By law, you are required to reveal all known prior art. You can sign the application with as long as it lists prior art.
By doing so, you will have reduced the chances of the patent being approved while at the same time fulfilling your legal obligation to the company. Not the best solution, but you're in a difficult spot.
I think some of those comments were inspired by the initial version of the language reference that we provided to the public. Microsoft wrote it in Microsoft meetings in which we were thinking primarily in terms of Microsoft platforms. As a result, we make references to things like COM and DLLs in the spec when really a DLL is a specific case of the more general problem of how to invoke native code on a given platform. One of the benefits of going to a standards organization and working with people like IBM, with whom we worked on the SOAP specification, is that we ensure we don't make any such references that tie us or lock us into something like the COM framework in future versions of the specification.
...I think we've done a great job supporting COM on the.NET platform. But people in the industry have been reading too much into our use of the words COM and DLL. They conclude that the.NET platform is for Windows platforms only, and that's absolutely incorrect.
People have read too much into the comments because of Microsoft's past actions. It would be really nice to think that they are fully supporting open standards for SOAP and C#. SOAP has tremendous potential. Reading this gives me some hope... Until I think about every Microsoft product's perverted implementation of standard.
I feel like a guy who just met a pretty girl at the bar. I *know* I'm not going to get to take her home, but the **slightest chance** that it might happen has me buying drinks and listening to her every word all night.
An offensive T-Shirt is illegal if it breaks decency laws.
Yes. It can be indecent to wear the shirt in public due to certain communities standards. That does not mean that you cannot distribute the shirt. Indecency does not prevent commerce (as the porn industry can readily agree).
If it is decided that mere source code is illegal, then its propogation via T-shirt print is, sadly, as illegal.
Again, it's not quite that simple. If the source code is ruled as copyright infringement, then the t-shirt is illegal unless it falls under fair use. If the source is ruled legal under DCMA, it may have different implications, but there are no precendents to determine what it would means.
There's nothing special about T-Shirts, they're merely another medium.
Finally, something I agree with. Yes, a t-shirt is just another medium, but it is a perfect tool for showing how code = speech. If the DeCSS case starts to be viewed under free speech rights (as the judge appears to be leaning), then the question becomes does the DCMA infringe on free speech. Free speech is not universal (child pornography being the prime example). At the same time, courts have been loath to restrict free speech. The T-Shirt is just a magnificant visual aid to prove that code is nothing more than language. Most non-programmers have a hard time understanding this. I can think of nothing better than a T-Shirt to illustrate how code is language.
"Look I'm wearing a T-Shirt. It has DECSS Source on it. I'm wearing it because I disagree with the DCMA and the MPAA. I'm wearing it as a political protest. It is my form of political speech. In fact, while wearing this shirt, I am going to recite, from memory, the DECSS source. Are you going to stop me from speaking? Can you stop people from listening to me speak?"
The quoted line is misleading out of context. The article actually says:
In addition, sources said Apple is considering adding pen-input support to the trackpad of Mercury, the company's next-generation PowerBook G4.
"The idea is to eliminate the need for a keyboard," said one source familiar with Apple's plans.
So the Powerbook will have a keyboard, it will have a trackpad. You can write on the trackpad with a stylus if you choose, but it does not replace the keyboard on the new powebooks.
BTW, how does wiretapping interact with encrypted data? What if they tap the email and discover that it's all PGP'ed? Can they brute-force it?
At the surface, it seems like they should be able to brute force it consistent with the court order for the wire tap. Just out of curosity, though, what about the DMCA's protections on decoding encrypted information?
To wit: From Jack Valenti's, MPAA Chairman, deposition:
10 Q You said any use of DVD that involves 11 coping is illegal. Is that right? 12 A I think what I said was, any time you 13 circumvent encryption according to the DMCA you're 14 violating the law. That's what I said.
It seems to me, if DMCA is used that broadly, couldn't it be used to argue against the FBI decrypting email communication?
Just a thought.
DocuLex Alternative to Adobe Acrobat Capture
on
From Paper To PDF?
·
· Score: 1
DocuLex has a program that is certified by Adobe and an alternative to Acrobat Capture. It is actually used by the Ricoh scanner you linked to. It appears to be cheaper.
I haven't had much luck finding anything cheaper. Ideally, I would like something to hook up to our digital copier and convert the scans to.pdf files. I've talked to every photocopier company and no one has a product. They seem to be missing a huge market, but ohwell.
