The Internet is a common technology nowadays in our daily life. More and more people think it will soon replace traditional mass media and become the new age public forum. However, the cyberspace is not as open, free, and democratic as we may imagine. Actually more and more regulations and rules are imposed on it. But deviating behaviors such as conflicts, crimes, and violence did not decrease with all the regulations and rules. And the hierarchy of power and class did not disappear from the cyberspace as the internet utopians described. The researcher investigated one of the biggest and most popular virtual community in Taiwan, Gassiping Board in PTT Bulletin Board System, in particular regulation and power aspects, and tried to find out what is behind the regulations and how the collective behaviors of the users collide with the power of the administrators and the order of the board. Do they reflect any social value or internet culture? And what is the connection with the real world? With the idea of regulation in Lawrence Lessig¡¦s book Code v2 and the concept of cyberpower, the researcher analysed the important changes and conflicts occurred on Gassiping Board. Gassiping Board can be seen as a free speech market by Lessig¡¦s concept, and the rules serving as laws, which give power to the administrators, along with the internet norms, regulate the behaviour of the users. By the code, the administrators can execute the rules. However, the common users have their own power given by the design of the code to rival the administrators, and they can even change the rules, the norms, and the free speech market of Gassiping Board. Also, some changing effects come from outside the virtual community, namely from the real world. Although the administrators have superior power of technology, most of the time they are low in authority. It is hard for them to regulate all the users under the anti-control culture in the cyberspace. The users of Gassiping Board will gather all their powers when it is necessary, and will even destroy the order and overthrow the power of the administrators. However, this phenomenon indicates self-centredness and lack of respect to others, no matter if it is led by the common users or the administrators. Even though the internet is a modern technology product, in practice modern values such as the quality of democracy, law and order can not work with the internet users in making the virtual community a public sphere with both freedom and order.

The era of increasingly well-developed communication, network, along with this wave of change, and the globalization, the economic opportunities brought by virtual world, is nothing more than companies do their utmost to pursue the scope. Increase the added value of products or services to enhance corporate profitability, originally only be used for sales of products and services in the physical store, joined network store sales and let the results of the rapid growth of invisible. But, what's the difference with the physical store, when in contact with the consumer products and services through web services. Will internet service changes product attributes in response of the consumers decision-making behavior? What's the important factor in rely on the procurement of online shoppers? The special attributes of the virtual economy, let us know, why trust is the reason of consumers purchase goods and services on recognized intermediary platform, and they gradually accumulating customer loyalty and purchasing intention. For this reason, we explored the trust antecedents, attribute dimensions, and how trust link to the loyalty and purchasing intention, as well as their composition and influencing factors. And based on the objects of online potential shopping group for the research topic, the trust associated with e-commerce community loyalty and customer purchase intention. By the stratified random sampling, a total of 248 samples were taken, and use of path analysis and stepwise regression to analyze the data in parallelly. In this study, convenience sampling questionnaire survey found that: "Personality-based trust", "institution-based trust" and "knowledge-based trust", link to the" customer loyalty "and" " purchase intention" via "Intermediaries trust. Trust in intermediaries¡¦ link to online shopper¡¦s purchases intentions, through "customer loyalty" with direct and indirect effects. The significant differences found, by analysis of the online shoppers demography of with and without the shopping experience in the past three months show on the trust of intermediaries. Therefore, we confirmed once again that the trust of the E-commerce community and its strong related items.

In 1999, the Chinese Academy of Sciences realized that there was a need for a better public understanding of science. For the public to have better accessibility and comprehension of China's significance to the world, the Computer Network Information Center (CNIC), under the direction of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, combined resources from thousands of experts across the world to develop online science exhibits housed within the Virtual Science Museum of China. Through an analysis of historical documents, this descriptive dissertation presents a research project that explores a dimension of the development of the Giant Panda Exhibit. This study takes the reader on a journey, first to China and then to a classroom within the United States, in order to answer the following questions: (1) What is the process of the development of a virtual science exhibit; and, (2) What role do public audiences play in the design and implementation of virtual science museums? The creation of a virtual science museum exhibition is a process that is not completed with just the building and design, but must incorporate feedback from public audiences who utilize the exhibit. To meet the needs of the museum visitors, the designers at CNIC took a user-centered approach and solicited feedback from six survey groups. To design a museum that would facilitate a cultural exchange of scientific information, the CNIC looked at the following categories: visitor insights, the usability of the technology, the educational effectiveness of the museum exhibit, and the cultural nuances that existed between students in China and in the United States. The findings of this study illustrate that the objectives of museum designers may not necessarily reflect the needs of the visitors and confirm previous research studies which indicate that museum exhibits need a more constructivist approach that fully engages the visitor in an interactive, media-rich environment. Even though the world has moved forwards with digital technology, classroom instruction in both China and in the United States continues to reflect traditional teaching methods. Students were shown to have a lack of experience with the Internet in classrooms and difficulty in scientific comprehension when using the virtual science museum--showing a separation between classroom technology and learning. Students showed a greater interest level in learning science with technology through online gaming and rich multimedia suggesting that virtual science museums can be educationally valuable and support an alternative to traditional teaching methods if designed with the end user in mind.

