squaretorus: petty bickery music industry legal issue
Well, yes, quite so.
However, in the case of the BBC TV it is not only large music industry labels that have got to re-licence their background music, but also a huge squadron of independent one-man-band music composer contractors.
Much of BBC TV background music, particularly for documentaries and historical drama, is specifically composed and performed for the task by private contractors.
So getting a blanket agreement may be rather difficult, since the independent contractors don't speak with one voice. The BBC can't force a private composer contractor to join a union or an industry body.
Actually, on second thoughts, what with the BBC being a government-run institution, maybe the BBC should back some kind of government-enforced copyright agreement for all of these composers. It is, after all, a bloody stupid law, so why not change it? I can't imagine that'd be popular with any future composers they might wish to hire, mind you.
Just to add to the background info, Channel 5 is owned by Radio Luxembourg (RTL) who have been broadcasting to the UK since 1933; they were the first company to provide English-language commercial radio listenable in the UK, the famous "Radio Luxembourg 208" which ran on mediumwave from 1933 until 1992, including a stint in WWII when the station was taken over against their will by Nazis. RTL also own several German, Dutch and French TV and radio stations.
Apparently the biggest problem for the BBC is figuring out how to deal with the copyright problems of background music. Almost all BBC TV programmes have background music, and almost all of that music has been licenced for TV use only, not for download over the Internet.
Until that problem is resolved, there are very few programmes that can be released via the BBC Creative Archive.
You wouldn't believe the number of Americans who get confused when I say I'm from the English/Welsh border. Many of them seem to believe that the entire island of Great Britain is just England, and that Scotland and Ireland share a land border... and most of them haven't even heard of Wales (which, coming from Shropshire, is rather annoying seeing as the whole used-to-be-part-of-Wales and the-only-bit-of-England-that-speaks-Welsh thing forms a major part of our heritage).
As if anyone could take orders from Prince Charles! (Coffee on monitor moment, there!)
Traditionally in the UK, the King/Queen rules England and more recently also Scotland, and then their eldest son who is due to become the next King gets to rule Wales, hence Prince Charles is currently the Prince of Wales. Northern Ireland is just somewhere we nicked off someone else, so like Canada or Australia it doesn't have it's own King/Queen.
jgbishop: every time I go to my bank's ATM, I have to indicate whether I want to do business in English or Spanish. Shouldn't that information be on the card?
In Europe it is quite common for the ATMs to automatically work out what language you speak, and automatically present you with an interface in that language.
This works solely by the ATM recognising which bank your card is from. For instance, mine is Barclays, which the ATM knows is a UK bank, so many ATMs in France present me with an English interface by default. I would strongly expect all European ATMs with this ability to present all US cardholders with an English language by default (Spanish-speaking US citizens aren't common tourists).
However this breaks when your country speaks more than one language. I'd expect all ATMs to be very confused about which language a Swiss cardholder prefers; Switzerland has German, French and regional languages as official languages. Belgians probably get a choice of Dutch or French too.
There are also regional variations. For example, when using my Barclays ATM card in Wales [1], I sometimes get the option for the interface in Welsh or English, because Barclays customers in Wales might prefer Welsh over English (for instance, my uncle prefers Welsh for conversing about money and family, but English for talking about science and technology).
So it can be done, but they don't dial back to HQ for your individual preference- the ATMs generally only recognise the default language of your bank. If your bank speaks both Spanish and English, then most ATMs aren't going to know any better.
[1] Wales and England are Kingdoms [2] of the United Kingdom in the same way that California and Texas are States of the United States. The UK isn't just England, any more than the US is just California.
[2] Actually, Wales is a Principality (ruled by a Prince/Princess, not a King/Queen), not a Kingdom, but you get the idea.
The UK scheme appears to be based around emailing users about security problems.
Because obviously, if you receive an email giving you security advice, its guaranteed to be up-to-date, accurate, authoratative and with excellent step-by-step instructions on how to +++ATH0 NO CARRIER
I'll have you know that the British climate has improved dramatically since Americans started driving 10-mile-a-gallon SUVs.
It hits 100F pretty much every year nowadays.
Global warming may be turning Africa, Asia and the Mediterranean into arrid deserts, but... actually, now I come to think of it, some silver linings don't have a cloud!
(Disclaimer: I'm British and drive a 4x4... albeit only a 1.3 litre, and I live next to a farm)
On behalf of what I expect is most of the British nation: Sorry, everybody.