It seems like the media has focused solely on the effect of the Internet on candidates' ability to communicate to voters. It reminds me of the media fascination with e-commerce and it's dealings with the consumer. E-commerce is important, but it ignores a large market of business to business commerce. It is only recently that the media has started to cover business to business commerce.
I think the same thing may be occuring regarding candidates' use of the Internet. I worked as a field director for a political campaign. We had a web site to communicate with voters, but it was not where the Internet had the largest impact on our campaign. The largest impact came behind the scenes.
Therefore, here are my questions:
How are you using the Internet to facililate communication between staff members, volunteers, etc?
How has the Internet affected your targeting efforts or GOTV efforts (Get out the Vote)? Do precincts still make the best indicator of a geographical area to target for GOTV efforts or have your databases allowed to target people more specifically?
Have you seen any parallels between the type of communication that happens in a vote-by-mail or absentee GOTV effort and your Internet efforts?
How is your voter database maintained? Do you share information with Congressional campaigns as well as the National Democratic Party? [When I was working on our campaign, the Dems didn't share any data.]
How has the Internet changed the media monitoring, opponent research, etc.?
Finally, do you believe that the relationship between voters and candidates through the Internet has been the bigger impact on campaigns or is it the behind the scenes efficiencies and communication that has had the larger impact?
Slashdot is not affected by equal access laws if I understand it correctly.
I believe equal access only affects broadcast media. It is part of the FCC licensing process because the broadcast spectrum is considered a public good that is leased to private entities. Newspapers are not governed by equal access laws.
Therefore, the question becomes whether the Internet follows broadcast or print precedents. My guess is that it would follow print. The real tricky questions would come if they interviewed Gore on Geeks in Space. Does internet radio follow radio law? Hmm...
I'm by no means a campaign law expert, but I've been field director on a congressional campaign and became quite well versed with all the laws [when people decided to follow them].
LOL! I could hear the old Saturday Night Live "Coffee Talk" skit. I believe it was Michael Meyers as a jewish woman who would always say one of two sentences and choke up. Then she would tell everyone to "Talk amongst yourselves."
The only "problem" that I have with Jon's writing relates to the grammar and repetition of his articles. At the same time, I enjoy his opinions, and his articles on Columbine and the conversation that followed them were some of the most intense and insightful articles that I have read/participated in during the last year.
Jon, I recognize that you're very busy and Slashdot does not have an editor to assist you with the creation of your articles. The articles you write are powerful and insightful. I want to acknowledge your contribution to Slashdot. I also see that it would be possible for your articles to reach even more people if more care was given to the construction of the articles.
I would suggest "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser. Next to Strunk and White, I consider it the classic book on writing.
I admire the fact that you have had several books published. I want to challenge you that even though you have had success as a writer, that you can become an even better one. Besides, publishing success does not necessarily mean that something is well written [See any Stephen Covey book for proof:-) ].
Finally, if you ever would like someone to review your articles prior to their posting to look for grammatical errors or repetition, I would be more than willing to do so.
Agreed. Thankfully, IBM just released the specifications for the PPC motherboards for anyone to use and create freely. (I'd say they open sourc'd it, but I feel that I'd be using the word improperly--plus it's really a noun, not a verb).
ARGH! I tried to find a link to the slashdot article or something on macweek/techweb/etc, but I couldn't find it. Anyone have the info?
The Internet will change campaigns, but not in the way that Jon described. I think it will be awhile before we see a major candidate use the Internet effectively for reaching voters.
Why would a candidate devote energy towards reaching voters through the Internet? As someone noted, the percentage of net-savvy voters is too small and too diverse to justify the expense. What technology would the candidate use? Spam? Web Pages? And if a web page, why would people visit it?
I think the first real significant political fallout from the Internet will come within campaigns, political action committees, political parties and public interest groups. Within these organizations there is a real need to share resources and information.
These organizations will utilize the net to mobilize people interested in their cause, to share information and databases with similar organizations, and to refine their skills at influencing public opinion. The political parties will miss the boat if they do not develop a network sharing information akin to the network that Great Harvest Baking uses to share information among its store owners. In the same way that Extranets allow businesses to share information throughout their sales channels, political groups can use the Internet to organize their mainly disparate members and contributors.
