Computer Inquiry Research Articles

Optimization design of railroad freight station computer inquiry system based on robot intelligent configuration system

In recent years, China’s railroads have been rapidly developed, but to improve the quality of service to customers and the rapid passage of passengers is a major problem facing the railroad operation. It is the era of information development at present, China’s railroad operation has also been unprecedented rapidly developed and has significant achievements. In order to meet the growing demand and improve the level of information technology, the information system platform for railroad freight transportation has been created, because each system is not connected with each other and is independent of each other, thus creating an upgrade of the system. To solve the above-mentioned problems, it is necessary first of all to establish an intelligent freight station inquiry system, which is one of the ways for the customers to experience the convenience directly. In this paper, by understanding and analyzing the inquiry system of freight stations, we address the shortcomings and deficiencies of the system now. Using the development concept of information technology and the general development goals of Chinese railroad passenger and freight stations, the development has been carried out through the two levels of the total structure and performance of the system. Current successful modifications and enhancements of the Chinese train transportation system show promising experimental results. It has been confirmed by these tests that the system demonstrates a high level of stability and dependability while skillfully meeting the intelligent inquiry needs of travelers at railroad freight stations.

First-principles calculations to investigate structural, electrical, elastic and optical characteristics of BWF3 (W = S and Si) fluoroperovskites

This work explains the first-principle computational inquiry of physical features of BWF3 (W = S and Si) halide-Perovskites compounds. With the aid of the WIEN2K code, our recent computation solely relies on Density Functional Theory (DFT). Using the equation of states made by Birch Murnaghan for optimization. The elastic factors are figure out and used to compute elastic characteristics, we found that both composites are structurally as well elastically stable. These substances exhibit strong resistance to plastic strain and are show ductility, scratch-resistant and anisotropic. BSF3 and BSiF3 are both metal-like substances, according to calculations made using the Tb-mBJ) potential approach. Density of states calculations are recycled to conclude how different energy states are involved in band structures. These compounds' band gap energies make it simple to study various optical characteristics. These chemicals exhibit strong absorption at high energy ranges. The compound BSF3 is transparent to incoming photons at low energies, while the complex BSiF3 is opaque. We have come to the conclusion that the compounds BSF3 and BSiF3 can be employed for high-frequency UV device applications as a result of our study into their optical properties. For the first time, our computational effort is calculated to investigate these substances that have not yet been experimentally proven to our satisfaction.

Nature of Interactions between Boron Clusters: Extended Delocalization and Retention of Aromaticity Post-Oxidation

Polyhedral boron clusters are lauded as 3D aromatics that frequently form interconnected periodic networks resulting in boron-rich borides with metal and non-metals having high thermodynamic stability and hardness. This leads to the question of whether the spherical delocalization of electrons in these clusters is extended across the network as in organic aromatic networks. These borides also frequently show partial oxidation, having fewer electrons than what is mandated by electron counting rules, whose impact on their aromatic stability and geometry remains mysterious. Understanding of the nature of electronic communication between polyhedra in polyhedral borides is largely unknown, though it is crucial for the rational design of advanced materials with desirable mechanical, electronic, and optical properties. Here, we show that electronic delocalization across polyhedral clusters has a significant impact on their structure and stability. Our computational inquiry of closo borane dimers shows substantial variation in conjugation with the ideal electron count. Upon two-electron oxidation, instead of forming exohedral multiple bonding that disrupts the aromaticity, it undergoes subtle geometric transformations that conserve aromaticity. The nature of geometric transformation depends on the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) that is decided locally on the polyhedral degree of the interacting vertices. The prevalence of π-type interactions as the HOMO in tetravalent vertices encourages conjugation across clusters and turns into a macropolyhedral system hosting a rhombic linkage between clusters upon oxidation. In contrast, the σ-type interactions dominate the HOMO of pentavalent vertices that prefer to confine aromaticity within the polyhedra by separating them with localized 3c-2e bonds. Our findings expose the fundamental bonding principles that govern the interaction between boron clusters and will provide the chemical guidance for the design and analysis of polyhedral boride networks with desired properties.