These kinds of daft stories are very popular in the UK. For some reason our nation suffers from a higher than acceptable proportion of stuck-up do-gooders who not only like to stick their noses into other peoples' business, but also like to form official-sounding organisations with committies, minutes, annual general meetings, ties, tie-pins, members-only bars and more pomp and circumstance than the last night of the Proms. I'd like to think it is related to the World War II home guard and air-raid warden mentality, where civillians were treated as little more than valuable cattle, but our long island history of Gentlemens' Clubs indicates that this is something more long term, inherrent to our core psyche.
The UK is not going to mandate that cameraphones have flashes. No way, no how, it ain't gonna happen. This is a headline-grabbing press release from a bunch of publicity-hungry nobodies. The UK has one of the highest penetrations of cameraphones, digital cellphones and general personal gadgetry in the world, not to mention our fascination with closed-circuit television monitoring (rendered pointless in a society that also invented the balaclava and tolerates the yashmack, on an island with weather so inclement that face-covering scarves and hooded clothing are a Jolly Good Idea at any time of year), so there is simply no chance of any Brit taking this suggestion seriously. It's simply bollocks journalism, press releases thoughtlessly regurgitated as sensationalist news, from the same newspaper school of dumbness that brought you the Hitler Diaries.
Seriously, though... you guys don't have digital flash-memory video cameras on your cellphones? WTF? Digital still cameras have been standard on cellphones for the last two years, video and flash memory last year. I don't want to start a "diss the yanks" thread, I realise there are plenty of things y'all do better, but... you chaps need to have some serious words with your cellular providers, you're not getting good handset upgrades.
My phone has digital video camera and an MMC card offering up to 1GB of storage. The phone came free with 100 minutes of calls on a monthly £25 (US$50) contract, albeit only with a 32mb MMC card, then I purchased a larger MMC seperately for thirty quid.
My missus got one too, free with contract again, here's footage she shot of squirrels in the churchyard.
I didn't even need to change contracts. I just rang them up and said I'd quit my contract after a year unless they upgraded my handset to a video model. It was delivered next day.
failed to get the rights to use the Daleks (how he got them the first time is a mystery)
He didn't get them first time, which pissed off Terry Nation's estate no end, hence why the new negotiations took so long. Sure, they're control freaks, but they've learned that if they don't take control, they end up with shoddy parodies, and it's a short walk from there to panto.
The BBC has broken the strike over terms and conditions for the Daleks. Apparently the Cybermen began crossing the picket lines in unmarked coaches, while the Daleks pelted them with rotten fruit, shouting "SCABS... WE... KNOW... WHERE... YOU... LIVE".
As part of the deal, thirty-seven gravel pits will close.
An Equity union representative, speaking of behalf of the Daleks, said "This is a sad time for the Daleks, but at the end of the day, they have bills to pay, and the electricity for the genetic embryo chambers doesn't come cheap."
The strike-busting Cybermen are understood to have had their contracts terminated early in favour of the new hovering Dalek Battletank design, previously only seen in paperback. The Cyberman leader said "THE DALEKS MAY HAVE WON THIS BATTLE BUT OUR EMPIRE WILL CONTINUE TO EXPAND."
Meanwhile a dispute is believed to have broken out inside the Dalek camp, with the Supreme Dalek unhappy at the terms negotiated by Davros. In a news conference earlier, Davros said "This marks the next generation of the Kaled race. We have evolved beyond rails, beyond wheels, beyond low-budget bluescreen CGI hovering awkwardly up stairs. Although I'm sorry to see Ace go, she was rather fit, wasn't she, and she still looks hot in those childrens' programmes she presents."
The Supreme Dalek was unavailable for comment, although he was earlier overheard saying "I... HOPE... DAVROS... LIKES... HOSPITAL... FOOD."
It simply isn't a case of whether they're likely to "deal" with it, it's a case of whether they're going to run away.
History HAS shown, time and time again, repeated recently in Iraq, that conscripts desert under fire in larger percentages than volunteers/professionals.
Training doesn't come in to it. Dedication does.
No amount of training is going to answer the question: "Am I prepared to die for this cause?"
A volunteer has already asked him/herself this question before entering the battlefield. A conscript doesn't really have to consider this until he/she is under attack.
CrimsonAvenger: It has been the preferred method for Europeans for centuries
I am European (the word "arsed" should have given that away:-). We, the United Kingdom, packed in conscription in the 1960s for exactly the reasons I stated: conscripts do a half-arsed job and flee under fire. France did the same for similar reasons, ending conscription in the 1990s.
