Not to mention "A Piece of the Action" showed us that even years later, Kirk hadn't learned to drive a car like that (and why would he?). I fear the makers of this movie haven't done their homework on Trek nearly as much as they promised they would.

Indeed, it's now impossible to find Quatro in stores; the whole line appears to have lasted only from 2004 to '06. I recently wanted to find some Quatro sets to introduce my new niece to LEGO (got to start kids off right ;) and was agog to discover not only could I no longer find Quatro sets in LEGO's online store, but people were offering them secondhand online, and asking outrageous prices, like multiple hundreds of dollars for tubs of a few dozen bricks. I had no idea the line had been discontinued so quickly, and no idea people were asking the same sorts of prices for these they'd ask for discontinued Star Wars sets, sets from the old Classic Space and Castle lines, etc.

Duplo sets are still easy to find, though, in my experience. That line's been around a lot longer than Quatro, too, and doesn't seem to be slowing down. I think Duplo will be around a long time to come.

Alas, I have yet to be able to visit a LEGO Store anywhere (though I hope to soon!), but as I understand it, the US stores have the cups, but European LEGO Stores have bags, and one pays by weight.

They do offer bulk brick assortments, though, and always have. While the usual price-per-piece ratio for most new sets typically works out to around ten or fifteen US cents per brick (with wide variation depending upon the specific parts, of course), it's certainly possible to get assortments that work out to around five or six cents a brick, and sometimes it gets lower. I bought four copies of the wonderful bulk tub 4679 - Bricks and Creations a few years ago for $20 each; that's 1513 wildly varied pieces for a little over 1.3 cents apiece, and I got four copies. Of course, seeking out specific bricks rather than whatever they put in those assortments is another matter, but still...

What does this legal judgement mean, as far as how things will be different? There've already been copycat brands like Mega Bloks, Best-Lock, and perhaps any number of others I'm forgetting or never heard of, and they've been around for years, even decades. Is this legal decision just putting a capper on the previous litigation? IANAL, naturally...

Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday warned about a serious flaw in almost every version of its popular Windows software that could allow hackers to seize control of a person's computer when victims read e-mails or visit Web sites.

This is getting so routine these days that MS should just bolierplate the warning with a spot for the date.