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Texas Instruments has spun a new IP camera system-on-chip (SoC) that enables 1080p video and analytics for the video surveillance market. The TMS320DMVA1 SoC combines an ARM9 core, a new Vision analytics co-processor, and a codec co-processor, and is offered in a Linux-ready DMVA1 IP camera reference design, says TI.

Noted iPhone and PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz, or GeoHot, told the gaming community not to update their systems until he was able to release custom firmware allowing them to continue using their Linux partitions, and it looks as if he's close to his goal. A new video posted today shows the hack, although a release date hasn't been given for the rest of us to download his work.

The Ubuntu developers have announced that Ubuntu 10.04 will be abandoning its switch to Yahoo search as the default search provider on the Ubuntu desktop and returning to use Google's search. The switch to Yahoo was announced in January and lauded as part of a revenue sharing deal which would provide "revenue [which] will help Canonical to provide developers and resources to continue the open development of Ubuntu and the Ubuntu Platform".

The Horde open source messaging and groupware project is gearing up for the first major release of its application suite and development environment in years with version 4, which is due to arrive in mid-2010. Horde has a long history since the first release of the framework over a decade ago. Version 3 first appeared in late 2004 and since then a large ecosystem of applications has flourished around it -- from Web-based PIM to photo management.

Last week, to the surprise of patent lawyers and the biotechnology industry, advocates for technological freedom won an enormous victory against socially harmful distortions of patent law. The Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York held invalid patents owned by Myriad Genetics on diagnostic testing for genetic susceptibility to the most common hereditary forms of breast and ovarian cancer. By "patenting" the right to determine whether the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are present in the relevant mutated form in a women's genome, Myriad Genetics has been able to exclude all other laboratories from conducting the test. Patients and their insurers have paid much more, and women and their families have waited crucial weeks longer than necessary for information relevant to treatment and potentially affecting survival.

Creating patches is usually handwork; fixing one specific issue at a time. Once in a while though, there is janitorial work to be done or some infrastructure to change. Then, a larger number of issues have to be taken care of simultaneously, yet all of them are following the same basic pattern, e.g. a replacement. Such tasks are often addressed at the source-code level using scripts in sed, perl, and the like. This article examines the usage of Coccinelle, a tool targeted at exactly those kinds of repetitive patching jobs. Because Coccinelle understands C syntax, though, it can handle those jobs much more easily.

I used to review linux, some of you may remember either knolinux or new2linux websites. Every once and a while a former reader would email and ask, "what happened?" How do you explain certain things in life? It wasn't health, family, ideological changes, or anything even close to resembling something dramatic. I simply took a new job...at Microsoft. No, I am not a programmer, so it wasn't even remotely related to operating systems, office, or anything that makes them money. It was mobile search, so in fact the pieces I worked on actually cost them several hundreds of millions of dollars. I digress. Since I left them after my 18 months of pain, shame and learning how lame it really is to not be a programmer, I have been working ever since on getting back into my engineering discipline and my love for linux. No, I wasn't forced to stop using Linux, I simply made a decision to try to understand my company's products, as I had spent nearly a decade of trying to make sense of what came out of Redmond. I only take from my time there a learning of how not to manage products, how not to spend money going after lost causes simply to try and beat others, and that free soda just doesn't make up for the slow and steady pull of life from the lack of color in the offices.

Almost simultaneously with the first series 1.8 X Server, the developers have also updated Mesa3D and various drivers. Four new stable kernels offer bug fixes and minor improvements. The X Server isn't the only component for which a new version has recently been released, as many other components that impact the graphics support in Linux distributions have also been updated in the past two weeks.

Ubuntu Linux is gearing up for the debut of its latest release with Ubuntu 10.04, codenamed "the Lucid Lynx" and scheduled for general availability at the end of the month. It's a release that offers multiple new features on the desktop and a new look to Ubuntu Linux.

The O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) has posted sessions and keynotes for its annual conference. Scheduled for July 19-23, at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, OSCON features keynotes including Google's Chris DiBona, Facebook's David Recordon, Canonical's Simon Wardley, and the GNOME Foundation's Stormy Peters.