(As for the shining example, Israel, suggested by another poster, I suspect that if their opponents were actually allowed to own any weaponry with which to place them under fire, they'd flee too. Threatening children throwing pebbles whilst you sit in an armoured tank with a 20mm cannon does not count as "under fire". That counts as "cowardly bullies".)
To guarantee dedication under fire you either need volunteers, or an alternative which is worse than dying at the hands of the enemy.
AC: As for conscripts being useless in modern warfare, that's bs. The average kid these days knows well how to use technology and learn new things. Why wouldn't they be able to, say, handle communication equipment or be aircraft mechanics. Or why wouldn't a conscript be able to launch a Spike ATGM at a shiny M1A2?
Because they're conscripts, by definition they don't want to be there.
When given the controls of vehicles under fire, conscripts have a tendency to just go home. I'm sure you can think of at least one major recent war where the defending army's conscripts simply drove home when attacked. Conscripts only fight when the alternative is a very long journey through inhospitable terrain.
It's not a matter of technical skill, it's a matter of whether they'd hold the front line or bugger off.
As for maintennance work, would you want to fly a jet that had been given a half-arsed service by someone who didn't want to do it?
And this compares to the highly successful anti-spam laws of which country, exactly?
(Disclaimer: I have a vested interest, I the anti-spam development manager at MessageLabs)
Re:Anne Quéméré = Anchor Mer (Sea)
on
Rowing the Pond Again
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Offtopic or Interesting? You decide...:-)
Knos: Brittany has a specific language which is in most part unrelated to french.
...but is, strangely, closely related to Welsh and other British Gaelic languages.
I know this because my uncle, who is a Welsh speaker, struck up a conversation with what he thought was a fellow Welshman in Brittany. Only half an hour into chatting (and, to be fair, drinking), did he click that the gentleman was in fact a local.
Oh, and interesting fact number two: Brittany is the reason why the largest UK island is called Great Britain- because there is a Little Britain (Brittany) in France. At one point a line of regional kings [1] claimed soverignty over all the Britons (Britons being the Gaelic-speaking peoples of France, Ireland and the UK).
[1] You have to remember that kings were little more than tribal leaders until recent centuries. The word "king" conjures up images of gold and palaces, when in fact for most of Northern European history, kings were the ones who had slightly larger mud huts and slightly warmer animal furs.
CGP314: any countries out there that have a rational set of porn/sex laws
Sealand? Has only one law; child porn is banned, punishable by exile (one law on their entire statute; this isn't just their only porn law, it is their one and only law at all, the entirely of their legal system). CF. HavenCo AUP - Unacceptable publications.
Eidechse: Binary math was once thought to be a useless curiousity.
Worshipping the sun was also once thought to be useless- and still is. Your point?
Primes have many uses. Most importantly, from the average Slashdot reader's point of view, they are the basis for most modern cryptography, such as the yellow padlocks on web browsers used to encrypt credit card details when buying online. Prime numbers are not a useless curiosity, they are highly valuable and very deliberately saught after.
Extending your logic, if we fill our lives with activities that today we consider useless, then we will eventually benefit from that. That manages to fulfil both the Underpant Gnomes and Cargo Cult paradigms of badness in one go.
People who spend their days doing useless stuff in the hope of turning up trumps are invariably disappointed. Christopher Columbus did not discover America for the Europeans as a random act; he was deliberately looking for a quick route to India. Alexander Fleming was not just messing about in the lab when he discovered penecillin; he was conducting very purposeful research into stapholycocci. These discoveries, toted by the lottery-culture media as accidents of pure chance, were in fact made only as part of rigourous effort and deliberation. Sure, they were side-effects, but there had to be a main effect that these people were searching for in order for there to be something for there to be a side-effect of. Equally, with your example of binary maths, these people were conducting very purposeful research into pure mathematics.
Mind you, since it is a national holiday here in the UK today, I'm going to test your theory by spending all day watching old Tom & Jerry cartoons. Just in case.
MastrTek: violation of Star Trek canon rampant through this series
Er, mate... You have noticed that Enterprise is about time travellers fiddling with the established ST cannon timeline, right?
Violation of the cannon timeline is the whole point of the plot arc of the entire series.
I agree that the franchise needs to be "rested", though. Time for another classic sci-fi series to have a "next generation". By the way, Doctor Who returns early next year.
