This study examines the regulatory issues and introduction problems of TV-betting data broadcasts in Korea by in-depth interview with a panel group. TV-betting data broadcast services of card games and horse racing games are widely in use in Europe and other parts of the world. In order to carry out the study, a demo program of TV-betting data broadcast in the OCAP(OpenCableTM Application Platform Specification) system environment, which is the data broadcasting standard for digital cable broadcasts in Korea was exposed to the panel group and then they were interviewed after watching and using the program. The results could be summarized as below. First of all, while TV-betting data broadcasts have many elements of entertainment, the respondents thought that it would be difficult to introduce TV-betting in data broadcasts as in overseas countries largely due to social factors. In addition, in order to introduce TV-betting data broadcasts, they suggested that excessive speculativeness must be suppressed through a series of regulatory system devices, such as by guaranteeing credibility of the media based on safe security systems for transactions, scheduling programs with effective time constraints to prevent the games from running too frequently, limiting the betting values, and by prohibiting access to games through set-top boxes of other data broadcast subscribers. The general consensus was that TV-betting could be considered for gradual introduction within the governmental laws and regulations that would minimize its ill effects. Therefore, the government should formulate long-term regulations and policies for data broadcasts. Once the groundwork is laid for safe introduction of TV-betting on data broadcasts within the boundary of laws and regulations, interactive TV games are expected to be introduced in Korea not only for added functionality of entertainment but also for far-ranging development of data broadcast and new media industries.
The advent of the Internet and related Web technologies has created an easily accessible link between a firm and its customers, and has provided opportunities to a firm to use information technology to support supplementary after-sale services associated with a product or service. It has been widely recognized that supplementary services are an important source of customer value and of competitive advantage as the characteristics of the product itself. Many of these supplementary services are information-based and need not be co-located with the product, so more and more companies are delivering these services electronically. Net-based customer service, which is defined as an Internet-based computerized information system that delivers services to a customer, therefore, is the core infrastructure for supplementary service provision. The importance of net-based customer service in delivering supplementary after-sale services associated with product has been well documented. The strategic advantages of well-implemented net-based customer service are enhanced customer loyalty and higher lock-in of customers, and a resulting reduction in competition and the consequent increase in profits. However, not all customers utilize such net-based customer service. The digital divide is the phenomenon in our society that captures the observation that not all customers have equal access to computers. Socioeconomic factors such as race, gender, and education level are strongly related to Internet accessibility and ability to use. This is due to the differences in the ability to bear the cost of a computer, and the differences in self-efficacy in the use of a technology, among other reasons. This concept, applied to e-commerce, has been called the "e-commerce divide." High Internet penetration is not eradicating the digital divide and e-commerce divide as one would hope. Besides, to accommodate personalized support, a customer must often provide personal information to the firm. This personal information includes not only name and address, but also preferences information and perhaps valuation information. However, many recent studies show that consumers may not be willing to share information about themselves due to concerns about privacy online. Due to the e-commerce divide, and due to privacy and security concerns of the customer for sharing personal information with firms, limited numbers of customers adopt net-based customer service. The limited level of customer adoption of net-based customer service affects the firm profits and the customers' welfare. We use a game-theoretic model in which we model the net-based customer service system as a mechanism to enhance customers' loyalty. We model a market entry scenario where a firm (the incumbent) uses the net-based customer service system in inducing loyalty in its customer base. The firm sells one product through the traditional retailing channels and at a price set for these channels. Another firm (the entrant) enters the market, and having observed the price of the incumbent firm (and after deducing the loyalty levels in the customer base), chooses its price. The profits of the firms and the surplus of the two customers segments (the segment that utilizes net-based customer service and the segment that does not) are analyzed in the Stackelberg leader-follower model of competition between the firms. We find that an increase in adoption of net-based customer service by the customer base is not always desirable for firms. With low effectiveness in enhancing customer loyalty, firms prefer a high level of customer adoption of net-based customer service, because an increase in adoption rate decreases competition and increases profits. A firm in an industry where net-based customer service is highly effective loyalty mechanism, on the other hand, prefers a low level of adoption by customers.