Sustaining television news archives

This paper reports on the findings of a sustainability study of television news archives conducted in 2018. After reviewing the history of the Vanderbilt Television News Archive, the paper discusses the questions raised by the sustainability project. What are the legal, economic, and technical issues that archivists need to consider when preserving television news, making their collections accessible to the public, and allowing researchers to explore their holdings through emerging technologies like data and text mining? The second half of the paper considers ways that nonprofit television news archives might collaborate more closely. While sharing and aggregating standardised metadata would constitute a promising step toward that goal, the paper highlights three other potential avenues of coordination. First, the legal basis for data mining nonprofit video archives should be clarified in order to meet the growing demand among researchers for this mode of computational inquiry. Second, on a technical level, broader adoption of descriptive metadata with full-text transcriptions would make it easier to analyse collections with machine learning and artificial intelligence. Finally, the sustainability of nonprofit television news archiving over the longterm requires acknowledgment and accommodation of the diversity of publics that these archives serve as well as of their distinctive financial models.

Hiding in the Open (Part II): How Tech Network Policies Can Inform 'Openness by Design' (and Vice Versa)

Hiding in the Open (Part II): How Tech Network Policies Can Inform Openness by Design (and Vice Versa) (TPRC 46 Paper Abstract: revised July 9, 2018) Open source. Open APIs. Open data. Open Internet. Open science. Open government. The concept of seemingly is everywhere in the information technology space. For the most part, is seen by its backers as an unalloyed virtue, a way of meritoriously spreading the innovative and social value of a particular online resource. And yet, surprisingly, no rigorous conceptual framework currently exists for assessing the relative value of open systems, especially as compared to their more proprietary counterparts. The author's thesis is that it is critical for stakeholders to fully understand at its deepest levels, in order to be able to participate in searching discussions of its merits in technology policy. This paper is the first in a Mozilla Foundation-sponsored series to examine across all layers and functionalities of the Internet. Here the focus is on modern day telecommunications and information networks, and their treatment by U.S. policymakers and other stakeholders. Future papers will explore the concept of in other layers of the Internet, including data platforms, software (such as open source), hardware, computational systems, applications (such as open APIs), and content. Three relevant industry sectors are reviewed in the paper: -- First, we will examine the architectural basis of the open Internet in its Middle Layers software elements -- including in particular the end-to-end principle, network interconnection, agnostic bearer protocols, and modularity. -- Second, we will turn to telephony network access, from the FCC’s Part 68 “Carterfone” rules, to the Computer Inquiry's basic telecommunications/enhanced information services dichotomy, and the Telecommunications Act/Computer III concepts of unbundling and Open Network Architecture. -- Third, we will analyze the broadband access debates -- from open access to network neutrality -- from the perspective of openness. The paper then provides some initial observations about in a networked environment. The framework of “openness by design” will be introduced, as an analytical tool for understanding the concept as a complex systems trade-off. In particular, should not be seen as an absolute value, or always advantageous, or even the clearly optimal default position. Instead, complete exists at one pole of a recognized systems polarity with complete enclosure. These two poles form the basis of an ever-shifting continuum between control and freedom, as played out in this instance with regard to networked resources. Moreover, an taxonomy can include structural, functional, behavioral, informational, participatory, and perceptual forms. The paper concludes with observing how is constantly at play throughout the Internet's software-based overlays and hardware-based underlays. Preliminary thoughts can be articulated on how to apply openness by design principles to all layers of the Internet ecosystem, including the data, software, computational, cloud, devices, and applications layers.

Analysis of Ancient and Medieval Texts and Manuscripts: Digital Approaches ed. by T. L. Andrews and C. Macé

