This is what "mining" is. There is a rate at which they are being created, and there is a maximum number that there will ever be: 21 million. That said, they are divisible up to 8 (I think) decimal points, so you can have tiny fractions of a dollar if you want. As demand grows, people will talk about millionths of a bitcoin instead of tenths of a bitcoin. Of course, this is a property of bitcoins specifically - other crypto-currencies don't necessarily have this upper limit built in. Also, the reason there isn't much volume in BTC has nothing to do with the number of BTC there are. You could trade $1T in BTC tomorrow if you wanted. You'd of course be disrupting the market significantly, would need $1T to buy the BTC, and would be setting the price of BTC worldwide, but you could do it. Let me give you a real world example. Back when the rain storms hit Vancouver and caused all that "turbidity" in the reservoirs, people were looking to buy mass quantities of bottled water. You could go to Safeway and get a 4L jug of water for $3, but once those ran out, you'd be buying Evian for $5/L. Once that ran out, I witnessed a guy come in to a Starbucks and buy 2 flats of their water - I think he got 8L of water for $120. The price of water in Vancouver varied from free (in some places) to 75c/L to $15/L. This is because the spike in demand for bottled water was larger than the standard base demand. The way a market works is can submit buy and sell orders of a security, and the exchange will post those buy and sell orders and attempt to match them. Let's say a stock is trading at $10. Let's say there are 3 people willing to buy the stock, and they submit buy orders for 10 shares each at $9.90, $9.80, and $9.70. Let's also say there are 5 people willing to sell the stock, 10 shares each, at $10.10, $10.20, $10.30, $10.70, and $15.00. To say "a stock is trading at $10" is to mean that the last trade that closed happened at a price of $10. There are unfilled orders at other prices because they haven't been matched yet. Volatility is a measure of how much the price of the last trade fluctuates. So let's say the next orders that are posted are: BUY 10 $10.20 BUY 10 $10.10 SELL 10 $10.00 BUY 50 $ANY The first order will clear at $10.10 for 10 shares. The second order won't clear. The third order won't clear, and the 4th order will clear, buying 10 shares at $10.00, 10 at $10.20, 10 at $10.30, 10 at $10.70, and 10 at $15.00. The stock will then be trading at $15.00. This happened because a big investor came in with a large order that was able to clear all of the existing sell orders. Now, for a stock with high trading volume, there will be hundreds or thousands of shares sitting in buy/sell orders just pennies or nickels off of the last traded price. Buying $100k of a well traded stock will clear a bunch of sell orders, but won't make a dent in the overall queue of orders. Dropping a few billion will (hence why we see huge price movements during takeover offers). Now, how does this matter with BTC? Well, it doesn't matter how many BTC there are, what matters is how many buy/sell orders are in the queue, what their sizes are, and how big the new orders are in relation to the value of the queue. There could be trillions of BTC and this wouldn't change. Buffett is famous for only in "investing in what he knows and understands" - things like railways. There are a ton of things he doesn't understand, and he fully admits it. That doesn't mean they aren't good investments (i.e., tech stocks). As for Roubini, well, the experts of the day back in FDR's time thought it was economic suicide to decouple the USD from gold. They were wrong. But again, this is all beside the point. We are talking about whether or not Mt Gox's implosion means that BTC isn't viable. It doesn't. Whether BTC (or some other crypto-currency) becomes widespread is independent of what happened at Mt Gox. Roubini is also just flat wrong about it being a Ponzi scheme. It just isn't, and calling it so doesn't make it so. Also, just for added thought: NY state just today started accepting applications for licenses for BTC exchanges. I think the procedure is you apply, and in the fall they will grant you a license and tell you what rules you have to play by.

Before we continue, please tell us what you think Mt God did that was: 1. Wrong AND 2.Could have been prevented by regulation AND 3. Is inherent to bitcoin Just so we are on the same page here

That's fair. It doesn't really matter.