This study proposes a real-time rendering algorithm for lighting when each of more than 100,000 moving particles exists as a light source. Two 3D textures are used to dynamically determine the range of influence of each light, and the first 3D texture has light color and the second 3D texture has light direction information. Each frame goes through two steps. The first step is to update the particle information required for 3D texture initialization and rendering based on the Compute shader. Convert the particle position to the sampling coordinates of the 3D texture, and based on this coordinate, update the colour sum of the particle lights affecting the corresponding voxels for the first 3D texture and the sum of the directional vectors from the corresponding voxels to the particle lights for the second 3D texture. The second stage operates on a general rendering pipeline. Based on the polygon world position to be rendered first, the exact sampling coordinates of the 3D texture updated in the first step are calculated. Since the sample coordinates correspond 1:1 to the size of the 3D texture and the size of the game world, use the world coordinates of the pixel as the sampling coordinates. Lighting process is carried out based on the color of the sampled pixel and the direction vector of the light. The 3D texture corresponds 1:1 to the actual game world and assumes a minimum unit of 1m, but in areas smaller than 1m, problems such as stairs caused by resolution restrictions occur. Interpolation and super sampling are performed during texture sampling to improve these problems. Measurements of the time taken to render a frame showed that 146 ms was spent on the forward lighting pipeline, 46 ms on the defered lighting pipeline when the number of particles was 262144, and 214 ms on the forward lighting pipeline and 104 ms on the deferred lighting pipeline when the number of particle lights was 1,024766.
During the past 4 years, I have made a careful analysis of the present rotating system of hunting areas, on the one hand, by asking a group of hunters to fill out a questionnaire, and on the other hand, by referring to the written documents on the subject. And, as a result, it is concluded that this system, by varying the hunting grounds each year, contains in itself several problems as follows. 1. The hunters find it quite inconvenient to use a different hunting ground year after year and they also complain that the present hunting ground charge is more than it is worth. Therefore, it is expected that the number of hunters will explosively increase in the future with the betterment of hunting conditions. 2. The hunters have almost no information about game and they are, as a whole, lacking in the ethics of hunting. 3. The allotment of time in hunting training courses is not so sufficient that it is next to impossible to improve the quality of hunters. 4. As a rule, the population density of wildlife is so sparse that it falls short of the proper standard of it. 5. The present hunting system does not seem to contribute to the advancement of tourism. 6. It is absolutely necessary to make a general survey of the situation of wildlife for the legal protection of it. Besides, the interests of hunters are so closely tied up with those of farmers and foresters that dreastic measures should be taken to settle their conflicting differences. For the purpose of solving the above-mentioned problems and at the same time, of developing sound hunting practices in the long run, I hereby make two suggestions. 1. The Establishment of the Hunting License Test System It is desirable to issue a license to a prospective hunter after he has met a special qualification and then passed a test so that he may have bits of information needed for his hunting activities. 2. The Introduction of The Revier System The fundamental concept of this system is based on the assumption that the private landowner should reserve a right to the pursuit of game and take responsibility for wildlife management.
Computer games for elderly people can be utilized as a tool not only for enjoying themselves but also for improving their health and quality of lives. It is reported that such games could be played in order to stimulate and enhance mental and physical capabilities of elderly people. It is also reported that traditional folk games are preferred to be played by elderly people rather than modern computer games. In this paper, we propose to use a tabletop interface, u-Table, and its corresponding natural gestures as a user interface for playing traditional folk games by elderly people. Since a table is a good place for people to get together, talk to each other and share their experiences, a tabletop interface can be used for playing games of cooperation, conversation and sharing. A set of traditional folk games were digitalized using u-Table. It was demonstrated that its users had better experiences of playing games with u-Table comparing to playing games using a mouse of a conventional computer.
