Standard Of Cinema and What is Entertainment?

      The standards of cinema have evolved immensely in the last 20 years. One can see that what people considered entertainment 20 years ago would not bring in a large audience today. This raises the question of the involvement of technology within the cinema industry. With the ever-growing technology that is being applied to cinema today, is it that humans are getting harder to entertain or the movie- makers need more special affects to get their vision across?

     There is a large amount of cinema that people consider entertainment that is just embodying the everyday life of an individual or character. On the other hand, a new movie called "Gods and Kings" is absolutely loaded with special effects and epic scenes. It seems also destruction action movies is the new standard for action thrillers. 

      The term comedy is left up to the receiver of the comedy. Comedians like Eddie Murphy were breaking the limitations with what could be said and done with his tight leather apparel and raunchy jokes. It seems today that in order to get an audience to laugh comedians must be that more raunchy and outrageous, compared to the guys poking each other's eyes out. 

     Modern movies also are acting as advocates for the major issues in society. I see it all over. These issues include: gay rights, women equality, and marijuana. It seems one cannot see any genre of movie without seeing at least of these themes being pushed into audience's view. 

     One can see through cinema and comedy where society is going and the direction of the progression of thought. 

This is post number 7, I'm all out of standards at this point! 

Paintball Standards

    Paintball is an unknown sport, but growing very quickly in popularity in the extreme-sport community. Studies in 2006 showed the player increase and support rate was growing faster than snowboarding. But one would possibly say, "What standards could there possibly be involved with paintball?". Well, the rule book is quite lengthy, and doesn't necessarily provide a set of standards per se. But as an active member of the paintball community, there are a few of the big regulation changes over the years that have stuck out to me. The most influential standards I have seen in the sport of paintball is: rate of fire, field size, and team size.

    The RoF, or rate of fire, has been a fluctuating variable ever since I have joined the sport. Back when I played in the New England Paintball League, official National Professional Paintball feeder league, there was no standard rate of fire. The guns, although electronic, were set to semi-automatic, and could only shoot as fast as the finger could pull the trigger. This lead to market competition: guns that could shoot the fastest everyone would by. Those with the best triggers and the easiest to shoot would prevail. Also back then, there were 3 man, 5 man, and 7 man divisions, with the professionals playing with 7 players at a time. But I do recall a time before I got serious about the sport, and was just a spectator, when the professionals were playing with 10 man teams: chaos. And obviously the size of the field is somewhat based on the number of players on the field, which caused everyone to redesign their field layouts when the standards changed.

   Soon paintball officials and players realized the problem in letting the guns be set to semi-automatic: there was no real way to control the rate of fire, and there was a clear advantage to teams with better guns. In an attempt to level the playing field, a standard  RoF of 15 balls per second was set. Although there must have been a difference of opinion amongst organizations, because the NPPL did not adopt the new "ramping" standard. Instead they set a cap on the max RoF one could achieve with just their fingers on semi-auto to 15 balls per second. So a new professional paintball league formed: Paintball Sports Promotions, that adopted this new 15 balls per second standard, and thus x-ball was born.

    Ramping is a technology used in paintball guns, where by if you start pulling the trigger at say, 3 balls per second, the gun will automatically "ramp" up to 15 balls per second, or BpS. X-Ball is the term used by paintball players to refer to this new game where all players would have their guns set to "ramp mode". And boy was it fast paced, the ability to shoot 15 BpS right of the break was invigorating, it suddenly became extremely difficult to survive out of the starting box into your first bunker. Front players would have to run for their lives to make it to the further bunkers while back players put up "ropes" for the opposing team to run through. Teams were going through cases and cases of paint and still, at the end of the day, the usual winner was the one who shot the most. Which I am sure was great for the industry, and fun for the players, for a time, but unfortunately that madness had to come to an end. I am just proud to say I was able to be a part of that era, a part of the effort to set appropriate standards for the game I love.

    When I got to college, The National Collegiate Paintball Association, or NCPA, was a little a head of the curve in terms of standard paintball RoF. Although they had adopted the new field sizes, layouts, and a team size of five that PSP had endorsed through x-ball, they did not support the 15 BpS standard. The NCPA had set a league standard of 12.5 BpS which may not sound like a big difference, but as a player going from one league to the other, the difference was very noticeable.

