Advertising-supported companies have long turned to the courts to squelch products that let consumers block or skip ads: it happened in the famous lawsuit against the VCR in 1979 and again with ReplayTV in 2001.

Tomorrow's legal fight may be over Web browser add-ons that let people avoid advertisements. These add-ons are growing in functionality and popularity, which has led legal experts surveyed this week by CNET News.com to speculate about when the first lawsuit will be filed.

If ad-blockers become so common that they slice away at publishers' revenues, "I absolutely would expect to see litigation in this area," said John Palfrey, executive director of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

When I began Low End Mac ten years ago, there were no G3 Macs. When Apple introduced the first G3s, which were about 50% more efficient than earlier PowerPC 604e CPUs, everyone was excited.

When Apple releases Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" in October, there will be no support for G3 Macs.

The first G3 Macs, the PowerBook G3 and beige Power Mac G3, were introduced in November 1997. The 250 MHz PowerBook G3 was the world's most powerful notebook, and the 266 MHz Power Mac G3 held its own against the Power Mac 9600 with a 350 MHz 604e CPU.

The last G3 Macs, the 12" iBook and 14" iBook, were discontinued in October 2003. The fastest G3 Macs were those upgraded with a 1.1 GHz PowerForce upgrade (recently reintroduced at 1.0 GHz for US$140).

The best selling G3 Macs were the iMacs, which took the market by storm in 1998, going through two major versions and numerous revisions between the 233 MHz Bondi blue iMac of August 1998 and the 700 MHz iMac that was phased out in March 2003.

The question is: What does the future hold for G3 Macs?

Today we'll look at G3 iMacs.

I've passed on Opera several times for different reasons: it cost money (used to), the UI felt bulky, no extensions. This time around I took more time to dig into the powerful configuration options and ended up with a browser that makes be cringe to use Firefox.

Let's start with history - Opera has an excellent track record of innovation (tabs, user JavaScript) and even though it is closed source they have a reputation of staying close to end users.

One of my constant complaints about Open Source is speed and user interface. Firefox does do much better than other OSS projects, but still offers us a fat, memory munching browser that only gets worse with add-ons.

Opera's real magic is offering an amazingly customizable browser with advanced features that is still slim and fast.

Apple has taken a remarkable three places on a new list of the 20 coolest brands in the United Kingdom.

The Top 20 CoolBrands list was headed by Aston Martin, but Apple took second place with iPod, seventh with its main brand, and nineteenth with iTunes.

Other tech brands to make the list were YouTube (3), Bang & Olufson (4) Google (5), PlayStation (6), Nintendo (9), eBay (13) and Amazon (20).

The vaunted "$100 laptop" that Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers dreamed up for international schoolchildren is becoming a slightly more distant concept.

Leaders of the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child that was spun out of MIT acknowledged Friday that the devices would cost $188 if mass production, expected to begin this fall, were to start now. The last price the nonprofit had announced was $176; it described $100 as a long-term goal.

One of our readers, Joe B., sent us his comments after comparing the previous iMac 24" nVidia GF and the new iMac 24" Alu:

We just compared these side-by-side:

1. The new iMac is significantly LESS bright at maximum setting than the older model, contrary to what I have seen written on the Web.

2. The ATI GPU in the new iMac is about 1/2 to 1/3 as fast as the NVIDIA GPU in the old iMac for volume rendering (tested with a 3D data set in OsiriX).

3. The glare from the new screen is a distraction for professionals in the medical and graphics industries. I sure looks handsome, though, and will likely attract PC converts.

4. The 2.8GHz processor speeds routine computing tasks by about 20%, as expected. We like this, but it does not make up for the shortcomings.

5. Overall, I am quite disappointed in the new iMac for my intended use....

News Corp's president and chief operating officer said on Friday he expected to have contentious negotiations with Apple over showing its television programs on iTunes.

"We have a pretty limited relationship with Apple and we'll see how it goes," Peter Chernin told the UK's Royal Television Society convention.

"I assume it will be prickly and dicey and contentious like all negotiations are and like all negotiations should be."

I must admit that I am perhaps a little too tolerant of people who use Windows. Yes, when the occasion arises, I do express the appropriate Mac preference, but I don’t wear an Apple logo on my sleeve.

SCO Group today filed for bankruptcy protection. With less than $10m cash left to call on, SCO said that Chapter 11 protection and reorganization would protect assets as it addresses, ahem, "potential financial and legal challenges".

The move comes after a US judge last month threw out SCO's case over claimed ownership of IP in Linux. He also ordered SCO to pay royalties to Novell, arising from Unix licenses that it had sold to Sun Microsystems and Microsoft. Novell could be owed as much as $25m, according to industry estimates.

All right, maybe you’re intrigued with the prospect of saving a lot of money on your next phone bill, and trying one of those Internet, or VoIP, phone companies. At the same time, the recent and widely-publicized meltdown of SunRocket, one of the better known providers, has to hurt the other independents.

All right, one week Apple has a music-related special event, where they announce a new line of iPods, the alignment with Starbucks and the huge price cut on the iPhone. The latter, as a matter of fact, almost upstaged the rest of the news.

Next Article: New Kensington Accessories Combine Cutting-Edge Style, Simplicity, with Intelligent Features

Previous Article: Moore's iPod/iPhone News Reader - Monday, September 17, 2007

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