I expect that the first time we read about the Internet seriously disrupting politics as usual it will be from a normally marginilized group that uses the Internet to gain a political victory (lobbying, election, etc.) that they could not have done without the Community and Communication tools of the Internet.
www.macosrumors.com has a slightly different version of events. Of course, they are only talking about Sawtooth not Shark, but it sounds like the recent controversy has changed Apple's attitude a little.
Macworld made the decision about a year ago to start covering *nix-type issues because MacOS X will be running on top of NetBSD (or did they decide to use FreeBSD instead?).
In addition, many Mac users feel like kindred spirits to Linux users. The operating systems may be vastly different, but the rejection of Windows and belief that the OS does matter makes the Mac community pull for the Linux community.
Finally, if Linux became popular on PPC, the market for PPC hardware components would decrease as the market size increase (good old economies of scale).
Organizing a Geek Political Interest Group
on
GEEK Unions?
·
· Score: 1
As many people have said, Jon is talking more about a Political Interest Group than a Union persay. The interest group can become everything from a trade association, to a paid lobbying organization, to a grass-roots organization.
The problem with an political interest group is overcoming the freerider problem derived from Economics, but observed in great detail when it comes to organizing interest groups. The basic rules are:
Smaller groups are easier to organize than larger ones--It is easier for members of a smaller group to keep track of the participation of its members than larger groups.
Organizations seeking selective benefits are easier to organize than those seeking collective benefits--Industries that organize around lobbying for a tax break that only benefits their industry have a lot easier time organizing that a public interest group organizing around a benefit that everyone receives no matter how much they contribute to the cause.
The reason that a geek interest group probably would not work are because of those two rules of the freerider problem. Geeks are a large group of people geographically diverse and **generally** seeking collective benefits. For an individual geek, it makes more sense to not become involved with any particular issue. If the issue is won, the geek will still benefit because **everyone** benefits. Even better, by not participating, the geek has got something without scarificing time, money or energy.
The ways that I see geeks overcoming the freerider problem is because we tend to be a little more dogmatic (i.e., environmentalists overcome the freerider problem based on passion, geeks could do the same) and because geeks have never seen-before power to communicate quickly.
I do agree that geeks hold a power card that we are not using effectively. However, I don't know if the power card is enough to overcome the inherent freerider problem.
Alright, enough of my political science theory tangent. Back to the topic.
This case reminds me a lot of the case involving a news site that linked to many national newspapers. The news site kept their name and advertising in a frame while linking to the non-affliated new sites. The courts ruled against the news site because it was unclear to consumers that the news that they were viewing was not part of the original site they visited.
The article's description of the problem was very poor. It's more than just linking.
As long as the ASCAP limits its scope to organizations using frames in this manner, I think they are completely right. Like everyone else, I am skeptical of them given the music industry's history and the comments made in the article. However, I'm to hesistantly agree with them.
Besides, if it convinces people to stop using frames, we'd all be better off. I'm proud to say the only html tags I have never used are for frames.
Apple claims that they are selling a large percentage of iMacs to new computer buyers and a substantial percentage to people who previously owned PCs. There was quite about of media coverage when Apple published these percentages. Sorry I don't have a link. I know that they talked about it during the last Shareholders meeting. Given that information, there is no way for Future Power to claim that it isn't competing.
I understand the concerns about AOL trying to piggy-back on the efforts of Cable companies (i.e. getting access without the costs of rolling out the cable). However, I think it makes sense in light of the way telephone and DSL services are governed. In the Northwest, US West controls the lines and we pay US West for the lines. However, the ISP is open. When it came to DSL, those were the conditions established.
Cable has traditional been viewed as a local monopoly. The barriers for entry into the cable market were too high to promote competition; therefore, local governments negiotated contracts on behalf of their citzens with the cable companies. I believe it is entirely feasible that as a condition of that contract that the cable companies should have the same competitive situation as the phone company. Sell the line as a monopoly--compete on the access.
Of course, I have a larger stake in this argument than most. In Portland, where I live, the local government refused to approved the TCI-AT&T merger and refused to allow TCI to offer cable modems unless TCI offers alternatives for ISP selection. The local government argues that its contract with TCI stipulates that the utility commission approve changes in service and ownership. Hence, unless AT&T/TCI agrees to a DSL-like model where they compete on as service providers, they will not be able to sell cable modems. AT&T/TCI are suing the City of Portland and Multnomah County over this issue. For a brief article look at Oregonlive.com.
