The joke that is "privately owned public space" gets even more jokey.
Little-Known Public Open Spaces Could Be Made PrivateWhile not widely publicized, over 12,000 square feet of public open space was constructed in the form of two sunny terraces off the fourth and sixth floors of the 31-story Intercontinental Hotel at 888 Howard Street, a condition of the development's approval and the result of a 1980s-era city policy which requires new South of Market commercial buildings to provide such privately owned public open spaces.
Next month, a proposed amendment could be adopted which would allow developers to pay an in lieu fee rather than provide any on-site public open space in their buildings.
If the amendment is passed and the Intercontinental is successful, don't be surprised if a flood of similar requests to privatize other existing public spaces in San Francisco soon surface.
In other words: when required to build public parks, developers used a loophole to build terrible, inaccessible, effectively-private balconies instead. So let's close that loophole by not requiring even that much.
I can't find any details on this supposed amendment, though. This appears to be the only source.
Tags: conspiracies, corporations, doomed, sf, sprawl
Six Weeks' Paid Leave Opposed By People With Thirty-Three Weeks' Paid Leave
The New Yorker:WASHINGTON - President Obama's proposal to give workers six weeks of paid leave is meeting strong opposition from a group of people who annually receive thirty-three weeks of paid leave.
Members of the group heard the President's proposal on Tuesday night, one of the few nights of the year when they are required to report to their workplace.
The opponents of paid leave, who show up for work a hundred and thirty-seven days per year and receive paid leave for the other two hundred and twenty-eight, were baffled by other moments in the President's speech.
For example, they were confused by Obama's challenge to try to survive on a full-time job that pays fifteen thousand dollars, since they all currently hold a part-time job that pays a hundred and seventy-four thousand dollars.
Tags: big brother, doomed
The Emularity
Last week, on the heels of the DOS emulation announcement, one of the JSMESS developers, James Baicoianu, got Windows 3.11 running in a window with Javascript. [...]That's Netscape 1.0n, released in December of 1994, running inside Windows 3.11, released in August of 1993, running inside of Google Chrome 39.0.2171.99 m, released about a week ago, on a Windows 7 PC, released in 2009.
Your turtles (who, I understand, go all the way down) will be wanting my http10proxy.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
Tags: computers, linux, mad science, nscp, retrocomputing
