ItsTheEndOfTheWorld<dot>AsWeKnowIt: Thursday was a day some believe is the beginning of explosive growth for the Internet, while others saw it as the beginning of the end. According to the LA Times, yesterday marked the day when the United States Government relinquished periodic reviews of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a relationship that had nominally tied the organization to an authority outside of itself. But no longer. Wingnut commentators believe the move opens the door for China or Iran to wrest control of the internets, but in actuality ICANN is only responsible for issuing domain names and has no ability to censor content (which can be accomplished by these countries through other means). Reasonable critics point to dangers associated with trademark protection, as it is assumed that ICANN will now open up registration choices beyond .com and its current cousins. This future would force Pepsi Corporation, for example, to either buy pepsi.beverage, pepsi.deliciousbeverage, pepsi.thirsty, and a thousand other variations, or risk damage to its brand at the hands of squatters. Yet boosters of ICANN independence believe it will also open the door to domain names utilizing different alphabets – such as Chinese or Arabic – which will in turn further open the web to non-English speakers. From our perspective, any move that strikes a blow to squatters who ransom every possible combination of words (RockyRadar) to those who would do something useful with a domain is a good day.
What’s a $20K difference: A common theme of stump speeches from leaders and lawmakers across the country is a focus not only on job creation, but quality job creation in innovative industries that lead to high paying jobs such as bioscience and clean energy. While few would argue that a thriving biotech industry will provide better for workers livelihoods than say a thriving fast food industry, there is some dispute as to how much better. A fact commonly cited by Governor Ritter and others around Colorado is that those employed in Colorado’s bioscience earn on average $67,320, 54% more than the average private sector wage in the state. Apparently a move to Washington state could significantly boost earnings for these workers where the average figure cited for bioscience workers’ salaries has been $81,499. A new study discussed in this article on Xconomy calls into question Washington’s big payday and suggests that bioscience jobs in the average for the Pacific Northwest actually may hover closer to the $60,000 mark. Two key differences in the new study’s findings compared to the study that generated the original figure for Washington are the use of median rather than mean salary and a methodology that probed the salaries for job openings rather existing jobs. The use of median seems logical in that it removes any bias that could be created via a few off-the-chart executive salaries. The focus on job openings could bias numbers downwards given that higher salaries often stem from experience – but it could actually make the number more relevant when discussing new job creation.
