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Patents in F1 explainedJames Allen on F1 – The official James Allen website 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. “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.
ScienceDaily (July 25, 2011) — 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.
Minority rules: Scientists discover tipping point for the spread of ideas
entrepreneurship
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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.