As many people have stated, the strength of the Senator's bill is in the details. However, the concept and logic are solid. Of course, even if the bill looks good, it doesn't mean that it won't get buried or that the House will approve a similar measure. Where is AT&T based? What are the chances that the Senator for AT&T state will filibuster and kill the bill?
Slashdot Mirror
What about looking for, and finding, prior art?
By law, you are required to reveal all known prior art. You can sign the application with as long as it lists prior art.
By doing so, you will have reduced the chances of the patent being approved while at the same time fulfilling your legal obligation to the company. Not the best solution, but you're in a difficult spot.
...I think we've done a great job supporting COM on the .NET platform. But people in the industry have been reading too much into our use of the words COM and DLL. They conclude that the .NET platform is for Windows platforms only, and that's absolutely incorrect.
People have read too much into the comments because of Microsoft's past actions. It would be really nice to think that they are fully supporting open standards for SOAP and C#. SOAP has tremendous potential. Reading this gives me some hope... Until I think about every Microsoft product's perverted implementation of standard.
I feel like a guy who just met a pretty girl at the bar. I *know* I'm not going to get to take her home, but the **slightest chance** that it might happen has me buying drinks and listening to her every word all night.
An offensive T-Shirt is illegal if it breaks decency laws.
Yes. It can be indecent to wear the shirt in public due to certain communities standards. That does not mean that you cannot distribute the shirt. Indecency does not prevent commerce (as the porn industry can readily agree).
If it is decided that mere source code is illegal, then its propogation via T-shirt print is, sadly, as illegal.
Again, it's not quite that simple. If the source code is ruled as copyright infringement, then the t-shirt is illegal unless it falls under fair use. If the source is ruled legal under DCMA, it may have different implications, but there are no precendents to determine what it would means.
There's nothing special about T-Shirts, they're merely another medium.
Finally, something I agree with. Yes, a t-shirt is just another medium, but it is a perfect tool for showing how code = speech. If the DeCSS case starts to be viewed under free speech rights (as the judge appears to be leaning), then the question becomes does the DCMA infringe on free speech. Free speech is not universal (child pornography being the prime example). At the same time, courts have been loath to restrict free speech. The T-Shirt is just a magnificant visual aid to prove that code is nothing more than language. Most non-programmers have a hard time understanding this. I can think of nothing better than a T-Shirt to illustrate how code is language.
"Look I'm wearing a T-Shirt. It has DECSS Source on it. I'm wearing it because I disagree with the DCMA and the MPAA. I'm wearing it as a political protest. It is my form of political speech. In fact, while wearing this shirt, I am going to recite, from memory, the DECSS source. Are you going to stop me from speaking? Can you stop people from listening to me speak?"
In addition, sources said Apple is considering adding pen-input support to the trackpad of Mercury, the company's next-generation PowerBook G4.
"The idea is to eliminate the need for a keyboard," said one source familiar with Apple's plans.
So the Powerbook will have a keyboard, it will have a trackpad. You can write on the trackpad with a stylus if you choose, but it does not replace the keyboard on the new powebooks.
At the surface, it seems like they should be able to brute force it consistent with the court order for the wire tap. Just out of curosity, though, what about the DMCA's protections on decoding encrypted information?
To wit: From Jack Valenti's, MPAA Chairman, deposition:
10 Q You said any use of DVD that involves
11 coping is illegal. Is that right?
12 A I think what I said was, any time you
13 circumvent encryption according to the DMCA you're
14 violating the law. That's what I said.
It seems to me, if DMCA is used that broadly, couldn't it be used to argue against the FBI decrypting email communication?
Just a thought.
I haven't had much luck finding anything cheaper. Ideally, I would like something to hook up to our digital copier and convert the scans to
It seems like the media has focused solely on the effect of the Internet on candidates' ability to communicate to voters. It reminds me of the media fascination with e-commerce and it's dealings with the consumer. E-commerce is important, but it ignores a large market of business to business commerce. It is only recently that the media has started to cover business to business commerce.
I think the same thing may be occuring regarding candidates' use of the Internet. I worked as a field director for a political campaign. We had a web site to communicate with voters, but it was not where the Internet had the largest impact on our campaign. The largest impact came behind the scenes.
Therefore, here are my questions:
How are you using the Internet to facililate communication between staff members, volunteers, etc?