There's a Bugatti Museum just over the field from my house (Gloucestershire, UK [Map]). The site is also home to the impressive Prescott Speed Hillclimb which is open to the public- you can even enter the time trial in your own car, although I find it more fun to watch the vintage cars, including old Bugattis, race up the hill.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, yes, quite so.
However, in the case of the BBC TV it is not only large music industry labels that have got to re-licence their background music, but also a huge squadron of independent one-man-band music composer contractors.
Much of BBC TV background music, particularly for documentaries and historical drama, is specifically composed and performed for the task by private contractors.
So getting a blanket agreement may be rather difficult, since the independent contractors don't speak with one voice. The BBC can't force a private composer contractor to join a union or an industry body.
Actually, on second thoughts, what with the BBC being a government-run institution, maybe the BBC should back some kind of government-enforced copyright agreement for all of these composers. It is, after all, a bloody stupid law, so why not change it? I can't imagine that'd be popular with any future composers they might wish to hire, mind you.
Just to add to the background info, Channel 5 is owned by Radio Luxembourg (RTL) who have been broadcasting to the UK since 1933; they were the first company to provide English-language commercial radio listenable in the UK, the famous "Radio Luxembourg 208" which ran on mediumwave from 1933 until 1992, including a stint in WWII when the station was taken over against their will by Nazis. RTL also own several German, Dutch and French TV and radio stations.
I was in the audience for this parliamentary seminar in February where Paula Le Dieu of the BBC Creative Archives Project spoke.
Apparently the biggest problem for the BBC is figuring out how to deal with the copyright problems of background music. Almost all BBC TV programmes have background music, and almost all of that music has been licenced for TV use only, not for download over the Internet.
Until that problem is resolved, there are very few programmes that can be released via the BBC Creative Archive.
You're thinking of the Lotus 123 case.
The difference was that Lotus didn't have a patent, they only had copyright, which as you rightly point out doesn't cover look and feel.
This time, though, Apple have a patent for the graphical design which means they may well be able to successfully sue those who copy the look and feel of their interface.
Which IMHO just goes to show how dumb patent law is these days, but hey, everyone's doing it so it might be right. Right? :-(
You wouldn't believe the number of Americans who get confused when I say I'm from the English/Welsh border. Many of them seem to believe that the entire island of Great Britain is just England, and that Scotland and Ireland share a land border... and most of them haven't even heard of Wales (which, coming from Shropshire, is rather annoying seeing as the whole used-to-be-part-of-Wales and the-only-bit-of-England-that-speaks-Welsh thing forms a major part of our heritage).
Figurehead only. CF. Constitutional Monarchy
As if anyone could take orders from Prince Charles! (Coffee on monitor moment, there!)
Traditionally in the UK, the King/Queen rules England and more recently also Scotland, and then their eldest son who is due to become the next King gets to rule Wales, hence Prince Charles is currently the Prince of Wales. Northern Ireland is just somewhere we nicked off someone else, so like Canada or Australia it doesn't have it's own King/Queen.
In Europe it is quite common for the ATMs to automatically work out what language you speak, and automatically present you with an interface in that language.
This works solely by the ATM recognising which bank your card is from. For instance, mine is Barclays, which the ATM knows is a UK bank, so many ATMs in France present me with an English interface by default. I would strongly expect all European ATMs with this ability to present all US cardholders with an English language by default (Spanish-speaking US citizens aren't common tourists).
However this breaks when your country speaks more than one language. I'd expect all ATMs to be very confused about which language a Swiss cardholder prefers; Switzerland has German, French and regional languages as official languages. Belgians probably get a choice of Dutch or French too.
There are also regional variations. For example, when using my Barclays ATM card in Wales [1], I sometimes get the option for the interface in Welsh or English, because Barclays customers in Wales might prefer Welsh over English (for instance, my uncle prefers Welsh for conversing about money and family, but English for talking about science and technology).
So it can be done, but they don't dial back to HQ for your individual preference- the ATMs generally only recognise the default language of your bank. If your bank speaks both Spanish and English, then most ATMs aren't going to know any better.
[1] Wales and England are Kingdoms [2] of the United Kingdom in the same way that California and Texas are States of the United States. The UK isn't just England, any more than the US is just California.
[2] Actually, Wales is a Principality (ruled by a Prince/Princess, not a King/Queen), not a Kingdom, but you get the idea.
The UK scheme appears to be based around emailing users about security problems.
Because obviously, if you receive an email giving you security advice, its guaranteed to be up-to-date, accurate, authoratative and with excellent step-by-step instructions on how to +++ATH0 NO CARRIER
It hits 100F pretty much every year nowadays.