No, it doesn't have anything to do with the currency itself. There are regulations to stop Mt Gox from doing what it did. Anything can be used as an investment. The largest trading market in the world is the forex market. This is nothing but currency trading, and it dwarfs all stock markets combined. No one who knows anything about how bitcoin works is calling it a ponzi scheme. The value of bitcoin isn't in making you rich later if you buy in now. It's that it actually has utility as a real currency. The market for bitcoin is volatile not because of "the players" (whoever those are), but because volume is still low. When trading volume is low, and big news comes out (such as China banning BTC exchanges, then re-allowing them), removing or adding significant demand to the market, you see huge price swings because it makes up a significant portion of trading volume. Go buy $1B in bitcoins. You'll see the price spike from $600/BTC to oh... $6000/BTC (estimating there). Now go buy $1B in USD. You might bump the value of the USD a few fractions of a penny, but that's it. BTC can be a good investment if you are able to handle the volatility. In fact, if you want to make money, the easiest way to do it is in a security that is predictably highly volatile. But that's not what I've been saying. BTC as a currency has its merits. Mt Gox failing as an exchange is completely independent of whether or not BTC is a viable currency.

Again, nothing to do with the currency itself. This is the same as saying you don't want to deal with dollars because of ponzi schemes, drug lords, retirement scams against the elderly...

It said they put money away every week. They didn't put $35 away a week, every week.

Uh, just because you can divide and get $35/wk doesn't actually mean they put away the same amount every week and ignored inflation.

The Brazilian Real lost 32% of its value to the USD over 1 month in September 2008. It recovered, then lost that value again. Most companies already don't accept bitcoins. Try buying something at Walmart with bitcoins. You can't do it. Bitcoins started off with NO merchant acceptance and it has only grown. No one cares if Walmart says they won't accept them, because they never have. There are however other merchants which do accept them, and the list of accepting merchants grows every day. What's more, bitcoins are most valuable for peer-to-peer transactions because the fees are so incredibly low. In-country P2P and international remittances are huge markets that standard currencies don't serve well. Mt Gox was an exchange. An exchange is different than the currency. When a US bank goes under, you don't question the value of the USD, you question the ability of the managers of that bank to run a business. Mt Gox was a very poorly run exchange. In fact, it was a video game trading site for Magic: The Gathering. That's how it got it's name. Magic The Gathering Online eXchange. Then someone bought it and handed it over to someone who had no idea how to run an exchange and it went under. And your point about losing 4-6% of all bitcoins is completely opposite of what it will do to the value. Because there are a limited number of them, removing some bitcoins from circulation only makes the remaining bitcoins MORE valuable. They can't just create more of them. I'd suggest you read a bit more about bitcoins, currencies, exchanges, and economics before acting like everyone in this thread who doesn't agree with you is an idiot.

How many US banks failed in 2009? How much $ value was destroyed with the markets crashed? Did the USD die? http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/28/whats-not-being-said-about-bitcoin/

You said they could only be hired if there was a shortage (false) and your backup document didn't even support that. Pretty much everything you have posted on the subject has been in error and everything I have posted has been from direct experience or backed up by the exact language from the CBAs themselves. You have now resorted to deflecting to "how many?" and "where is your proof?" arguments which weren't what I was addressing.

That is not at ALL what that link says. First this is a document which only covers advice for those districts that are experiencing TOC shortages, and gives them advice on several actions they can take to fill the gap. This is not a policy document on whether or not you can hire retired TOCs, and nothing in here prevents retired teachers from being hired. Second, that note you mention addresses retired teachers not being able to post to continuing contracts. Continuing contracts are ones which are expected to last longer than 1 year. See Article C 20 in the CBA I posted. This section also covers "temporary" positions, which are longer than 3 months, and your link says retired TOCs may have some limits placed on their access to temporary contracts (not that they are banned). Third, 28% of TOC positions being more than 4 days will indeed be skewed by long term leaves, but they will be skewed DOWN. This is the number of POSITIONS, not the number of days paid. If you are looking at days paid, it would probably be >50% are in long term positions. So, to sum up, your own link shows that retired TOCs are only banned from assignments longer than 1 year (i.e., can't get re-hired while on pension), may have some limits placed on their access to assignments longer than 3 months (but aren't banned from them), and actually suggests districts look to actively re-hire retired teachers as TOCs in some circumstances. Nowhere does it say that retired teachers can't be hired at all, and that wasn't the purpose of the document.