Reviewed by: Analysis of Ancient and Medieval Texts and Manuscripts: Digital Approaches ed. by T. L. Andrews and C. Macé Alexandra Gillespie Analysis of Ancient and Medieval Texts and Manuscripts: Digital Approaches. T. L. Andrews and C. Macé, eds. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014 338 pp., 27 b/w illustrations, 51 color illustrations, 26 b/w tables. €97 ISBN: 978-2-503-55268-2. In 2010, Stanford University Library estimated that less than 5 percent of ancient and medieval documents and manuscripts had been made available online. In 2017, that number is probably still below 10 percent. The vast majority of digitized manuscripts and documents await transcription; many classical and medieval texts are available online only in outdated or unreliable editions. It is still not clear whether emerging specifications—for example, the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Annotation Data Model or the International Image Interoperability Framework—will deliver on their promise that cultural heritage data sets can be released from institutional “silos,” aggregated, shared, linked, and opened to new forms of [End Page 577] computational inquiry. And even if they can be, what sort of inquiries can and should be undertaken? What new results can researchers expect? This book provides answers to those questions, although the editors and authors regularly acknowledge that, while the work of imaging, encoding, and exposing texts and manuscript images continues, such answers will be tentative and somewhat premature. Joris J. van Zundert notes in his conclusion to the collection that “most contributions in this volume in some way refer to scholarly edited texts.” Essays on the Vita et miracula s. Symeonis Treverensis by Tuomas Heikkilä, Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogus by Philipp Roelli, and Richart de Fournival’s Bestiares by Jean-Baptiste Camps and Florian Cafiero describe advances in the use—since the 1990s—of phylogenetic and other “tree”-building algorithms for textual stemmatics. The principles that lie behind this work are nineteenth-century and Lachmannian: agreements in error suppose a genetic relationship between the witnesses attesting the error. Computation improves rather than changes method in these cases. It improves the range, scale, accuracy, evidentiary basis, and verifiability of scholarly findings. It allows inquiry to proceed when in an earlier era it would have been stalled by practicalities or undermined by cumulative human error. The ease and speed with which a large and highly varied data set can be processed by a machine enables Alberto Cantera to take on the daunting tradition of Avestan manuscripts of the Zoroastrian liturgies, which were transmitted orally for approximately eight hundred years before the first written copy. Karina van Dalen-Oskam uses similar processing power to isolate, by cluster and principal component analysis, the distinctive diction and vocabulary of scribes of the Middle Dutch Rijmbijbel. Francesco Stella, Luca Verticchio, and Stefania Pennasilico extend these methods even further beyond their usual domain of authorship attribution, to apply them to the literary genre of the epistle. In these essays, computation produces statistical support for that which scholars usually intuit. Petrarch did devise a new vocabulary for letter writing; Alcuin was inclined to imitate his Augustinian models. Scribes did innovate as they copied the Rijmbijbel, and their innovations are clustered by region and chronology. [End Page 578] Armin Hoenen describes some experiments that supplement van Dalen-Oskam’s findings on the habits of scribes. He sets out to test the hypothesis that types of scribal error might be reproducible automatically. In theory, an algorithm that mimics single-letter substitution could produce something that resembles a medieval scribal corpus. Hoenen’s results are negative, and revealing. The algorithms he uses produce more variation over a few copies than scribes do over dozens. Scribes, that is, did not copy “automatically”: they used phonographic, orthographic, metrical, and semantic cues to maintain the integrity of their message. Other contributions here are less concerned with the results of computational analysis than with the promise and the structure of data sets. Samuel Rubenson describes a relational database of the Apophthegmata patrum that allows literary comparison across all languages and manuscripts. Maxim Romanov argues for text-mining techniques as a way to approach hundreds of thousands of surviving medieval Arabic biographical texts. Eugenio R. Luján and Eduardo...

Computational scientific inquiry with virtual worlds and agent-based models: new ways of doing science to learn science

In this paper, we propose computational scientific inquiry (CSI) as an innovative model for learning important scientific knowledge and new practices for “doing” science. This approach involves the use of a “game-like” virtual world for students to experience virtual biological fieldwork in conjunction with using an agent-based computer model to enable computational inquiry activities. After an overview of literature into learning about scientific inquiry and the use of virtual worlds and game-like systems for learning science, we provide a description of the technology systems we developed and the methods of the study. The results are reported of a two-week intervention involving the use of a CSI approach in two eighth-grade classes that found significant learning gains by students. The paper concludes with a discussion of the findings and a consideration of CSI more generally for learning important and difficult scientific knowledge and practices.

The ICT Revolution in Historical Perspective: Progressive Capitalism as a Response to Marxist Complaints, Piketty Pessimism and Free Market Fanaticism About the Deployment Phase of the Digital Economy