On April 1, Sony released firmware update 3.21 for the PS3, an update that disabled the Install Other OS function on the older, bulkier PS3s. Sony's official reason: "Security Concerns." Now, nearly a week later, consumers are reporting that the update has led to a variety of bugs, including slowed internet connections, controller compatibility issues, and resolution issues when using HDMI. And that's if the update installs at all, as there have been reports that the download cycle hits an endless loop and never fully completes.

A few years ago I wrote on OSNews several articles (1,2) about workstations. After three years I had to stop, because there were no workstations left on the market, they became legacy and were not sold any more. Now with the rise of mobile devices with touchscreen and wireless network connectivity virtually everywhere, the question becomes valid, what will happen with the desktop computers, are they still needed, or will they follow the workstations on their way to computer museums?

Google's open source Android mobile operating system (OS) has continued to grow and gain US market share over other popular mobile operating systems in recent months. According to a February 2010 Mobile Subscriber Market Share report from US market research firm comScore, Google's smarpthone OS has grown more than 5 percentage points since November of 2009 alone – far more than any of its competitors. The positive trend means that Android now holds an overall US market share of 9%. The comScore report surveyed current mobile subscribers age 13 and older to find out what device manufacturer and platform they were using.

GNOME 2.30 was originally intended to coincide with GNOME 3.0 -- a massive cleanup and rethinking of the popular desktop. However, GNOME 3.0 is delayed for at least another release, which leaves GNOME 2.30 as most likely the last version in a series stretching back almost a decade. You will find signs of what is coming, including 3.0 previews, but, for the most part, like its predecessors, GNOME 2.30 is a collection of generally unrelated improvements. Unlike recent KDE releases, a specific direction is hard to see, unless it is an emphasis on improved usability and, to a lesser extent, application inter-connectivity as part of the cleanup for the big release.

A Swedish firm called People of Lava has announced what appears to be the world's first Android-powered TV. The Scandinavia Window to the World TV runs Android 1.5 on a Cortex-A8 processor, and offers HD with 1920 x 1080 resolution, available in 42-, 47-, and 55-inch models, says the company.

IBM says that they are within their rights to protect their investment in mainframe technology and have not broken their 2005 pledge. IBM had sent a letter to TurboHercules SAS listing patents that believed the open source mainframe emulator could possibly infringe. IBM say they were not claiming the patents were infringed but that the letter was an illustration of the company's patent portfolio related to mainframe technology.

Just when it seemed like Microsoft's European anti-trust tangle on browser choice in Windows was over, trouble is stirring again. Opera Software has told The Reg that it has informed the European Union of a possible problem with a fix that was designed to make Internet Explorer in Windows comply with EU antitrust law. Opera has also informed Microsoft.

Most images on the web such as JPG, PNG, and GIF are raster images – grids of pixels that each hold a color value. Raster images are great for photos of real people and events, but they have drawbacks. When you scale a raster image up or down in size, you’re losing data and/or clarity in the image. Color intensity can also be lost in conversions and compression, leaving you with a mangled version of what you once wanted. A great alternative for many situations is to use vector graphics. Inkscape is a powerful free vector drawing program for Windows, Linux, and Mac, and this guide will get you started with using it to create your own smooth, colorful, scalable graphics.

Microsoft has come under heavy criticism for its role in the standardisation process for its Office Open XML (OOXML) standard at the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO). In a blog entry on the second anniversary of the specification's adoption as an ISO standard, Alex Brown, convenor of the Office Open XML (OOXML) Ballot Resolution Meeting at the ISO, has stated that Microsoft is failing to implement commitments on transforming OOXML into an open ISO standard. He summarises the situation thus, "It seems to me that without a change of direction the entire OOXML project is now surely heading for failure."

It was both an honor and a surprise. When I was notified by Mr. Hugh Forrest that I had been nominated for the Dewey Winburne Community Service Award, it was surprising. When I was named as the 2010 Dewey Award winner, I was humbled... And a bit bothered. The Dewey Award is traditionally given to individuals and having come to understand a bit more about the man, Dewey Winburne, I fully appreciate the recognition and the reason behind it. Still...