Patents in F1 explainedJames Allen on F1. We’ve had a big response to the story earlier this week about the new ride height control system on the Lotus Renault using tiny cylinders on the end of the pushrods.
There were many questions from readers about whether Lotus could patent the idea. A senior F1 engineer has kindly stepped in to clear up the question of patenting F1 technical ideas for readers. His explanation is below: “The lack of patents in F1 is quite simple. It’s because if a team takes out a patent on a design, that then locks in an advantage the other teams cannot access. “By keeping a new design in the game, a team can gamble that they can do a better job on a design than another team. Meanwhile it appears that not only does the FIA consider the Lotus idea legal, but other teams including Ferrari are already working on their own version. . * An update on the Lotus ride height system: Giorgio Piola, who broke the story earlier this week has written that Mercedes are also working on a version of it. Minority rules: Scientists discover tipping point for the spread of ideas.
Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society.
The scientists, who are members of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC) at Rensselaer, used computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point where a minority belief becomes the majority opinion. The finding has implications for the study and influence of societal interactions ranging from the spread of innovations to the movement of political ideals. "When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority," said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski, the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at Rensselaer.
Conference. Ideas. Why Creativity Needs Shorter Copyright Terms. In response to a tweet of mine about shortening copyright to stimulate creativity, someone questioned the logic.
It's an important point, so it seems useful to do some thinking out loud on the subject. First, I should probably address the question of whether *longer* copyright stimulates creativity. The basic argument seems to be that longer copyright terms mean greater incentives, which means greater creativity. But does anyone seriously think about the fact that their creations will still be in copyright 69 years after their death? It won't do them any good, and probably won't do their descendants much good either, since the income at this point is generally close to zero. Indeed, speaking as an author, I know that practically all my income from writing comes within the first couple of years; after that, it's dribs and drabs. But let's look at the main part of my claim: that reducing copyright's term would encourage creativity.
For the first assertion, look at history. Spectrum: The New Economics of Semiconductor Manufacturing. The next rule states that ”every customer-supplier connection must be direct, and there must be an unambiguous yes-or-no way to send requests and receive responses.”
This rule was violated when, for example, a worker--we'll call her Jane--operated a deposition-process machine that received wafers supplied by another worker, whom we'll call Bill. That arrangement made Jane Bill's ”customer.” In a properly ordered system, he'd send her wafers when--and only when--they were needed. In practice, he sometimes had no wafers when she needed them, and at other times he encumbered her with wafers she could not use. Jane then had to throw those excess wafers onto the costly pile of inventory. The third rule states that ”the pathway for every product and service must be simple and direct.” Why does this indeterminacy matter? Implementation of these ideas is harder than it may seem; it requires a certain adjustment of thinking.
In January 2007, we set to work on this collaborative effort.