Rand Race writes: "Lowend Mac is reporting here that Apple is considering dropping the G4 on most of its line in favor of IBM's Altivec-less G5. The G5 would appear in early 2001 at speeds from 700Mhz to 1Ghz in single, dual, and quad setups. Speeds up to 2Ghz should be reached by 2002. Updated G3s (750Cx/G3e) at 533-666Mhz will be used in iMacs and iBooks (maybe a 666Mhz G5 iMac SE), Dual and Quad G4-500s in midrange machines, and G5s in high end machines (733,866, & 1Ghz), Powerbooks (733 & 850), and Cubes (866 & 1Ghz). Disclaimer; this is a rumour and we all know about Apple rumors..." Update: 08/18 09:04 PM by CT : Several people noted that this is more then a rumor, its a blatant lie... they got very worked up about it too ;)

Do you want an i-Opener, and for how much? Are space-vehicle rescues "your thing"? Does your cute iMac suffer from a video-game-violence deficiency? Do your Web habits stray to courtroom and crime-scene voyeurism? Do you think that online privacy agreements must of needs outlive the dot-com-ephemera which offer them? If Yes to any or all, you've come to the right place.

JimRay writes: "A company called powerlogix has announced that they are offering a G-3 upgrade for those fruity iMacs. For a mere US$500, you can have an iMac running at 500mhz with 1mb of backside cache. Throw linuxPPC on that thing and you're ready to rock and roll. The press release is here and the specs are here."

Weeden writes: "Here is a Salon article that wants to know why computers have to make so much noise. They think if the iMac can be quiet, why can't everyone else? Just do what I do and turn on some music, that makes the noise go away!" Quiet is certainly a concern for all-day computer users; I know I'd pay quite a bit more for a nice ATX case with a massive heat sink, if that were practical. If you need quiet now (and like the Salon writer, aren't willing to switch to an iMac) you might also want to check out this Ask Slashdot on the same topic.

Thanks to all of the fine folks who contributed these updates, you are in for another illuminating, invigorating, inspiring round of fruity nuggets picked from the tree of wisdom, irradiated, waxed, polished, chilled, packaged and shipped (metaphorically) to your browser. Swallow two of these a week, call if symptoms recur.

datarealm writes "In a story on yahoo, Intel badgered Harvard into covering all iMac kiosks during an Intel sponsored event. Apparently the Intel provided covers trapped heat, forcing the machines to not only be covered, but also powered down." How much of is this happening in donations to education, and what questions need to be asked when companies sponsor these kind of things?

Jason Haas writes: "We now have instructions for playing MPEG movies under LinuxPPC, and they're posted on our Web site on this page. Sam Lantinga of Loki Software wrote a number of the utilities we use (thanks!), along with one by Jan Hubicka. Happily, they're all in RPM format, which shouldn't be a problem for anyone to handle. We also have instructions for editing Netscape's setup to automagically play MPEGs when they're downloaded. It is most cool to see and hear your LinuxPPC box playing a movie." Maybe I can find a nice cheap green iMac to try this on.

On May 4, we asked you to suggest questions for an interview with Metallica. It seemed for a while, though, like the interview that emmett had wrangled would never happen -- despite agreeing to speak with us, calls to his agents found that drummer (and frequent spokesman) Lars Ulrich was either "too busy" or "unavailable" for a long time, and we felt pretty much like the winner in a game of "hold the grenade." Yesterday, though, Lars came through for us: after I explained the nature of a Slashdot interview, and how the questions were gathered and chosen, as well as the fact that he was free to be as candid and discursive as he'd like, I spoke with him for more than an hour. Lars seemed impressed by the forum that Slashdot offered and called it "a nice setup" for an interview. You don't have to agree with his conclusions, or with the actions that the band has taken, but you ignore his words at your peril. So without further ado, here are your questions, and Lars, unfiltered.

