This is part three of Ars' guide about virtualisation. "Part 1 described three ways in which a component might be virtualized; emulation, "classic" virtualization, and paravirtualization, and part 2 described in more detail how each of these methods was used in CPU virtualization. But the CPU is not the only part of a computer that can use these techniques; although hardware devices are quite different from a CPU, similar approaches are equally useful."

OpenOffice 3.2 has been released featuring faster load times and a host of new features. The OpenOffice team have made version 3.2 of the open source office suite for Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Solaris available to download. It offers numerous enhancements over its predecessor which offer both stability and speed benefits.

Sometimes, you come across news items that make you go "eh...?" This is definitely one of them: Microsoft has announced a new anti-piracy update for Windows 7 that phones home every 90 days to check for new activation cracks, but the update is entirely optional - which kind of makes me wonder about the point.

"Since we released Chrome for Mac in beta last December, we've been busy adding new features. Today, after some incubation in the developer channel, we're happy to make some of these features more widely available. The new beta release of Chrome for Mac offers extensions, bookmark sync, and more."

"Silvan Scherrer and Dmitry A. Kuminov have released the GA of the port of the Qt 4 application framework to OS/2 and eComStation, i.e., version 4.5.1 GA. The new release comes with complete support for drag and drop, session management, SQLite3, and includes the Qt Designer application."

"When it comes to defining open source, licensing is a critical topic since it's the license that helps to make an application or effort open. But for Michael Tiemann, president of the Open Source Initiative, it's not necessarily the only key success factor for open source projects."

The Mom of all internet companies, Google, has announced today that it will effectively become an internet service provider. The company is planning on building a number of ultra high-speed broadband networks in select locations in the United States, serving anywhere between 50000 and 500000 users.

As should be common knowledge by now, Apple is very restrictive and sometimes quite arbitrary in managing its App Store. One thing is clear, though: fat chance there's going to be an alternative browser in the App Store (i.e., one that doesn't use WebKit). Mozilla didn't even bother to submit Fennec, but Opera is going head-to-head with Apple: the Norwegian browser maker has announced Opera Mini for the iPhone, but has not yet submitted it for approval.

"In years past, an ISSCC presentation on a new processor would consist of detailed discussion of the chip's microarchitecture (pipeline, instruction fetch and decode, execution units, etc.), along with at least one shot of a floorplan that marked out the location of major functional blocks (the decoder, the floating-point unit, the load-store unit, etc.). This year's ISSCC is well into the many-core era, though, and with single-chip core counts ranging from six to 16, the only elements you're likely to see in a floorplan like the two below are cores, interfaces, and switches. Most of the discussion focuses on power-related arcana, but most folks are interested in the chips themselves. In this short article, I'll walk you through the floorplan of two chips with similar transistor counts - the Sun's Niagara 3 and IBM's POWER7."

"After a long wait, Apple has released the next major update to its pro-class photo workflow application, Aperture 3. The new version boasts over 200 new features, including the addition of the successful facial recognition and geotagging features, Faces and Places, that were introduced with iPhoto '09. Version 3 also adds edge-detecting adjustment brushes for non-destructive localized editing and touch-ups. Along with numerous UI and performance improvements, Aperture 3 adds full 64-bit support on supported systems running Snow Leopard."

Hand-held devices could soon have pressure-sensitive touch-screens and keys, thanks to a UK firm's material that exploits a quantum physics trick. The technology allows, for example, scrolling down a long list or webpage faster as more pressure is applied. A division of Samsung that distributes mobile phone components to several handset manufacturers has now licensed the "Quantum Tunnelling Composite". The approach could find use in devices from phones to games to GPS handsets.

While some potential users of the iPad may be put off by such things as its lack of multi-tasking, which they might have expected on a device this size, the device may prove highly useful to users with varying disabilities. Ms Ricky Buchanan runs the ATMac website, which is dedicated to accessibility issues with Apple products.

And there we are, the KDE team has released KDE Software Compilation 4.4, formerly known as, well, KDE. Major new features include social networking and online collaboration integration, the new netbook interface, the KAuth authentication framework, and a lot more.

Notebooks with dual GPUs have been shipping for a while now, but switching between the fancy discrete GPU and the low-power integrated one hasn't exactly been painless. Today, NVIDIA introduced a technology called Optimus, which makes the switching process automatic and transparent. In Windows, that is.