Dan Christian asks: "I just got off the phone with SGI support. They tell me that they are no longer offering software support packs for their Linux boxes and my initial 90day support has run out. Where can I find good free information or third party support for my SGI 300L? This is really annoying, since the box is only 4 months old and there was no notice that it was becoming un-supported."

Thanks to Dare Obasanjo for conducting this interview with [Miguel De Icaza], and sending it on to me. I've posted the interview below here - interesting answers, and very thorough. Well done, Dare.

Packetknife writes: "It would seem SGI has dropped support for their Pro64 compiler suite. Many people are aware that SGI has some of the best compiler people in the business. Their contributions would be most excellent and I'm hoping they continue heavy support for GCC. Either way, they are asking for feedback. Please send email to IA64devtools@oss.sgi.com to let them know you want this project to continue and contribute to GCC as well. Any work SGI does on the compilers will help all platforms and the whole community."

Little Sheep writes: "An interesting round-up interview regarding modern Linux filesystems is published by OSNews, featuring the developers behind IBM's JFS, ReiserFS and SGI's XFS filesystems."

j2brown writes: " Yahoo! News has this little article about IBM taking Linux to Hollywood. " It's not a very in-depth article, but it is interesting that Big Blue is saying that Hollywood will be moving their rendering stuffs to Linux in the next 12 to 18 months. Wonder how SGI feels about that.

Troy Baer writes: "SGI and the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) have announced the installation of the first cluster using Itanium processors. The system consists of 73 SGI 750 nodes, each with two Itanium 733MHz procs and 4GB of memory, connected by Myrinet 2000 and Ethernet. Software includes Linux/ia64, SGI's ia64 compiler suite, MPICH/ch_gm, OpenPBS, and Maui Scheduler."

Zurk writes "Here's an article with the inside scoop on how animation studios and special effects shops actually deploy Linux in house. Also mentions how the Linux systems are replacing SGI systems at a rapid clip and some regular user comments on working with linux for graphics work."

green pizza writes "In prepairing for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (the FF movie), I found the following articles on the technology behind the picture. Very impressive stuff, I like how they developed their own modeler plugins and render shaders to get even closer to photorealistic humans. What did amaze me, though, was their heavy use of Silicon Graphics systems, as I was under the impression that the movie was developed on Sony GSCube machines. Turns out the movie was modeled and composited on SGI systems and rendered on a huge Linux cluster. SGI's press room has information, as well as fan movie sites, aplenty."

Zurk writes: "SGI is turning off its famous employee web server http://reality.sgi.com on August 15th. The machine has been running for nearly 10 YEARS and has resulted in a number of really kewl IRIX applications (and some linux ones as well) distributed from employee web pages at SGI. Games/source code/pictures/irix tips and examples of working life at this once great company will no longer be available." Seems like the sort of thing that every business ought to maintain, for employee sanity and general niceness -- too bad this one is about to go.

At about the same time, two readers sent in questions about those expensive LCD panels that, if you are not fortunate enough to own one, you are envious of anyone who does (I know I am!). However, these two questions raise some interesting issues which I'm sure those of you looking to buy one, may be asking as soon as you make that purchase. One issue is longevity: how long do those LCD pixels last? Another issue is cost: why don't LCD manufacturers make lower-cost Monochrome LCD screens available for those who don't need to work in full-color glory?

mirko writes: "Here's a link to some weird projects that consist of recycling old servers. You have the SGI Fridge, but also the VAXbar, the SGI Espresso Machine, the VaxTap2000Pro and the SGI HiFi-Miniset. Now that you recycled the case, you can get inspiration from this project in order to recycle their inside components..." We've linked to some of these before, but a couple of them are new (to me, anyway).

Slashback tonight with stuff to chew on re: XFS, the baseball-Everquest connection, and whether it's safe to login at SourceForge. Oh, and yet more on the state of HAL. Please read safely.

foobar104 writes: "Today SGI announced their SGI 750 server, a dual-processor IA-64 system based on the W460GXBS2 motherboard from Intel. The 750 will ship with Linux (probably SGI's tweaked version of Red Hat; that's what they've used before), and they say it'll be available in July. (Usually that means first customer shipment in July, with volume shipments coming sometime after that.) The press release is here, and more technical info can be found here. In other news, HP also announced some IA-64 products today."

