Rob Lanphier wrote in wondering about what happened to the AOL/RN story. Well, it appears that little digital hiccup we had today sort of, well, "lost" the story. So, in recap, AOL will be bundling RealPlayer in their latest round of pseudo-techie coasters that will be coming out soon. Additionally, the Beta 2 of the player is out, with the additional features:

• New Intel/RealNetworks video codec technology (better quality video)
• Frame Rate Upsampling (take a 15 fps video and make it look like 20-30 fps)
• Web-based server administration tool w/source (hack to your hearts delight)
• Server on multiple platforms (Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Win NT, DEC OSF, SGI Irix, Win 95)

Trevor wrote to let us all know that Filaments is ready for download. For those you who are unfamiliar with Filaments, it is a library package that can be used to create architecture-independent parallel programs-that is, programs that are portable and efficient across different parallel machines. Filaments can be used directly as a subroutine library to write parallel programs, but it is most useful as the target of a parallelizing compiler. Click below for the full release annoucement.

Justin Couch (Mithrandir) writes "As one of the millions out there that use MP3 daily for work, and also as someone who writes ISO specs for a living I was rather interested in the article that got posted today about the disappearing MP3 encoder from 8hz. Almost all of the comments at least showed a lack of understanding of the ISO process so I thought I should write you an article on exactly what happens and how this situation comes about." Hit the link to read it.

Emperor Zog writes "After many moons, Electrogig's web site (www.gig.nl) is back online. They are offering their high-end 3DGO modeler/renderer and Gig Viz CAD software for Linux, for the bargain price of $995! 3DGO is simply the most powerful 3D package available on Linux today, and it's good to see that Electrogig's back. Unfortunately, they don't have the downloadable trial versions back online yet, but you can at least look at the pretty pictures or send them a congratulatory e-mail. Check out the benchmarks page; Linux-Intel kicks some SGI butt! " Looks like the demos are now online-go /. 'em...

Michael Bacarella wrote in with the first essay on Linux Standards. I've got several more of these left to post today, and I'll continue to post them as I have time.

One part of the Los Alamos new supercomputer, Blue Mountain has shipped. SGI shipped the 512 processer module to Los Alamos. Currently Los Alamos is involved in a race with Lawrence Livermore and Sandia to build a 100 tflops machine by 2004. Los Alamos will be using their machine to accurately testing the United States' aging nukes. Sandia's box is out in front. It is an Intel-built machine equipped with 9,072 Pentium Pro processors capable of performing up to 1.8 Tflops. However, Intel has dropped out of the super-computer business, and eventually the SGI box at Los Alamos and the IBM box at Livermore will be in true competition.

Jeff Monks writes "Computer World has a short article about SGI's newest Cray machine - 2,048 processors! I bet it plays a mean Quake... "

Cyrrin has written in with a killer update from Siggraph 98. He's got notes about everything from Alpha to Antz, as well as a ton of juicy nuggets from the Linux 3D SIG. Click immediately below and read this if you're at all into graphics!

The DjVu Wizard writes "Slashdot ran a story about AT&T Labs' new DjVu document image compression technology a few weeks ago. Versions of the DjVu viewer/plug-in for Netscape are now available for the following platforms: Linux/x86, Irix/SGI, Solaris/Sparc, MacOS8.0. DjVu allows users and web site designers to put high-resolution scanned documents in color on the Web by achieving compression ratios as high as 1000:1. A compressor for various Unix platforms is available free for non-commercial uses. Some Slashdot readers complained about a "spam" clause in our licensing agrement. Our lawyers listened, and removed the clause (it was never our intention to spam anybody anyway). At AT&T Labs, we read Slashdot and we support Linux. "

Jesse Barnes wrote in to let us know where to get at the non-alpha, full version of Linux for many Indys. Additionally, check out the page for more information.

Gotta dig it. Ted Dolotta announced that the winner of the Unix license plate auction is John Mashey (author of the Mashey Shell- Bourne predecessor and VP of MIPS/SGI). $6k and it all goes to charity.

Gregory Seidman writes "News.com is reporting that SGI is killing off Cosmo Software now that the sale to Sony has fallen through. Perhaps the Open Source community can prevail upon SGI and/or Cosmo to release the source of their VRML browser, CosmoPlayer."

At the worldwide Cray User Group (CUG) meeting this week, Cray Research, Inc., announced a new vector supercomputer series, the SV1 series. This is truly a nerd's computer. It is an SMP rather than NUMA machine, and each processor can do 4GFlop/s. The chips themselves are cool, too. You can take a processor and divide it up into four processing units. Some definitley innovative stuff here. The computers start at US$500,000 and will be available in August.

SGI has announced IRIX 6.5. The new release, which will be available next month, features support for up to 128 processors and allows for easier integration with other operating systems. All jokes about IRIX aside, I'm sure there's a few things Linux could learn from it - both good and bad.

Gregory Seidman writes "So this guy, Dominic Giampaolo, who now works at Be but used to work for SGI has a page of the amusingly destructive antics he and some other (former?) SGI employees perpetrated while working in the SGI AGD. " I think when Dave reads this, he'll have a new hero. This guy burns things, blows things up and launches things with tubing. Very amusing.

Scott Elyard has written an interesting editorial on the Myth of the Fall of SGI. A lot of us have written SGI off as obsolete- and they've made their share of silly blunders in the last 6 mos ( Search Slashdot for SGI to read about some of them). But Scott doesn't think so. Read what he has to say about the future of a company that a lot of us have forgotten about.

Jon A Christopher has risen through the ranks to become the new release coordinator for the LessTif project (for those unaware, LessTif is a free version of Motif, the defacto standard widget set from days of old, and days not so far off). He has written an editorial on LessTif, speaking of why it is still important today for this project to be finished, and why folks should be interested, and even join in. Read on to see what he has to say.

Rob Riggs writes " Nintendo is shopping around for a MIPS replacement, and apperently has chosen a chip by Artx to as a replacement for the SGI's Reality game coprocessor. SGI's lawsuit of Artx is on hold as they try to negotiate which nail Nintendo uses to hammer the coffin shut. "

BadlandZ sent us a link to a nice page about Stephen Hawking's visit to SGI. Spiffy if you're into that sorta thing.

Roger Bolton wrote in to complain that we ran a bit on SGI dropping MIPS, and unfairly neglected the good stuff happenin'. Specifically he says " a) SGI is porting IRIX to IA-64, IRIX will continue to be developed for high scalability, true 64 bit, fault tolerant systems. b) SGI has teamed up with Intel to develop new high bandwidth architectures and graphics pipes for IA machines. c) As well as Windows NT IA-32 (Pentium II) machines, SGI will release IA-64 workstations which can dual boot IRIX or Windows NT. d) SGI's servers with IA-64 processors will only run IRIX and will scale to 128+ CPUS using SGI's ccNUMA architecture."

I had high hopes for SGI, but it just doesn't seem like they are really going to matter now that they are trying to just be an uber clone maker with a few extra spiffy technologies. They should ditch IRIX, endorse Linux, and concentrate on awesome hardware and software. High end SGI Hardware/Software running an optimized, open Linux? It would fly! I'd prefer an SGI running Linux to an x86 box any day, they just need to throw their weight behind it and make it cost effective. It would be an excellent alternative to Wintel.