Linux needs to stop being a laboratory.

Linux needs to have a UI that regular people want, not what some programmers want.

Linspire had the right idea. Make Linux look and work like what people are used to.

There can be one distribution that looks and works like Windows, including WINE. And, another that looks and works like MacOS X.

These should be packaged and sold in stores, with tech support. As well as bundled with hardware.

There can still be all the current distributions with their different UIs for the Power-users.

But if you want to sell Linux to desktop users (who don't care about the 'coolness' of Linux) it simply has to run the software they need to run, in a way they're familiar with.

People are going to have to give up the egotistical stand that says Linux shouldn't work like Windows.

If a car manufacturer made their cars as different from other cars as Linux is from other OSes, they'd have very few sales too.

To DC, it's stealing money. From them.

If you've never authored a work and had it pirated (I have and bought a copy of my work on eBay, expecting it to be a genuine copy and received a Xeroxed manual and a copied disk.), you don't know what it's like.

DC is within it's rights to enforce their copyright on the car. They have to, because after decades of wrangling, they got all the ownership issues sorted out and have been releasing toy cars and models.

In order to have a license to sell to toy and model companies, they have to defend it in all arenas.

Since there IS a licensed Batmobile maker, your post is wrong.

http://www.fiberglassfreaks.com/

There is a limited market for Batmobile replicas. And every car Towle sells means one less sale by the licensee.

So yes, DC is being damaged. They lose the per-car licensing fee from each car sold by a non-licensee.

You're exaggerating. Paramount did "sue" ALL the producers of fan made merchandise

A "Cease and Desist" letter isn't a lawsuit.

And Star Trek is far from dead. The sequel to the 2009 movie is currently filming, and several fan based shows are in production.

Star Trek: Phase II is about to release "The Child." Based on a script written for the aborted second series in 1979. The script was adapted for a TNG episode, but this will be as originally conceived and directed by Jon Povil who wrote it.

Paramount served every maker of replica Star Trek Props with Cease and Desist orders in the mid 90's.

Even Richard Coyle who was negotiating in good faith for a license, and Paramount denied. Richard made many of the props used in the Star Trek movies.

Today, fans can make their own replicas. There are several companies with licenses to make replica props.

And there are still several garage kit companies selling kits of various qualities and accuracy that just fly under the radar.

DC Comics licensed one guy named Mark Racop to build these cars.

Mark Towle however, made the prototype for the licensed Speed Racer Mach V that was sold some time back (based on a Corvette chassis.)

Mark Towle does great work, his cars are really top notch!

But, unfortunately DC Comics believes there's only room for one licensee for Batmobiles in the market.

Making replica Futuras would be a great idea. But, that would be a very tiny market, even compared with Batmobiles.

Towle does good work, many famous people own his cars.

I hear your planet exiles it's Enviro-wackos to interstellar space.

In fact, we got this guy who adopted the Earth name
"Al Gore" who is from your planet. Can you take him with you on your way out?

And don't let the asteroid belt hit you in your thrusters as you accelerate to a significant portion of C!

At our technological level, we pose no danger to anything off this planet.

It would be like saying you'll sterilize a grain of sand to protect the planet.

Such a silly scenario...

If we ever develop interstellar travel that is fast, cheap and practical, maybe then this scenario starts to have legs.

Not going to happen. We've seen about a tenth of a degree warming in the first half of the 20th Century (now reversed), that occurred LONG before the rise of automobiles and factories adding CO2 to the atmosphere.

Every prediction I've read about how much temperature change that the draconian measures would reverse are similarly in fractions of a degree over a period of a century.

Human activity just isn't affecting the climate all that greatly.

Any predictions of climate change on the level of several degrees is just scare-mongering.

It's not supportable based on what we've observed thus far. In fact atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased by about 8 percent or so since the mid-1990s. According to climate alarmists, this should have caused measurable global warming. But none has been observed.

Human activity may indeed affect global climate, but it's like pouring a thimbleful of dye into a swimming pool.