Over the course of a quarter of a millennium industrial capitalism has emerged from four deep recessions brought on by the bursting of commodity bubbles to achieve sustained economic growth by instituting progressive policies. These policies promote market success by reinforce entrepreneurial experimentation and investment, while simultaneously reducing income inequalities to stimulate demand. The bursting of the tech stock bubble and the financial meltdown of the early 21st century are the fifth such challenge. Using historical, comparative analysis, this paper shows that the building blocks for a successful institutionalization of the digital mode of production are in hand, awaiting strong policy initiatives to center the economy on sustainable growth. Section I presents the analytic approach, describing the pattern of development of industrial revolutions based on a framework for analyzing long-term innovation offered by Carlota Perez that extends and combines Schumpeter and Keynes into a theory of progressive capitalism. Section II, applies the analytic framework to the ICT revolution in qualitative and quantitative terms. The radical changes in organizational structure and core competence of organizations, driven by the dramatic changes in communications resources are described and quantified. The ultimate payoff of each of the great industrial technology revolutions has not come within the sectors in which they originated, but their ability to spread through and transform the entire economy. Section III, identifies the challenges that must be overcome to set the economy on a stable development path. The key to the transformation is the convergence of the information and energy sectors, the two most important resource systems of an advanced economy. Information and control technologies are hollowing out the energy sector. However, convergence is too weak a word to reflect the radical nature of the transformation that is needed and has already begun and to passive a word to capture the need for vigorous policy implementation to overcome institutional inertia and guide investment toward a coherent constellation of goals. Section IV explains why progressive policies is the key to building the road to the future. Excessive pessimism on the left (e.g. Piketty) and excessive optimism on the right (e.g. repeal of progressive era legislation) about what the market can do on its own are not justified by historical experience. The road to a stable growth path lies neither in the 19th century policy of Laissez faire nor 20th century policy of utility regulation, but the development of a 21st century model that extends the successful approach of the Carterphone, the Computer Inquiries and Spread Spectrum decisions. These policies were quintessential progressive capitalism by using state power to create a space of guaranteed access to essential communications resources, but refusing to regulate behavior within that space. The result was an explosion of entrepreneurial experimentation and a virtuous cycle of innovation and investment and ensured the ICT revolution would be overwhelmingly an American revolution.

Excavating Historicity in the U.S. Network Neutrality Debate: An Interpretive Perspective on Policy Change

This article offers a framework for studying the historicity of the contemporary debate about network neutrality in the United States by drawing on the theory of intertextuality. Contrary to the popular notion that the idea of “neutrality” first appeared in 2002, the article traces the term back to the 1960s when the Federal Communications Commission took up the problem of convergence or “compunications” in the Computer Inquiry proceedings. The article closes with some reflections about how an intertextual perspective informs study of policy as a constitutive discursive practice.

The impact of the computational inquiry based experiment on metacognitive experiences, modelling indicators and learning performance

Computational experiment approach considers modelling as the essential feature of Inquiry Based Science Education (IBSE), where the model and the computer take the place of the “classical” experimental set-up and simulation replaces the experiment (Landau, Pαez, & Bordeianu, 2008).Modelling, as a pedagogical tool, involves the model construction, the exploration of model characteristics and the model application to a specific problem, resembling authentic activities of scientists and mathematicians (Herbert, 2003).Recent developments in strategy instruction research suggest that learning in a particular discipline is enhanced by guiding students through the development of content-relevant metacognitive strategies (Wosnitza & Volet, 2009).Problem-solving is a complex process, which involves several cognitive operations such as collecting and selecting information, heuristic strategy and metacognition (De Corte, 2003; Garofalo & Lester, 1985; Schoenfeld, 1994).The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of the Computational Experiment Methodology on learners' cognitive performance, use of modelling indicators and shift of the metacognitive experiences during problem solving using computational models.Sixty prospective primary school teachers volunteered to participate in the study.Students were exposed by the Instructor to a number of computational experiments, while during the course they developed their own models of simulation.The results of the experiment show that the use of the computational experiment approach has a substantial effect on the metacognitive experiences and the use of modelling indicators.

The Internet is a Packet-Switched Telecommunications Network

For the second time in five years, the D.C. Circuit in Verizon v. FCC has struck down the jurisdictional theory relied upon by the FCC in creating its Open Internet rules, because the Commission still classifies Internet connections as information rather than telecommunications services. Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Brand X, most legal scholars have considered the question of whether the FCC may choose to regulate Internet access as an information service to be settled law. Drawing on a detailed analysis of the regulatory treatment of protocol processing in the Computer Inquiries and the technical structure of Internet Protocol networks themselves, this essay argues that conventional wisdom is mistaken. The view of ISPs as intermediaries that necessarily store or transform user data is anachronistic, likely taken from the operation of ISPs’ most visible predecessors, online services like CompuServe and America Online. Further, the issue in Brand X was the unbundling of last-mile cable modem transmission facilities, not an end-to-end Internet Protocol service. The factual assumptions underlying the former decision do not hold in the Internet context, a conclusion this paper demonstrates in a way easily replicated by any network engineer. Because of this faulty premise, Internet governance in the U.S. is again dealing with classic telecommunications issues — interconnection, non-discrimination, and vertical integration, but disconnected from existing law and historical precedent.

