Abstract: A method and apparatus to conduct automatically, and moderate absolutely, a networked electronic conference to provide order, maintain constant control, and ensure the best dissemination of information possible. A defined but flexible rule base governs the conference, as executed and interpreted by a conference controller. The rule base comprises a multitude of conference management options and techniques. A main feature of the preferred embodiment is the ability to govern a conference according to a sequence-ordering scheme as defined in the rule base. This conference administration system is independent of the physical implementation of the media or network interconnecting the participants to a conference. Further, it is not limited to the use of any particular means of communication (i.e., voice, textual data, graphical data, etc.).

Abstract: A system for converting digital data to sine waves of differing frequency for networking computers. The sine waves are synthesized using variable encoding. The data is shifted through registers at a multiple of the data rate with the state of the stages of the register monitored to locate the zero-crossing of the sine wave. The state of the register stages is supplied to a series of multiplexers and resistors to generate the segments used to synthesize the sine waves. The data is monitored to derive a signal supplied to the multiplexers to determine the encoding pattern for each bit cell of data.