As the feature size is continuously decreasing and integration density is increasing, interconnections have become a dominating factor in determining the overall quality of a chip. Due to the limited scalability of system bus, it cannot meet the requirement of current System-on-Chip (SoC) implementations where only a limited number of functional units can be supported. Long global wires also cause many design problems, such as routing congestion, noise coupling, and difficult timing closure. Network-on-Chip (NoC) architectures have been proposed to be an alternative to solve the above problems by using a packet-based communication network. The processing elements (PEs) communicate with each other by exchanging messages over the network and these messages go through buffers in each router. Buffers are one of the major resource used by the routers in virtual channel flow control. In this thesis, we analyze two kinds of buffer allocation approaches, static and dynamic buffer allocations. These approaches aim to increase throughput and minimize latency by means of virtual channel flow control. In statically allocated buffer architecture, size and organization are design time decisions and thus, do not perform optimally for all traffic conditions. In addition, statically allocated virtual channel consumes a waste of area and significant leakage power. However, dynamic buffer allocation scheme claims that buffer utilization can be increased using dynamic virtual channels. Dynamic virtual channel regulator (ViChaR), have been proposed to use centralized buffer architecture which dynamically allocates virtual channels and buffer slots in real-time depending on traffic conditions. This ViChaR’s dynamic buffer management scheme increases buffer utilization, but it also increases design complexity. In this research, we reexamine performance, power consumption, and area of ViChaR’s buffer architecture through implementation. We implement a generic router and a ViChaR architecture using Verilog-HDL. These RTL codes are verified by dynamic simulation, and synthesized by Design Compiler to get area and power consumption. In addition, we get latency through Static Timing Analysis. The results show that a ViChaR’s dynamic buffer management scheme increases the latency and power consumption significantly even though it could increase buffer utilization. Therefore, we need a novel design to achieve high buffer utilization without a loss.

Seismic modeling is a technique for simulating wave propagation through the subsurface. For a given geological model, seismic modeling allows us to generate snapshots of wave propagation and synthetic data. In my dissertation, for real seismic events I have chosen to implement the finite-difference modeling technique. When adequate discretization in space and time is possible, the finite-difference technique is by far one of the most accurate tools for simulating elastic-wave propagation through complex geological models. In recent years, a significant amount of work has been done in our group using 2D finite-difference modeling. For complex salt structures which exploration and pro- duction industries meet today, 2D finite-difference modeling is not sufficient to study subsalt imaging or the demultiple of subsalt models. That is why I have developed a 3D finite-difference modeling code. One of the key challenges that I have met in developing the 3D finite-difference code is to adapt the absorbing boundary conditions. Absorbing boundary conditions are needed to describe the infinite geological models by limited computing domain. I have validated the 3D finite-difference code by comparing its results with analytic solutions. I have used 3D finite-difference program to generate data corresponding to 3D complex model which describes salt and subsalt structures of Gulf of Mexico. The resulting data include reflections, diffractions and other scattering phenomena. I have also used finite-difference program in anisotropic context to show that we can effectively predict shear-wave splitting and triplication in the data. There are new sets of events that are not directly recorded in seismic data, they have been called virtual events. These events are turning to be as important as real events in modern data processing. Therefore we also have to learn how to model them. Unfortunately, they cannot yet be modeled directly from finite-difference. Here I will describe how to model these events by using cross correlation type representation theorem. As illustration of how important of virtual events for seismic data process- ing, I also described an internal multiple attenuation technique which utilized virtual events.