How has the Internet affected your targeting efforts or GOTV efforts (Get out the Vote)? Do precincts still make the best indicator of a geographical area to target for GOTV efforts or have your databases allowed to target people more specifically?
Have you seen any parallels between the type of communication that happens in a vote-by-mail or absentee GOTV effort and your Internet efforts?
How is your voter database maintained? Do you share information with Congressional campaigns as well as the National Democratic Party? [When I was working on our campaign, the Dems didn't share any data.]
How has the Internet changed the media monitoring, opponent research, etc.?
Finally, do you believe that the relationship between voters and candidates through the Internet has been the bigger impact on campaigns or is it the behind the scenes efficiencies and communication that has had the larger impact?
Thanks.
Slashdot is not affected by equal access laws if I understand it correctly.
I believe equal access only affects broadcast media. It is part of the FCC licensing process because the broadcast spectrum is considered a public good that is leased to private entities. Newspapers are not governed by equal access laws.
Therefore, the question becomes whether the Internet follows broadcast or print precedents. My guess is that it would follow print. The real tricky questions would come if they interviewed Gore on Geeks in Space. Does internet radio follow radio law? Hmm...
I'm by no means a campaign law expert, but I've been field director on a congressional campaign and became quite well versed with all the laws [when people decided to follow them].
LOL! I could hear the old Saturday Night Live "Coffee Talk" skit. I believe it was Michael Meyers as a jewish woman who would always say one of two sentences and choke up. Then she would tell everyone to "Talk amongst yourselves."
Too funny.
The only "problem" that I have with Jon's writing relates to the grammar and repetition of his articles. At the same time, I enjoy his opinions, and his articles on Columbine and the conversation that followed them were some of the most intense and insightful articles that I have read/participated in during the last year.
:-) ].
Jon, I recognize that you're very busy and Slashdot does not have an editor to assist you with the creation of your articles. The articles you write are powerful and insightful. I want to acknowledge your contribution to Slashdot. I also see that it would be possible for your articles to reach even more people if more care was given to the construction of the articles.
I would suggest "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser. Next to Strunk and White, I consider it the classic book on writing.
I admire the fact that you have had several books published. I want to challenge you that even though you have had success as a writer, that you can become an even better one. Besides, publishing success does not necessarily mean that something is well written [See any Stephen Covey book for proof
Finally, if you ever would like someone to review your articles prior to their posting to look for grammatical errors or repetition, I would be more than willing to do so.
Thanks for answering the questions.
MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.com/news/358517.asp
ZDNet: http
CNN: http://www.cnn. com/2000/TECH/computing/01/19/crusoe1.idg/index.h
BTW, Arstechnica is promising an in-depth look at the CPU later today from their CPU expert.
MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.com/news/358517.asp
ZDNet: http
CNN: http://www.cnn. com/2000/TECH/computing/01/19/crusoe1.idg/index.h
BTW, Arstechnica is promising an in-depth look at the CPU later today from their CPU expert.
Agreed. Thankfully, IBM just released the specifications for the PPC motherboards for anyone to use and create freely. (I'd say they open sourc'd it, but I feel that I'd be using the word improperly--plus it's really a noun, not a verb).
ARGH! I tried to find a link to the slashdot article or something on macweek/techweb/etc, but I couldn't find it. Anyone have the info?
The Internet will change campaigns, but not in the way that Jon described. I think it will be awhile before we see a major candidate use the Internet effectively for reaching voters.
Why would a candidate devote energy towards reaching voters through the Internet? As someone noted, the percentage of net-savvy voters is too small and too diverse to justify the expense. What technology would the candidate use? Spam? Web Pages? And if a web page, why would people visit it?
I think the first real significant political fallout from the Internet will come within campaigns, political action committees, political parties and public interest groups. Within these organizations there is a real need to share resources and information.
These organizations will utilize the net to mobilize people interested in their cause, to share information and databases with similar organizations, and to refine their skills at influencing public opinion. The political parties will miss the boat if they do not develop a network sharing information akin to the network that Great Harvest Baking uses to share information among its store owners. In the same way that Extranets allow businesses to share information throughout their sales channels, political groups can use the Internet to organize their mainly disparate members and contributors.
I expect that the first time we read about the Internet seriously disrupting politics as usual it will be from a normally marginilized group that uses the Internet to gain a political victory (lobbying, election, etc.) that they could not have done without the Community and Communication tools of the Internet.
www.macosrumors.com has a slightly different version of events. Of course, they are only talking about Sawtooth not Shark, but it sounds like the recent controversy has changed Apple's attitude a little.