Anonymous Coward writes: "In this interview, part III, over at GNULinux.com you can read what Jordan Hubbard, CEO of FreeBSD Inc., has to say about the future of FreeBSD. '[...] Finally, the notion of the PC is changing. One could even argue that the PC has widened to encompass the PowerPC, because there are all these iMacs on peoples' desks, and according to the original mandate we should be looking at those iMacs, too, which is what we're doing,' sounds pretty sweet." This article provides a positive (but sober) overview of recent and anticipated progress from the devil-suit side of free software. You might also be interested in Jordan's answer to the question, "Can FreeBSD scale to the PDA?"

mr.e@home.com writes: "Flashingyellow.com has started up a contest to port the DivX MPEG-4 codec to the Macintosh platform. The goal is a completely open-sourced, cross-platform codec for use with Quicktime (hoping the Linux port of Quicktime ever gets completed). Prize is $5000 and an iMac DV Special Edition."

Graymalkin writes: "Apple has finally released iMovie (the really easy video editor) for the non-iMac DV customers; the best part is that it's free. You can get it over at iMovie's Web site. I've used demos of this package and compared to professional packages like Premiere it really packs a punch. You need OS 9 and at least 64 megs of RAM (unless you want to do Web quality video, then 64 is fine). It's nice to see Apple responding to their customers (like myself) who wanted iMovie but didn't want to go out and buy an iMac to get it. fnord. "

Cybersonic writes: "Cnet has an interesting story where they are thinking about going after yet another company making a translucent PC. " It's a company from Australia that makes something called "FishPC". It's not a standalone machine like the iMac is, which the company pointed out when interviewed.Update: 04/24 03:54 by H :I've been told that the case is actually AMD's EasyNow! design - thanks to Chris Tom for the head's-up. Wonder why they aren't suing AMD?

Viking Coder and Rares Marian sent in submissions asking about recommendations on systems for high quality video editing. They have concerns about the hardware and the software necessary for such tasks. I figure all of you folks out there who have some experience in this area should be able to help them out. (Read More)

werdna writes: "A recent article criticized Apple for overreaching by asserting "design protection" for the product configuration of its iMac line. Apparently the United States Supreme Court might agree with Slashdotters in an appropriate case. In a decision handed down yesterday, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Samara Brothers, Inc., the Court held that product design, like color, cannot be inherently distinctive and obtain trademark-like protections, until it has acquired distinctiveness such that the marketplace naturally perceives the design to be a designation of product source, such as in the way that "International Business Machines" is associated with products from a company in Armonk rather than a general description for typewriters sold internationally. Thus, absent a design patent, it has just become substantially tougher to obtain protections for industrial designs. Time will tell how important this decision will be."

CitizenC writes, "C|Net is currently running a story about the home of the future! Excerpt: First the Net went portable. Now it's going practical. Forget about plug-and-surf Web computers such as the iMac; we're talking about stoves that store recipes, and toilets that e-mail personal information to your doctor. It sounds like just so much new-millennium hype, but Net-enabled appliances are the first wave of a complete revolution in home design--a revolution that's happening right now. "

Andrew van der Stock writes "Check out this link and see a rack-mounted iMac. Very Cool." Shades of the 21" Frankenstein iMac covered a few months ago here on Slashdot. This is a cool hardware hack of the "gotta get it done" variety. Talk about faith in a platform! But what is he doing with all the old iMonitors? Perhaps ESR and friends could use some interesting targets ...

Well, here are Patrick Volkerding's answers to your questions, "Just in time for St. Patrick's Day. :)" as Mr. Volkerding himself put it. Read and enjoy!

dublin passed along this CNET article reporting that Apple Computer has settled its cases against both Daewoo and Emachines, filed in response to those companies' release of iMac look-alike PCs. Read below for more.

imac.usr writes "MacNN mentioned that Apple now has its own Web page describing Linux, the distributions available for PowerPC Macs, and links to them." But can you drag your hard drive to the trash to unmount it?

Yes, we know this is overdue. We put up the original Ask Larry Augustin post on Jan. 10, and here we are posting Larry's answers on the 27th. The first few weeks after an IPO are hectic for any CEO who is involved in one, and we understand this, but the wait has been as frustrating for the Slashdot staff as for anyone else, and there was nothing we could do about it. Anyway, finally, here are Larry Augustin's answers to your questions.