Posts by wetshoes

Google's gatekeeper to collect toll for dying news orgs

google news?

Pretty much all legitimate content. Not the same as google search.

We need this to pay for journalism

"News" has 3 phases: research and writing, editing, and publish and distribute. The internet has made the last phase essentially worthless, because it is so cheap and easy to do. Most newspapers consist largely of "bought" stories from AP or UPI, ads, and a bit of locally produced proprietary content. They are mostly "aggregators", which is also pretty worthless. Magazines are mostly proprietary content plus ads. Only the proprietary content has any real value. Google is a perfect basic - cheap, unbiased - aggregator. There is room for some other aggregators that add basic editorial things like selection, placement, and headlining (Huffington Post, e.g.) . On-line aggregators can get paid from on-line ads. But not the journalists. There needs to be a much more reliable way to pay people for good writing, investigative reporting, and titillating smears. Readers need to pay authors. This seems like it provides a path.

Google Chrome OS to route print jobs around planet

Exactly

PostScript was created to be a device-independent printer language. Worked like a champ for many years. Still works great, except cheap printers don't support it. In fact, PDF files are basically just PostScript. You should be able to send a PDF to any intelligent printer and not have to worry about drivers.