Monday's questions for the Cult of the Dead Cow ranged from serious-tech to silly. Various members of the Cult answered appropriately. Great stuff! One warning: if you are offended by strong language or are a hacker under 18, you should not read this Q&A session. The Cult is one of those groups the assorted nanny-censor programs try to keep away from deity-fearing, good-citizen, mass-average folks because they're commie anachist no-gooders. Or something like that. (And we like them that way!) Click below to learn why these people are A Danger to the Established Order(tm).

Gekko and Webslacker were the first of many to tell us about the stir over at ZDNet, which is reporting on the arrival of sub $200 PCs due Q1 2000. These new desktops from Taiwan's Tatung come in eye-catching candy colors a la Apple's iMac. Tatung has opted for Rise and Cyrix K6 chips instead of Intel Pentiums, and a CD-ROM drive is an option. One wonders with the increase in the cost of DRAM how this will impact the price?

Gryff writes "Victorinox, makers of the fine Swiss Army line of knives, has just announced a Cybertool version. It has 13 different screwdrivers and a total of 34 functions including, according to the pictures on that page, tightening peripheral cables, pulling chips and setting dip switches. And - hey! - it's see-through to match your iMac and Visor. "

Ivo writes "Apple just announced a new iMac. The base model starts at $999, and the $1499 model has built-in firewire and DVD. More at Apple's website " Three different models (no fan, better graphics and sub-woofer), and the commercials are online.

webslacker writes "Those snoops over at Apple Insider have gotten their hands on some blueprints of the new iMac. Not a drastic change, but it now uses a short-neck CRT and the new trayless DVD drive is very very cool. Check it out."

Cheeseman writes "The usually very reliable Japan Apple Watch quotes South Korean sources saying that the iMac II will be launched at the Paris Apple Expo in a couple of weeks. What's interesting about this is that one of the new colors will be the 'graphite and white' as seen on the G4. I suspect that this means that Apple will use the iMac II to get apple back into the business market and sell one G4 together with 10-30 iMacs IIs for about 10 to 25 grand. With AirPort this means that you've got an instant LAN that works out of the box with no cabling. " And the rumours are that the new machine will be less then 1000$US-though I would suspect that's a stripped down machine.

Apple's G4, launched in a blizzard of savvy hype, heralds the second Age of Apple. Although this one is very different from the first (for one thing, Apple is a lot greedier), Apple's string of successes says a lot about the fact that individual creativity will beat out corporate marketers every single time.

R3 writes "Looks like Intel is trying to come up with some sort of iMac-like PC - "for home" and this is the best they could some up with is the Ottoman PC. " Here are some more pictures . The sad thing is that I think its cool. I'd like a PIII in the arm of my sofa too please.

Steve Nakhla writes "The same people responsible for the iMac-looking PC's are now shipping a dual-Celeron PC, that makes overclocking a breeze. " So the question is, Publicity Stunt, or a valuable feature that consumers want? A motherboard that makes 8x overclocking easy is certainly cool, but its definitely gonna void some warranties, and maybe even blow up some chips.

Phrogz writes "Apple, following their July 1st lawsuits against Future Power and Daewoo for the same, is now suing eMachines for their use of an iMac-style design (the eMachines eOne). "

drix asks: "Like many I'm running a Linux gateway between my home network and cable internet connection. Naturally, I'd like it if my Linux server, 4 Win 98 boxes, and iMac could do a nightly backup. The problem is I only have one tape drive, which is, of course, situated in the server. So my question is what software exists that, a) runs on Linux, b) exists in a client server form, where the server runs a "backup daemon" that each client connects to to backup its respective hard disk each night, and c) has clients available for Windows and optionally Mac? I guess the analogous NT ware would be Seagate Backup Exec, which runs on an NT server and polls NT workstations nightly for any changed files, and then uses delta file compression to zip those changes to the server's tape drive. I don't need anything that complicated, but I must have the basic ability to move the files."

An anonymous reader wrote in to send us an article that talks about new machines with integrated LCDs (sorta like that NEC box we mentioned a few weeks ago). Apparently vendors like GW2k are also following the trend to create slimmer iMac type non-upgradable but super-simple boxes. Personally I'm just obsessed with flat screens.

Jareth writes "Remember the iMac PC made by Future Power? Apparently Apple didn't like the idea of someone making money off of their design, so they are suing for damages. The story is over at Wired. " Well, they can't win a case based upon "look & feel", but it'll be interesting to see how this turns out. Luckily, whoever invented the beige case isn't suing every computer manufacturer ever.

Unit3 writes "Finally a real competitor to the iMac from a Wintel manufacturer: NEC's Z1 appears to not only outpower the iMac, but includes some very nice design and expandbility ideas that most of the iMac ripoffs these days are missing. " At $2500 I'm not quite sure that its an iMac competitor, but it has several other features that are quite tasty. Course it has to run Linux... I still think I'd prefer a VAIO.

PaulB writes "Intel's new Easy PC standard has some prototype systems ready for it, which you can read about on Wired. Very cool looking stuff, finally no more iMac envy. " You can see the photos of the machines on intel's website but they do all have those stupid looking jumpsuit dudes in the way. Update: 06/08 08:45 by H :SurplusBaggage wrote in with the Phillips 42" monitors. Price tag: $15k.

aphro writes "Seems somebody over in japan has gotten some ideas about comming out with a new kind of toilets! Although the text is in japanese, I can't tell if this is a serious thing or not. " I pray not, but its cute...

webslacker sent us linkage to a place selling translucent PC cases for those of you who are seeking something different, or are jealous of the iMac. These actually look pretty excellent.

Shawn Pryde writes "MSNBC reports that Michael Dell told investors the Dell is going to start making PC's modeled after the iMac." I hafta say for all the criticisms, the super cheap, non-upgradable internet capable appliance PC is a wonderful holy grail. Someday it'll happen, but the question is will Dell be able to cover the cheap part of that grail?

BobRainGod wrote in to tell us that a fire has apparently wasted Apple's Mexican production plant, and stunted iMac production. No this doesn't have anything to do with the APSL.

webslacker writes " First they looked like Jello, now these kids compete to make the most realistic iMac out of Jello. The weirdest thing is, this contest was school sponsored. " my school never did anything nearly that cool.