Excavating Historicity in the U.S. Network Neutrality Debate: An Interpretive Perspective on Policy Change

This article offers a framework for studying the historicity of the contemporary debate about network in the United States by drawing on the theory of intertextuality. Contrary to the popular notion that the idea of neutrality first appeared in 2002, the article traces the term back to the 1960s when the Federal Communications Commission took up the problem of convergence or compunications in the Computer Inquiry proceedings. The article closes with some reflections about how an intertextual perspective informs study of policy as a constitutive discursive practice.

The leading-edge vortex and quasisteady vortex shedding on an accelerating plate

A computational inquiry focuses on leading-edge vortex (LEV) growth and shedding during acceleration of a two-dimensional flat plate at a fixed 10°–60° angle of attack and low Reynolds number. The plate accelerates from rest with a velocity given by a power of time ranging from 0 to 5. During the initial LEV growth, subtraction of the added mass lift from the computed lift reveals an LEV-induced lift augmentation evident across all powers and angles of attack. For the range of Reynolds numbers considered, a universal time scale exists for the peak when α≥30°, with augmentation lasting about four to five chord lengths of translation. This time scale matches well with the half-stroke of a flying insect. An oscillating pattern of leading- and trailing-edge vortex shedding follows the shedding of the initial LEV. The nondimensional frequency of shedding and lift coefficient minima and maxima closely match their values in the absence of acceleration. These observations support a quasisteady theory of vortex shedding, where dynamics are determined primarily by velocity and not acceleration. Finally, the nondimensional vortex formation time is found to be a function of the Reynolds number, but only weakly when the Reynolds number is high.

Functional Separation, Italian Style

U.S. regulators would be ill-advised to abandon current de-regulatory policies encouraging facilities-based in communications markets and return to models developed for monopoly service markets. Functional should be viewed as an extraordinary remedy for persisting competitive problems and is inappropriate for effectively competitive markets. There have been recent discussions in Europe over the use of functional of wireline access networks to cure persistent problems involving access network discrimination by vertically integrated dominant providers. Yet the regulatory environment in markets that have implemented should be noted to stand in contrast with the deregulation in the U.S. communications market, where policymakers have abandoned prior structural and non-structural Computer Inquiry safeguards. Continuation of Computer Inquiry mandates developed for narrowband, single-purpose networks was found to be inappropriate and unnecessary for today's converged broadband networks. Moreover, the Federal Communications Commission concluded there was sufficient actual and expected competition to justify changing the regulatory regime. With Telecom Italia's recently announced operational separation of its wholesale access services and retail units, the voluntary corporate restructuring, developed with the approval of Italy's communications regulatory body, AGCOM, is best viewed as a solution solely for the Italian communications market which is lacking a widely deployed competitive provider. The restructuring is meant to ease concerns particular to the Italian marketplace and can not necessarily be considered an ideal model for regulation in other markets. In the U.S., reversion to a functional regulatory model would require a sudden and extreme policy reversal that would render the telecommunications sector wholly unattractive to investors. Instead, policy makers should focus on the dual challenges of bringing broadband deployment to areas presently unserved by any provider and preserving and expanding existing levels of by removing remaining disincentives to investment and making more spectrum available to wireless providers.

Telecommunications policy learning: the case of the FCC's computer inquiries

During the last fifteen years there has been a growing body of scholarship utilizing social learning theory to explain policy change. While the adaptation of learning theory to the study of policymaking has been an evolutionary process, some core tenets have emerged. Social learning is distinguished from other theories by (1) the importance it places on state actors and (2) its focus on the role of ideas in the policy process. In this essay, social learning theory is applied to several cases of US telecommunications policy-making. More specifically, this paper focuses on the efforts of the Federal Communications Commission to come to grips with the growing technological interdependence between the telephone and computer industries between 1965–86. During this period, three major rule-makings, collectively referred to as the “computer” inquiries, were undertaken by the agency. Following a discussion of social learning theory and a general overview of US telecommunications policy, the three computer inquiries are examined in depth through an analysis of government documents and secondary sources. It is concluded that the historical data presented here confirms a pattern of social learning across the three cases.

