With new evidence that ISPs are widely throttling legal peer-to-peer file sharing, a U.S. Senate committee is holding a Net neutrality hearing on Tuesday that may signal that lawmakers are ready to debate Internet bills long languishing in Congress. The FCC chairman, in fact, says that Comcast's blocking was widespread, so much so that it happened even when there was no network congestion.

Cryptography expert Bruce Schneier says that lots of security software is 'snake oil' and that antivirus products are not sufficient, even though they are necessary, in this Q&A.

A patent filing shows that Apple is working on methods for IM, such as sending, receiving, and viewing ongoing conversations.

NetSuite and SugarCRM align with BT in deals that some analysts see as a boon to open source, while one suggests that BT could "break out as the first real net-savvy telco. That is, the first telco of the 21st century. It's beginning to look like it."

And Microsoft says that XP SP3 is available. The service pack has been a long time coming, but Microsoft deemed it released to manufacturing and XP SP3 is working its way toward OEMs and corporate customers. The public version will become available April 29.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 22, 2008 09:49 AM