Subjacent Culture, Orthogonal Community: An Ethnographic Analysis of an On-Line Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fan Community

This dissertation presents an ethnographic analysis of the community of fans of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer whose members frequented the online linear posting board known as The Bronze. Buffy originally aired from 1997 until 2003, but the community that formed at the official Buffy fan site in 1997 continues on in real life and on line, having survived the end of Buffy and the closure of all three of its official posting boards. This study uses an interdisciplinary combination of textual analysis and ethnographic techniques (interviews, participant observation, autoethnography, cyberethnography) to ascertain the importance, relevance, and meaning of The Bronze community to its members, known as Bronzers. I argue that the nature of the linear posting board allowed Bronzers to form a unique and long-lived community by using The Bronze in creative and imaginative ways. In particular, language--to some degree appropriated from Buffy--was used by Bronzers to write a better world for themselves on line. Hence, the community is built on (and maintained by) language that is used in an unusually postmodern manner. As a group, Bronzers tend to be highly educated, literary, and artistic. To Bronzers, much of Buffy's appeal was its emotional realism and imaginative depth. Unusually for television, these elements were combined with strong female leading roles, a cast of bookish and somewhat countercultural characters, and a foregrounding of emotionality and interpersonal relationships. Bronzers were drawn to these aspects of Buffy--which formed its "gothic aesthetic"--and in turn created their own somewhat countercultural community, one that came to reflect their own close ties and emotional attachments. I argue that The Bronze community exists subjacent to mainstream cultural formations, and orthogonal to real life communities. Using this framework, a number of implications emerge for computer-mediated communication in general, including an explanation for the prevalence of hostility in online communication. Furthermore, when situated in its broader context, The Bronze can be seen as a meager palliative to the damaging effects of contemporary post-industrial capitalism, one that nonetheless illumines the brightly stultifying commonplaces that lead people to seek shelter in dimly-lit imagined spaces

Software Quality Assurance A Study Based on Pakistan’s Software Industry

This paper investigates the role of quality management practices in software industry of Pakistan. We present a comparison between the more-experienced and less-experienced firms with respect to the critical factors of quality management. The critical factors of quality management practices in the software industry are first identified from the literature survey and validated through an empirical study. The study attempts to probe the influence of “age of quality” and “use of software” over software quality management practices and programs. The results of the study shows that the ‘age of quality” and “use of software” have partial influence over the software quality management

Prospects & Challenges of Implementing Knowledge Management System in IT Industry

Recent past has seen an epidemic growth in the adoption of strategic information systems. In order to be successful, enterprises are putting in huge investments into implementation of information technology (IT) and knowledge management systems (KMS). KMS implementation in an IT industry has been discussed in this paper. Several challenges including multiple information sources, access control, and employee’s mistrust among others are being identified along with their possible solutions. Later foreseen benefits of KMS implementation including quicker problem identification, faster response time, and cost saving among others are being highlighted. The paper concludes with revealing future research possibilities

Impact of Green In-Store & Green Supply Chain Processes on the Performance of Large Retailers in Pakistan

This study aimed to explore the relationship of green in-store activities and green supply chain processes with the economic performance of large retailers in Pakistan. It used a quantitative research approach using co-relational research design. The variables under the domain of Green In-Store processes included the Energy Management (EM), Waste Management (WM), and Green Consumption (GM) while the variables under the domain of Green Supply Chain processes included the Green Purchasing (GP), Green Logistics (GL), and Cooperation with Suppliers (CS). On the other hand, the performance of the large retailers in Pakistan was measured via two variables including Environmental Performance (ENP) and Economic Performance (EP). The results show that that Energy Management, Waste Management and Green Consumption are positively related to Green Supply chain practices like Green Purchasing, Green Logistics and Cooperation with Suppliers. It recommends that organizations, particularly large retailers in Pakistan should focus on environmental problems by executing supplier related green processes such as evaluating suppliers’ performance on greening, perform environmental audits, offer feedback to suppliers about these audits with training

A Comprehensive Study Of Energy Efficient Routing In Wsn Towards Qos

The Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is an emerging field of wireless network comprising of few to many autonomous tiny sensors nodes, with limited processing, limited memory, limited battery power, limited bandwidth and limited wireless transmission capabilities. The life time of the sensor node depends upon the battery power. WSN are commonly used to monitor environmental conditions like temperature, sound and pressure etc. WSN is an application of MANET. Wireless sensor node collects data and sends back to the sink or Base Station (BS). Data transmission is normally multi-hop among sensor nodes that enable these nodes to transmit data from hop to hop towards the sink or BS. Wireless sensor network requires robust and energy efficient communication protocols to minimize the energy consumption as much as possible.  Main penalty area of researchers is to design the energy efficient routing protocol. Routing protocols should be energy efficient, scalable and prolong the network lifetime.But Quality of Service QoS is also a challenge for energy efficient routing protocols for researchers. QoSneeds a multi-layerlinespanning using the different layer protocol architecture. In this paper, we enlighten the energy efficient routing towards QoS in WSNs and proposes a solutionfor the QoS layer in energy efficient routing techniques in WSNs and finally, highlight some open problems and future direction of research for given that QoS in WSNs