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.

news.com is reporting that the last MIPS chip will be the R14000. This is particularly surprising as MIPS is doing well in the embedded market.

This is the first of a series of articles investigating the interplay between Open Source Software and commercial vendors. The common thread will be to find out how authors have earned a living from writing and servicing GPL/Open Source Software.

The series kicks off with Michael Tiemann, one of the founders of Cygnus Solutions, and author of the C++ component of GCC. Cygnus is one of the pioneers in commercial support for open-source software. It sells support and customization services for the gnu programming tools (gcc, gdb, ld, etc). Initially, the Free Software Foundation applauded this, but more recently, RMS feels that by also selling proprietary software Cygnus has betrayed the principle of free software.

In this interview, Michael discusses what it takes to set up a business based on open source software, what Cygnus hopes to add to GCC, and why they took the decision to sell closed source software.

George Russell. posted his predictions for the future to c.o.l.a. and sent a copy of it here as well. Hit the link below to read his predictions- I think he's pretty much right on with most of his guesses.

William Lachance wrote in to tell us that John Carmack's .plan file has updated with interesting stuff about Rhapsody. finger johnc@idsoftware.com for the whole scoop. James M. sent in this related link to blue's news where Carmack is quoted as saying that as part of the MS/SGI deal, MS owns OpenGL, so it is unlikely that there will be rhapsody (or Linux or Be) OpenGL.

news.com is running this story where they discuss the major problem with Unix- the fact that it has so many flavors that vendors can't support hardware properly. This is obviously true, but diversity is also something that really is interesting under unix as well. Of course if you read RedHat's estimates on Linux workstations, Linux is growing at a strong clip relative to the total unix market. In a few years it may be the standard. Hope Sun, Digital, SGI and SCO are paying attention. Thanks to Robert Gash (NashMan) who sent this link in.

Ton Roosendaal of NeoGeo wrote in with some clarifications after all the hub bub that's been moving through here at Slashdot about Blender. The main point he makes is that Blender is freeware. Read on to read his comments.

Charles Esteban Paul wrote in to tell us about the Blender 3D Software. He says "The Blender is being released by NeoGeo for FREE. Currently it is only for the SGI, however they are planning a Linux port next month." Hope this comes true!

A story on OS News pointed to this story that talks about SGI's planned line of NT based PC workstations. Personally, this breaks my heart. I had always though of SGI as a Unix champion (jokes about Irix aside) and it hurts to see them pushing NT. Is this the begining of the end for SGI or a great new strategy?

Aspirin The Fox wrote in to tell us that Mark Kilgard, famous OpenGL advocate, and disappeared from SGI. This information was announced on an OpenGL game developers list. Is this related to the cozying up of MS & SGI during the Fahrenheit deal?

Dan Marks wrote in to let us know that SGI has a new CEO:Richard Belluzzo. Richard used to be a General manager of sorts over at HP. Read more here.

Daryll Strauss, daryll@harlot.rb.ca.us has announced in the 3dfx.glide.linux newsgroup that a port of the killer tank game, BZFlag is now available for linux. I think it might only work with the 3Dfx card, but I'm not sure. It's great to see more people taking advantage of the hard work that the 3Dfx guys and the Mesa folks have put in. What other projects do you know of that use this new code?