Andrew Klaassen writes "Layoffs at SGI yesterday hit, among other things, the XFS for Linux project. Project lead Steve Lord writes, "We do intend to keep working on XFS linux, and I do intend to work really hard to get it into the distributions and Alan and Linus's kernels, [but] it will take us a little while to regroup our efforts and to work out our priorities on the project...." He also mentions that LinuxCare will no longer be helping out with funding for the port."

JigSaw writes: "Is the world ready for yet another Operating System? Travis Geiselbrecht, an ex-BeOS kernel engineer, seems to think so. (He is actually the one who wrote the Linux ext2 filesystem add-on for BeOS). He recently put up on his web site his personal Operating System, NewOS, with full source code. The OS was written from scratch and it is very modern and powerful as you can see from its feature set. It currently runs on x86 and... Sega Dreamcast but he is planning ports for Alpha, SGI and Sun Blade machines in the near future."

Delrin writes "This article on Zdnet reports on how Linux is slowly becoming an important player in the high-end graphic design industry. The latest upcoming movie "Shrek" a perfect example. Dreamworks and others are turning to linux for a large portion of their work, turning away from the likes of SGI and Microsoft." The movie looks visually astonishing: I'm definitely checking it out asap. Hopefully the story can live up the credits (Mike Meyers, John Lithgow, Eddie Murphy) and the visuals (the trailers blow away much of Toy Story 2).

Slashback items tonight on India's satellite launch, a bi-coastal EFF-organized protest (yes, will involve leaving your cubicle, basement, silo, remote farm, etc.), Apple not falling far from the tree, and the death of Indrema. Read on below :)

Jeremy Allison wrote in to tell us that Samba 2.2.0 has been released. Of course, I'm sure everyone reading this knows what that means already, so I've attached the press release. Mostly this looks like its stuff for compatibility with Windows "We just changed enough to break everyone else" 2000's implementation of the protocol. Congrats to everyone involved with what is unquesitonably among the most important server apps on Linux.

One of the things I try to focus on with Ask Slashdot questions are issues involving trademarks and the big guy trying to rob the little guy out of a name, or a domain that they may have had for years. Although this was necessary to stop the domain squatters out to make a quick buck, it seems to have turned into a corporate right to harass everyone. Long before the internet was a household name, people registered domains or created project names that they didn't think would cause problems and now, years later, they are finding out how wrong they were, and how the laws can rob their project's identity. What follows is a question regarding SGI their quest to go after anyone with any name starting with "Open" or containing "GL". How long is it, before corporations begin to carve up the English dictionary and we won't be able to use a single word without following it with "(tm)"?

Starting the show off with some cool do-it-yourselfer sorta projects: Diederik Meijer submitted the The Silicon Graphics Refrigerator Project (or: How To Turn a $175.000 High-End SGI Challenge DM Server into a Fridge). Next up, mdaughtrey built a Mechanical Hit Counter jrbx1 sent us a link to an in-dash Atari 2600. Even coolor is that the dash its in is attached to a 1978 volkswagon ;) rednax sent us a review of a kit for adding neon to your PC. If you're not skilled enough to hack how it works, at least you can pretend you're cool and hack how it looks! I Nothing is more dangerous then glewtion's link to a story about a sculpture in england that that worries people since the heat it generates cook fry a bird mid-air. Oh, and I lied: even more dangerous then art is amasci's link to making pet ball-lightning. In your microwave, duh. If you've got some spare time, MxTxL submitted something that we've been seeing more of, email games. This one is battlemail, which apparently is glorified addictive paper rock scissors. f you were an Anime character, here's some helpful hints to keep in mind. Hieronymus Coward sent us a bit about The Drew Carrey Show featuring a 2 minute segment based on the sims. I wonder if they will use the vibromatic bed, actually the next expansion comes out soon (today?) so I probably am gonna have to resurrect my neighborhood sometime soon. Thirsty? Dipfan sent in a story about Coke wanting to put soda fountain style coke in every house right next to the water dispenser. Got Carbonated Milk? Finally for a little random product plugging, Rustin H. Wright found a place selling penguin crossing signs. Finally, anotherone noted that you can use Google in full swedish bork bork chef glory.