Just war? War games, war crimes, and game design

Military shooters have explored both historical and modern settings and remain one of the most popular game genres. While the violence of these games has been explored in multiple studies, the study of how war and the rules of war are represented is underexplored. The Red Cross has argued that as virtual war games are becoming closer to reality, the rules of war should be included. This article explores the argument put forward by the Red Cross and its reception by games media organizations, in order to consider how the concept of “just war” is represented within games. This article will focus on concerns over games adherence to the criteria of jus in bello (the right conduct in war) and will also consider the challenges that developers face in the creation of entertainment products in the face of publisher and press concerns

Supporting security-oriented, collaborative nanoCMOS electronics research

Grid technologies support collaborative e-Research typified by multiple institutions and resources seamlessly shared to tackle common research problems. The rules for collaboration and resource sharing are commonly achieved through establishment and management of virtual organizations (VOs) where policies on access and usage of resources by collaborators are defined and enforced by sites involved in the collaboration. The expression and enforcement of these rules is made through access control systems where roles/privileges are defined and associated with individuals as digitally signed attribute certificates which collaborating sites then use to authorize access to resources. Key to this approach is that the roles are assigned to the right individuals in the VO; the attribute certificates are only presented to the appropriate resources in the VO; it is transparent to the end user researchers, and finally that it is manageable for resource providers and administrators in the collaboration. In this paper, we present a security model and implementation improving the overall usability and security of resources used in Grid-based e-Research collaborations through exploitation of the Internet2 Shibboleth technology. This is explored in the context of a major new security focused project at the National e-Science Centre (NeSC) at the University of Glasgow in the nanoCMOS electronics domain

Expanding the Data Warehouse Paradigm to Support the Virtual Company

Virtual Organizations (VO) are on the rise fueled by a more global base for commerce, technology development to support VOs and a more global demand for products, and virtuality can fundamentally transform the ways in which organizations operate. In order to operate successfully a VO must develop a knowledge infrastructure which allows for seamless flow of information between geographically distributed people, processes and repositories. To support this a virtual data warehouse needs an architectural design with a logically common meta-data, common semantics and common business rules. While data warehouses have been designed to support the traditional organization the VO’s high level of uncertainty and lack of centralized control make the construction of a data warehouse to support a VO more challenging. This paper presents two possible scenarios for accomplishing this along with advantages and disadvantages of both and measures of success

Building Teams from a Distance

[Excerpt] Virtual teams are comprised of individuals that are separated geographically or organizationally and that rely primarily on technology to complete tasks (Powell, Piccoli & Ives, 2004). This work arrangement has been found to be advantageous for many firms because it reduces the costs and time associated with employee travel. It also permits organizations to attract and retain top talent because workplace flexibility is increasingly seen as a crucial aspect of job satisfaction for many employees (Bergiel, Bergiel & Balsmeier, 2008). Virtual teams are also valuable to many businesses because team members commonly focus their interests on tasks instead of shared social or cultural environments, which often impact the dynamic within conventional teams (Hamilton & Scandura, 2003). This fosters a working environment that encourages innovation and decreases discrimination by hierarchy, employee impairments, race or age because productivity is more important than other characteristics (Bergiel et al., 2008). While virtual teams have many advantages, they frequently struggle to establish a strong sense of trust between individuals, frequent team member intercommunication, and effective leadership; all of which are necessary for team success

Chaotic worlds: an analysis of World of Warcraft

Virtual worlds provide new forms of collaboration and social interaction. The World of Warcraft (WoW) is one such virtual world. It is the most popular example of what is called a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). In this paper, we analyze players’ outcomes with WoW using chaos theory. Our paper suggests that players are highly sensitive to initial conditions which are impacted by style of play and the social structure of groups

A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Face-to-Face and Virtual Communication: Overcoming the Challenges

Virtual communication has become the norm for many organizations (Baltes, Dickson, Sherman, Bauer, & LaGanke, 2002; Bergiel, Bergiel, & Balsmeier, 2008; Hertel, Geister, & Konradt, 2005). As technology has evolved, time and distance barriers have dissolved, allowing for access to experts worldwide. The reality of business today demands the use of virtual communication for at least some work, and many professionals will sit on a virtual team at some point (Dewar, 2006). Although virtual communication offers many advantages, it is not without challenges. This article examines the costs and benefits associated with virtual and face-to-face communication, and identifies strategies to overcome virtual communication\u27s challenges

Determining how information technology is changing the role of leadership in virtual organization

Includes bibliographical references

Issues in the study of virtual world social movements

Virtual worlds are online three-dimensional worlds that are often constructed to look much like the real world. As more people begin to use these virtual worlds, virtual communities are emerging enabling various social activities and social interactions to be conducted online. Based on a literature review of social movements, virtual communities and virtual worlds, this paper suggests a framework to guide IS research into this new and exciting area