Global warming may be turning Africa, Asia and the Mediterranean into arrid deserts, but... actually, now I come to think of it, some silver linings don't have a cloud! (Disclaimer: I'm British and drive a 4x4... albeit only a 1.3 litre, and I live next to a farm)
(UKUS: "The Sun" = right-wing soft porn tabloid)
On behalf of what I expect is most of the British nation: Sorry, everybody.
These kinds of daft stories are very popular in the UK. For some reason our nation suffers from a higher than acceptable proportion of stuck-up do-gooders who not only like to stick their noses into other peoples' business, but also like to form official-sounding organisations with committies, minutes, annual general meetings, ties, tie-pins, members-only bars and more pomp and circumstance than the last night of the Proms. I'd like to think it is related to the World War II home guard and air-raid warden mentality, where civillians were treated as little more than valuable cattle, but our long island history of Gentlemens' Clubs indicates that this is something more long term, inherrent to our core psyche.
The UK is not going to mandate that cameraphones have flashes. No way, no how, it ain't gonna happen. This is a headline-grabbing press release from a bunch of publicity-hungry nobodies. The UK has one of the highest penetrations of cameraphones, digital cellphones and general personal gadgetry in the world, not to mention our fascination with closed-circuit television monitoring (rendered pointless in a society that also invented the balaclava and tolerates the yashmack, on an island with weather so inclement that face-covering scarves and hooded clothing are a Jolly Good Idea at any time of year), so there is simply no chance of any Brit taking this suggestion seriously. It's simply bollocks journalism, press releases thoughtlessly regurgitated as sensationalist news, from the same newspaper school of dumbness that brought you the Hitler Diaries.
Why Oh Why do we as a nation suffer these fools?
...It's the theme from Mission: Impossible.
Does the United States Secret Service have copyright permission to use the theme from Mission: Impossible?
Er... here in Europe we call that "my phone".
Seriously, though... you guys don't have digital flash-memory video cameras on your cellphones? WTF? Digital still cameras have been standard on cellphones for the last two years, video and flash memory last year. I don't want to start a "diss the yanks" thread, I realise there are plenty of things y'all do better, but... you chaps need to have some serious words with your cellular providers, you're not getting good handset upgrades.
My phone has digital video camera and an MMC card offering up to 1GB of storage. The phone came free with 100 minutes of calls on a monthly £25 (US$50) contract, albeit only with a 32mb MMC card, then I purchased a larger MMC seperately for thirty quid. My missus got one too, free with contract again, here's footage she shot of squirrels in the churchyard.
I didn't even need to change contracts. I just rang them up and said I'd quit my contract after a year unless they upgraded my handset to a video model. It was delivered next day.
He didn't get them first time, which pissed off Terry Nation's estate no end, hence why the new negotiations took so long. Sure, they're control freaks, but they've learned that if they don't take control, they end up with shoddy parodies, and it's a short walk from there to panto.
The BBC has broken the strike over terms and conditions for the Daleks. Apparently the Cybermen began crossing the picket lines in unmarked coaches, while the Daleks pelted them with rotten fruit, shouting "SCABS
As part of the deal, thirty-seven gravel pits will close.
An Equity union representative, speaking of behalf of the Daleks, said "This is a sad time for the Daleks, but at the end of the day, they have bills to pay, and the electricity for the genetic embryo chambers doesn't come cheap."
The strike-busting Cybermen are understood to have had their contracts terminated early in favour of the new hovering Dalek Battletank design, previously only seen in paperback. The Cyberman leader said "THE DALEKS MAY HAVE WON THIS BATTLE BUT OUR EMPIRE WILL CONTINUE TO EXPAND."
Meanwhile a dispute is believed to have broken out inside the Dalek camp, with the Supreme Dalek unhappy at the terms negotiated by Davros. In a news conference earlier, Davros said "This marks the next generation of the Kaled race. We have evolved beyond rails, beyond wheels, beyond low-budget bluescreen CGI hovering awkwardly up stairs. Although I'm sorry to see Ace go, she was rather fit, wasn't she, and she still looks hot in those childrens' programmes she presents."
The Supreme Dalek was unavailable for comment, although he was earlier overheard saying "I
History HAS shown, time and time again, repeated recently in Iraq, that conscripts desert under fire in larger percentages than volunteers/professionals.
Training doesn't come in to it. Dedication does.