Where Internet Service Providers and Telephone Companies Compete: A Guide to the Computer Inquiries, Enhanced Service Providers and Information Service Providers

In 1966, the FCC launched the first of the Computer Inquiries, asking about the difference between computers that run telecommunications networks and computers with which we interact. Even in the late 60s, the FCC perceived the tremendous potential that computer networks promised for economic growth, the highly competitive nature of the computer network market, and the dependency of computer networks upon the underlying telecommunications network monopoly. The end product of the Computer Inquiries has been to distinguished between computer networks classified as enhanced services and basis telecommunications services. The FCC found no need to regulate enhanced services. The Internet falls within this category of enhanced services, with everything above layer 2 in the IP stack falling within this category. However, recognizing the dependency of enhanced services on basic services and the ability of telecommunications monopolies to anticompetitively impact the enhanced services market, the FCC created a series of progressive safeguards. But there is a problem. Some of the Computer Inquiry rules have been codified in the Code of Federal Regulation; some have not. Some rules have been reconsidered by the Commission, appealed in federal court, and reviewed by the Supreme Court. Some rules are currently in effect, some have been vacated, and some are the subject of current open proceedings before the Commission. This makes these rules difficult to comprehend, particularly to a small Internet business. Thus, this paper embarks upon the modest project of setting forth the Computer Inquiries rules as they exist today. All facilities based carriers fall under Computer Inquiry obligations. Facilities based carriers who offer enhanced services must unbundle their basic service from their enhanced services and offer the basic service to independent enhanced services providers (ESPs) on the same terms and conditions. Bell Operating Companies (BOCs), with their greater market power and incentives, have stronger separation safeguards. BOCs who elect to provision enhanced services may do so through a separate subsidiary pursuant to Computer II, or without a separate subsidiary pursuant to Computer III. Computer III requires the posting of a Comparably Efficient Interconnection plan detailing what the BOC is providing to itself and how these elements shall be made available to independent ESPs. Computer III also requires that BOCs, regardless of whether they provision enhanced services (they all do), create Open Network Architecture plans that break their networks down into basic building blocks available for use by ESPs. BOCs are required to file regular reports with the Commission detailing their compliance with these rules. Beyond the separation rules, the FCC created additional safeguards generally aimed at all carriers. These rules included Customer Propriety Network Information (restricting the use of a customer's telecommunications information for non-telecommunications purposes), restrictions on discrimination against independent ESPs, Network Information Disclosure (ensuring that information concerning upgrades to the network is provided to all equally), restrictions against cross subsidization, and accounting safeguards. Service Providers

Safeguarding the national security: Can the military and other Government functions be confident that the newly fragmented telecommunications system will respond to crises?

The way in which the relationship between the US government and the telecommunications industry has changed since the breakup of the Bell System is discussed. The large number of suppliers may present a security problem because the communications in the Department of Defense will continue to depend upon public networks. It is noted that even before divestiture, the FCCs Second Computer Inquiry decision prevented the DoD's primary contractor, AT&T, from packaging, selling, and servicing a complete systems of equipment and transmission service from one end of a circuit to the other. The factors that make it difficult for the DOD or any other Government agency to get single-management, end-to-end service for its routine, day-to-day communications are discussed. The work being done by a special; body set up within Bellcore and by the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee and the national Coordinating Center to deal with these problems is discussed.

The decision to divest: Incredible or inevitable? The contest that ultimately fractured the Bell System was as much a clash between the participants' deeply held philosophies as it was about antitrust laws

To provide background to the out-of-court settlement reached in 1982, the author discusses the regulations introduced by the Communications Act of 1934, the Final Judgment of 1956, and the Second Computer Inquiry Decision of 1980. It is noted that, in agreeing to the 1956 consent decree, Bell System managers failed to anticipate adequately the accelerated pace of technology. The viewpoints of the main participants in the AT&T antitrust suit are summarized, and it is pointed out that the contest that ultimately fractured the Bell System was as much a clash between the participant's deeply held philosophies as it was about antitrust laws. Consideration is given to the type of decision that would have been reached if an out-of-court settlement had not been agreed upon.

1A Voice Storage System: Voice Storage in the Network-Perspective and History

In mid-1976, Bell Laboratories undertook development of the then radical concept of introducing new customer services via a voice-storage capability in the network. With four systems installed and ready for service, the project was terminated in October, 1981, as a result of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) actions stemming from the Computer Inquiry II decisions declaring voice storage to be an enhanced service that could not be offered by the regulated network.

Data communication and data processing — a basis for definition

The absence of a precise method of distinguishing data communication from data processing functions is complicating the Federal Communications Commission's Second Computer Inquiry and creating a climate of uncertainty in the teleprocessing industry. This article proposes a simple mathematical criterion for distinguishing between these two classes of functions, illustrates its application, and discusses associated regulatory policy issues.