No it isn't. I even linked to the collective agreement there that you can read yourself, and have the direct experience of my wife who was a TOC in the VSB for a few years recently as well. She got scale after 4 days, regardless of whether it was a single assignment or several assignments in a row (exactly the language I quoted from the collective agreement). I don't know how you can argue I'm wrong when you have the CBA to read right in front of you and a specific real example countering your point. And yes, this is a problem. In some districts schools are allowed to call in a certain teacher, and in these districts they often do request younger teachers to save money. Other districts' CBAs forbid the practice of calling in a specific teacher and the TOC assignments go via the standard roll call procedure.

Wrong. I just asked my wife (was a teacher in BC for 3 years, including as a TOC, and fairly recently too), and she said so long as you work 4 days, you get paid to scale regardless of whether it was 4x1 day jobs, or 1x4 day job. An "assignment" is defined as an assignment with a school district, not just with a school. And this is definitely true in Vancouver. It USED to be that all 4 days had to be for the same school, but they changed that so 4x1 counts. Other districts may be a little different in that the assignment is continuous only if it is at the same school, but Vancouver at least is this way. My guess is that other greater Vancouver area districts are similar because they have to compete for the same TOC pool. Also, according to the BCTF, 28% of all TOC assignments are 4 days or longer, and yes, they tell you when they call you. Guess who will get those... So 28% of all assignments are paid to scale for being >4 days, PLUS all of the shorter "assignments" that you can daisy chain together in the districts that count that way = retired teachers can be paid to scale for 100% of their TOC days if they want and it isn't hard to do so. Oh, and proof: That is from the Vancouver school board's collective agreement. I also checked Surrey's (so the two biggest school districts in the province) and it is the same. http://www.vsb.bc.ca...006 to 2011.pdf

TOCs don't make a flat rate and seniority does matter. If working < 4 days, then yes, it is a flat rate. However, if you work 4 or more days in a row, your rate is retroactively set to your full-time salary, with seniority factored in. The TOC level is set so that most TOCs can work at least 80% over the course of the year on average, so there is enough work that retired teachers can make their full salary. What's more, they call senior TOCs first, and you can turn down jobs if you don't want them. So, if a retired teacher turned TOC gets a call for a 1-day sick leave, they can take a pass on it. They'll take the longer assignments if they can, just to ensure they get their full rate, and if it turns out they are only needed for 2 days, they are first in line for the call on the third day. So no, it isn't a flat rate, and yes, seniority matters, and yes, retired teachers cost the system more.

The retired TOCs is a big problem. A lot of new teachers don't get the hours they need because of double dipping retirees.

She is trying to. She is considering a master's in education policy or assessment strategies. Right now we are in the UK so she can see how education is done here (it's worse). Might go live in the US next for a bit depending on how things go with my work. We're still fairly young, so she has some time to build up some expertise, but yeah, this is something she'd love to do eventually.

I'm not a fan of the NDP, but I'm not a fan of the Liberals either. My wife was a teacher in BC (and hopes to be one again) and this annoys the crap out of us.

The people who work transit police are actual police, not rent-a-cops. Most of them are former RCMP or VPD. The problem with the force is they were originally given full police status (and thus hired appropriate people), but then translink brass decided to cut their balls off and not allow them to do what they were hired to do. So that's why they seem ineffective. It's not the officers' fault.

It's volatile because there isn't a lot of volume right now. If you have 500 x 1 BTC buy orders from $900-1000/BTC and someone comes along and wants to sell off 525 BTC, it'll drop the price from 1000 to 900 in an instant. You can't do that with something like IBM stock because there is just so much more volume. BTC are divisible to something like 8 or 9 decimal places. You'll pay 0.0052 BTC for your coffee.