No amount of training is going to answer the question: "Am I prepared to die for this cause?"
A volunteer has already asked him/herself this question before entering the battlefield. A conscript doesn't really have to consider this until he/she is under attack.
Okay, so which makes it more likely to be dedicated under fire, and which less likely:
I am European (the word "arsed" should have given that away :-). We, the United Kingdom, packed in conscription in the 1960s for exactly the reasons I stated: conscripts do a half-arsed job and flee under fire. France did the same for similar reasons, ending conscription in the 1990s.
(As for the shining example, Israel, suggested by another poster, I suspect that if their opponents were actually allowed to own any weaponry with which to place them under fire, they'd flee too. Threatening children throwing pebbles whilst you sit in an armoured tank with a 20mm cannon does not count as "under fire". That counts as "cowardly bullies".)
To guarantee dedication under fire you either need volunteers, or an alternative which is worse than dying at the hands of the enemy.
Because they're conscripts, by definition they don't want to be there.
When given the controls of vehicles under fire, conscripts have a tendency to just go home. I'm sure you can think of at least one major recent war where the defending army's conscripts simply drove home when attacked. Conscripts only fight when the alternative is a very long journey through inhospitable terrain.
It's not a matter of technical skill, it's a matter of whether they'd hold the front line or bugger off.
As for maintennance work, would you want to fly a jet that had been given a half-arsed service by someone who didn't want to do it?
And this compares to the highly successful anti-spam laws of which country, exactly? (Disclaimer: I have a vested interest, I the anti-spam development manager at MessageLabs)
Offtopic or Interesting? You decide... :-)
Knos: Brittany has a specific language which is in most part unrelated to french.
I know this because my uncle, who is a Welsh speaker, struck up a conversation with what he thought was a fellow Welshman in Brittany. Only half an hour into chatting (and, to be fair, drinking), did he click that the gentleman was in fact a local.
Oh, and interesting fact number two: Brittany is the reason why the largest UK island is called Great Britain- because there is a Little Britain (Brittany) in France. At one point a line of regional kings [1] claimed soverignty over all the Britons (Britons being the Gaelic-speaking peoples of France, Ireland and the UK).
[1] You have to remember that kings were little more than tribal leaders until recent centuries. The word "king" conjures up images of gold and palaces, when in fact for most of Northern European history, kings were the ones who had slightly larger mud huts and slightly warmer animal furs.
Sealand? Has only one law; child porn is banned, punishable by exile (one law on their entire statute; this isn't just their only porn law, it is their one and only law at all, the entirely of their legal system). CF. HavenCo AUP - Unacceptable publications.
Worshipping the sun was also once thought to be useless- and still is. Your point?
Primes have many uses. Most importantly, from the average Slashdot reader's point of view, they are the basis for most modern cryptography, such as the yellow padlocks on web browsers used to encrypt credit card details when buying online. Prime numbers are not a useless curiosity, they are highly valuable and very deliberately saught after.
Extending your logic, if we fill our lives with activities that today we consider useless, then we will eventually benefit from that. That manages to fulfil both the Underpant Gnomes and Cargo Cult paradigms of badness in one go.
People who spend their days doing useless stuff in the hope of turning up trumps are invariably disappointed. Christopher Columbus did not discover America for the Europeans as a random act; he was deliberately looking for a quick route to India. Alexander Fleming was not just messing about in the lab when he discovered penecillin; he was conducting very purposeful research into stapholycocci. These discoveries, toted by the lottery-culture media as accidents of pure chance, were in fact made only as part of rigourous effort and deliberation. Sure, they were side-effects, but there had to be a main effect that these people were searching for in order for there to be something for there to be a side-effect of. Equally, with your example of binary maths, these people were conducting very purposeful research into pure mathematics.
Mind you, since it is a national holiday here in the UK today, I'm going to test your theory by spending all day watching old Tom & Jerry cartoons. Just in case.
Er, mate... You have noticed that Enterprise is about time travellers fiddling with the established ST cannon timeline, right?
Violation of the cannon timeline is the whole point of the plot arc of the entire series.
I agree that the franchise needs to be "rested", though. Time for another classic sci-fi series to have a "next generation". By the way, Doctor Who returns early next year.
There's a Bugatti Museum just over the field from my house (Gloucestershire, UK [Map]). The site is also home to the impressive Prescott Speed Hillclimb which is open to the public- you can even enter the time trial in your own car, although I find it more fun to watch the vintage cars, including old Bugattis, race up the hill.