Internet has changed People¡¦s life and brought new communication problems. Community website is a platform which combines website¡¦s content and community. This platform had changed users not only to be a message receiver, but also to be a sender, who is more active. This characteristic promises the active audience, one of the basic assumptions in Uses and Gratifications Theory. Otherwise, in previous researches, computer mediated communication lacks of some media cues. But as basic network setting has changed, the conclusion maybe has been changed. In order to understand what are user¡¦s motivations and if there are any differences among different media. This survey conducts 41 questions to evaluate user¡¦s needs and the degree of social presence based on previous studies. As a result, there are 442 valid questionnaires in this study. As for motivations, a factor analysis revealed five motivations to use community websites: communication, information, surveillance, persuasion, and entertainment. Communication is the most important motivation of all. As for social presence, the ranking decreasingly is instant message, real-time video, e-mail, chat room, and forum. These two properties, motivations and social presence, obviously affect user¡¦s using intensity.

The importance of knowledge management has been on the spotlight for many years. Many researches related to the knowledge management are focused on the issues of knowledge sharing and knowledge creation, but only few are directly linked to the knowledge integration process. In this thesis, we will exam the AnTec operation to discover the benefits and incentives of knowledge integration process to it's software development. This study will also explore how the company can establish goal, make decision, confirm the knowledge requirements,and obtain knowledge externally and internally by utilizing the knowledge integration process. Performance of the software development can be dramatically improved from the knowledge integration elements of "direction", "sequencing", "routines", and "group problem soling and decision making" in a virtual team. The finding of the study has suggested: (1) The knowledge integration process requires efficient communication among system analyses, department managers, and the end users. IT manager should be responsible for the quality of all questions proposed. (2) Fully utilize the knowledge integration structure and properly extract know-hows from different areas to proceed the software development in the virtual team are essential to the success of the knowledge integration process. (3) This study will be govern into two models - "Knowledge Sharing Process and Structure" and "Virtual Team Operation" models and can be reviewed by AnTec for further reference. Keywords : Virtual Team, Knowledge Integration, Project Management

Virtual communities have become more and more popular in the Internet world. Members of a virtual community can disseminate information rapidly to create word- of-mouth (WOM) effect in marketing. Therefore, in-depth studies of the increase use of word-of-mouth marketing in the electronic world become more important. The object of this study is to use "the virtual book club¡¨, as the subject to investigate the factors that may affect member attitudes by the word-of-mouth. Four main factors were included in the research framework as independent variables, which are the knowledge of the message sender, knowledge of the receiver, quality of the message, and relationship strength between the sender and the receiver. Trust between the sender and the receiver is treated as a mediating factor. The dependent variable is the receiver¡¦s attitude. A quasi-experimental design was conducted and the findings include the following: 1. The knowledge level of the send can significantly affect the trust of the receiver. 2. The strength of the relationship can significantly affect the trust. 3. The quality of the message content can significantly influence the receiver¡¦s attitude.

How to reduce handoff drop and increase seamless handoff is a very important issue of Quality-of-Service (QoS) in cellular. Although the Cellular IP which separates local and wide area mobility can significantly improves the performance of existing mobile host protocols (e.g. Mobile IP), especially when mobile hosts migrate frequently, it does not have the ability to support QoS control and needs to emit beacon periodically. Hence, we propose schemes of the admission control, the bandwidth reservation for handoffs, the retransmitting data and the estimated quantity for the useful Request Message to improve the control function of QoS in the Cellular IP. Also we propose another paging way in the Cellular IP, which is, the fast find path algorithm and optimal cross point node. The admission control can limit the quantity of connection in whole networks. The bandwidth reservation particularly used for handoff can reduce the rate of handoff drops. The estimated quantity for the useful "Request Message" ignores the overload with a large number of request messages. The fast find path algorithm and optimal cross point node only apply in the first find eligible routing path. It can reduce the paging time of mobile host and let the mobile host attach fast.

Recent advances in information technologies provide a unique opportunity for sharing knowledge free from constraints of time and place. One application area is Internet-based learning where members of virtual groups are separated by location, and are challenged by a collaborative project. In this research we investigate the developmental patterns of such groups, and address how trust may shape and be shaped by the virtual groups¡¦ development. Twenty-five groups in a cyber-university participate in our study. Our findings suggested the development of virtual groups was characterized by three stages: dependency and flight, fight and pair, and work. In addition, virtual group members initially imported trust rather than developed trust. Calculus-based trust, knowledge-based trust and identification-based trust coexisted and co-evolved over time. Finally, there appeared to be a reciprocal relationship between trust and group development.