Macworld made the decision about a year ago to start covering *nix-type issues because MacOS X will be running on top of NetBSD (or did they decide to use FreeBSD instead?).
In addition, many Mac users feel like kindred spirits to Linux users. The operating systems may be vastly different, but the rejection of Windows and belief that the OS does matter makes the Mac community pull for the Linux community.
Finally, if Linux became popular on PPC, the market for PPC hardware components would decrease as the market size increase (good old economies of scale).
As many people have said, Jon is talking more about a Political Interest Group than a Union persay. The interest group can become everything from a trade association, to a paid lobbying organization, to a grass-roots organization.
The problem with an political interest group is overcoming the freerider problem derived from Economics, but observed in great detail when it comes to organizing interest groups. The basic rules are:
Smaller groups are easier to organize than larger ones--It is easier for members of a smaller group to keep track of the participation of its members than larger groups.
Organizations seeking selective benefits are easier to organize than those seeking collective benefits--Industries that organize around lobbying for a tax break that only benefits their industry have a lot easier time organizing that a public interest group organizing around a benefit that everyone receives no matter how much they contribute to the cause.
The reason that a geek interest group probably would not work are because of those two rules of the freerider problem. Geeks are a large group of people geographically diverse and **generally** seeking collective benefits. For an individual geek, it makes more sense to not become involved with any particular issue. If the issue is won, the geek will still benefit because **everyone** benefits. Even better, by not participating, the geek has got something without scarificing time, money or energy.
The ways that I see geeks overcoming the freerider problem is because we tend to be a little more dogmatic (i.e., environmentalists overcome the freerider problem based on passion, geeks could do the same) and because geeks have never seen-before power to communicate quickly.
I do agree that geeks hold a power card that we are not using effectively. However, I don't know if the power card is enough to overcome the inherent freerider problem.
Alright, enough of my political science theory tangent. Back to the topic.
This case reminds me a lot of the case involving a news site that linked to many national newspapers. The news site kept their name and advertising in a frame while linking to the non-affliated new sites. The courts ruled against the news site because it was unclear to consumers that the news that they were viewing was not part of the original site they visited.
The article's description of the problem was very poor. It's more than just linking.
As long as the ASCAP limits its scope to organizations using frames in this manner, I think they are completely right. Like everyone else, I am skeptical of them given the music industry's history and the comments made in the article. However, I'm to hesistantly agree with them.
Besides, if it convinces people to stop using frames, we'd all be better off. I'm proud to say the only html tags I have never used are for frames.
Apple claims that they are selling a large percentage of iMacs to new computer buyers and a substantial percentage to people who previously owned PCs. There was quite about of media coverage when Apple published these percentages. Sorry I don't have a link. I know that they talked about it during the last Shareholders meeting. Given that information, there is no way for Future Power to claim that it isn't competing.
I understand the concerns about AOL trying to piggy-back on the efforts of Cable companies (i.e. getting access without the costs of rolling out the cable). However, I think it makes sense in light of the way telephone and DSL services are governed. In the Northwest, US West controls the lines and we pay US West for the lines. However, the ISP is open. When it came to DSL, those were the conditions established.
Cable has traditional been viewed as a local monopoly. The barriers for entry into the cable market were too high to promote competition; therefore, local governments negiotated contracts on behalf of their citzens with the cable companies. I believe it is entirely feasible that as a condition of that contract that the cable companies should have the same competitive situation as the phone company. Sell the line as a monopoly--compete on the access.
Of course, I have a larger stake in this argument than most. In Portland, where I live, the local government refused to approved the TCI-AT&T merger and refused to allow TCI to offer cable modems unless TCI offers alternatives for ISP selection. The local government argues that its contract with TCI stipulates that the utility commission approve changes in service and ownership. Hence, unless AT&T/TCI agrees to a DSL-like model where they compete on as service providers, they will not be able to sell cable modems. AT&T/TCI are suing the City of Portland and Multnomah County over this issue. For a brief article look at Oregonlive.com.
As many people have stated, the strength of the Senator's bill is in the details. However, the concept and logic are solid. Of course, even if the bill looks good, it doesn't mean that it won't get buried or that the House will approve a similar measure. Where is AT&T based? What are the chances that the Senator for AT&T state will filibuster and kill the bill?