Internet commerce has been growing at a rapid pace for the last decade. Many firms try to reach wider consumer markets by adding the Internet channel to the existing traditional channels. Despite the various benefits of the Internet channel, a significant number of firms failed in managing the new type of channel. Previous studies could not cleary explain these conflicting results associated with the Internet channel. One of the major reasons is most of the previous studies conducted analyses under a specific market condition and claimed that as the impact of Internet channel introduction. Therefore, their results are strongly influenced by the specific market settings. However, firms face various market conditions in the real worlddensity and disutility of using the Internet. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of various market environments on a firm's optimal channel strategy by employing a flexible game theory model. We capture various market conditions with consumer density and disutility of using the Internet.
shows the channel structures analyzed in this study. Before the Internet channel is introduced, a monopoly manufacturer sells its products through an independent physical store. From this structure, the manufacturer could introduce its own Internet channel (MI). The independent physical store could also introduce its own Internet channel and coordinate it with the existing physical store (RI). An independent Internet retailer such as Amazon could enter this market (II). In this case, two types of independent retailers compete with each other. In this model, consumers are uniformly distributed on the two dimensional space. Consumer heterogeneity is captured by a consumer's geographical location (ci) and his disutility of using the Internet channel (${\delta}_{N_i}$).
shows various market conditions captured by the two consumer heterogeneities.
(a) illustrates a market with symmetric consumer distributions. The model captures explicitly the asymmetric distributions of consumer disutility in a market as well. In a market like that is represented in
(c), the average consumer disutility of using an Internet store is relatively smaller than that of using a physical store. For example, this case represents the market in which 1) the product is suitable for Internet transactions (e.g., books) or 2) the level of E-Commerce readiness is high such as in Denmark or Finland. On the other hand, the average consumer disutility when using an Internet store is relatively greater than that of using a physical store in a market like (b). Countries like Ukraine and Bulgaria, or the market for "experience goods" such as shoes, could be examples of this market condition.
summarizes the various scenarios of consumer distributions analyzed in this study. The range for disutility of using the Internet (${\delta}_{N_i}$) is held constant, while the range of consumer distribution (${\chi}_i$) varies from -25 to 25, from -50 to 50, from -100 to 100, from -150 to 150, and from -200 to 200.
summarizes the analysis results. As the average travel cost in a market decreases while the average disutility of Internet use remains the same, average retail price, total quantity sold, physical store profit, monopoly manufacturer profit, and thus, total channel profit increase. On the other hand, the quantity sold through the Internet and the profit of the Internet store decrease with a decreasing average travel cost relative to the average disutility of Internet use. We find that a channel that has an advantage over the other kind of channel serves a larger portion of the market. In a market with a high average travel cost, in which the Internet store has a relative advantage over the physical store, for example, the Internet store becomes a mass-retailer serving a larger portion of the market. This result implies that the Internet becomes a more significant distribution channel in those markets characterized by greater geographical dispersion of buyers, or as consumers become more proficient in Internet usage. The results indicate that the degree of price discrimination also varies depending on the distribution of consumer disutility in a market. The manufacturer in a market in which the average travel cost is higher than the average disutility of using the Internet has a stronger incentive for price discrimination than the manufacturer in a market where the average travel cost is relatively lower. We also find that the manufacturer has a stronger incentive to maintain a high price level when the average travel cost in a market is relatively low. Additionally, the retail competition effect due to Internet channel introduction strengthens as average travel cost in a market decreases. This result indicates that a manufacturer's channel power relative to that of the independent physical retailer becomes stronger with a decreasing average travel cost. This implication is counter-intuitive, because it is widely believed that the negative impact of Internet channel introduction on a competing physical retailer is more significant in a market like Russia, where consumers are more geographically dispersed, than in a market like Hong Kong, that has a condensed geographic distribution of consumers.