Larry H. Miller's Megaplex 17 played a part in pushing “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest” to a record-shattering $132 million weekend.

The theater, at Sandy's Jordan Commons, sold 27,475 tickets to the Disney-produced action movie on Friday, Saturday and Sunday - more than any other theater in the country.

The theater ranked eighth nationwide for gross sales for the weekend, a discrepancy explained by higher ticket prices in other cities.

The Megaplex 17 had “Pirates” on 16 of its screens for sold-out Friday midnight showings. The audience demand spilled over into 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. screenings Friday.

The $132 million taken in by “Pirates” broke the previous three-day record, $114.8 million earned in 2002 by “Spider-Man.”

- Sean P. Means

Micron equips U. complex

The Micron Technology Foundation has given $273,000 in gifts to the University of Utah to help equip and furnish its new John E. and Marva M. Warnock Engineering Building.

Spokesman Stan Lockhart said Monday the donations bring Micron's support for the U. to more than $1 million over the past decade.

When completed this October, the 100,000-square-foot, four-story Warnock Building will serve nearly 3,500 engineering students, faculty and staff members.

The foundation is the charitable arm of the computer memory chip maker, which is ramping up operations at its Utah County plant toward a goal of nearly 2,000 employees by early next year.

- Bob Mims

Novell offers open training

Novell Inc., hoping to boost the use of Linux inside and outside the classroom, has unveiled two training programs.

The company's "Train the Teacher" program is a free, weeklong boot camp aimed at educators interested in teaching the "open source," or freely distributed, operating system and associated applications.

Novell also is partnering with ThomÂson Course Technology to release a series of SUSE Linux Enterprise courseware offerings.

"The long-term success of open source depends on continuous learning among members of the community," said Dan Veitkus, Novell's vice president of training services. "The next few years will mark a dynamic and exciting time for open source growth." Information on Novell's academic training programs is available at http://www.novell.com/natp.

- Bob Mims