    Now, with the introduction of the 2014 rule book, PSP has become more tame and reasonable by enforcing a standard RoF capped at 10.2 BpS. I for one am a firm supporter in a standard RoF. Under the rules of semi-automatic, our guns would have to be tested before every game, for certain mods in the gun or tricks one could use called "bouncing" which would almost let you achieve a fully automatic paintball gun. Refs would get to take your gun and unload as much paint as they saw fit before deeming your gun "legal". Which, was frustrating, because a team would have to ensure someone was walking around with extra paint to top you off before entering the field. By enforcing a rate of fire standard, we can make sure that one team does not have an unfair advantage over another, while still keeping the original sport of paintball in mind. Although not everyone has adopted this standard completely, as the NPPL still exists as a separate (failing) entity. it is still believed to be the global standard by most players in the community. 

http://www.paint-ball.org/paintball/statistics.htm

http://ncpapaintball.com/

http://nppl.com/

http://pspevents.com/

http://pspevents.com/rules/#.VIkCUSvF98E

What changed in the fashion industry and what will change

In the past days when everything was still in black and white and people walked in the streets without looking at their phones or tablets, the fashion industry was very different than what it has become today. Back in the day brand was not an issue, the manufacturing of the suit or dress was all that mattered. People at the time were not interested in brand recognition all that mattered was how much money they had to spend on the quality of the product and therefore on the skill of the tailor. I remember I had this conversation with my grandparents once, whom where around at the time when companies like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Prada where just small stores at the corner of some street that used to make tailored suits and dresses. Nowadays on the other hand the world of fashion has shifted from an industry where to get high quality clothes you would have them made to your specification by any tailor in town, to an industry where big brands have arisen thanks to successful branding into producing in large numbers high quality products and therefore pushing the hand made market out of the picture. Companies like Prada, Armani, Dolce & Gabbana and Gucci produce average quality products and sell them for extremely high prices. They have managed to steal the higher spending sector of the market because they successfully implemented brand recognition where back in the days tailors would usually advertise through its customers rather then openly like these companies.

If you notice, these companies started their campaign to success with a small but important step, an easily recognizable logo, and if you look today that logo is still in effect. Another aspect they used to strengthen the brand and unify the customers was to introduce the concept of a monogram. Basically what they did was genius, they only produced products with their monogram allover the products they sold. As we have seen today, people shifted from not buying the products because of the monotone color the brand uses or the monogram that is splattered across all the products to buying these products precisely for those qualities and to identify with a richer social class. The question now is if this standard for the fashion industry will stick or if companies like the recently exploding UNIQLO will set a new standard for the fashion industry for the masses.  In the past years UNIQLO has been gaining traction and a serious contender at the table when it comes to fashion. Basically what UNIQLO does and stand for is the pursuit for fashionable clothes with no overcharges due to brand recognition or brand weight, they are in the business to provide quality clothes that follow the fashion trend at a price that does not enrich the pockets of greedy owners, and so far it has been successful. UNIQLO has opened stores in every continent with stores opening in new cities faster then ever, I predict this type of fashion to stick and be a contender to provide fashionable clothes for the masses.

reflections on standards & society

This course has left me with a severe case of standarditus , a condition in which one sees all problems in the world through the lens of standardization.  As a recurring offender of STS courses here at Stevens, I went into the class with tools such as an understanding of Actor Network Theory and an understanding of the political demensions through examples like Winner's bridges and the many automobile examples given throughout Vinsel's classes.  As a computer scientist who keeps up to date on what is going on in open source project standards committess, it would have been a disservice to myself to not take this class.  I had heard the terms de facto, de jure, and concencus before in discussions about standards but lacked an understanding of how these standards processes shaped the way that the standards were made.  I found that the standards game and having John Day speak to the class were extremely helpful at this as to understand how negotiation and personal interest shapes the standards process.  Negotiation takes an understanding of the other person and their position far deeper than what is often gained at a committee table.  Understanding what the best type of standard is for a given problem under constraints such as time and safety is important as not to waste time failing. 

Before this class I had not thought much about the political side of standards.  A standard like any other asset a company may own is part of the strategy when competing for market dominance.  One would hope that the standard is good for innovation and the general public, but after taking this course it is clear that this ideal case is rare.  Even scientific standards committees suffer from this as it is near impossible to not attempt to best represent the interests of your employer.  Standards need to be updated and maintained as the fields that contain said standard and their relationships change.  The standards process is prone to corruption (as is anything inherently political) and those who oversee the process must be vigilant

I enjoyed having two lecturers in the class and thought that brought unique perspectives into discussion.  I thought the later lectures in the course were more helpful being those that focused on a single topic e.g. common core and pollution in west virginia.  Having a single reading I felt made the topics go more in depth.  One thing I think would be helpful would be for us to blog about the topic of the week which could be brought into that weeks discussion.  I also think that a list of what you want us to get out of each reading would be helpful as the readings can be quite long and it is sometimes easy to get lost in the details.  Overall I really enjoyed the course and feel it is and will continue to be useful in the way I think about the world. 

Standards Committee's in Open Source Software

Throughout the semester we have seen a lot of committees. All the ones we have sen have been from standards institutions. Let's look at a community ran one!

Debian advertises itself as the universal operating system. This is because they aim for everything to work well out of the box, and to be easily extendible. Since Debian is the [basis of so many distortions][deb-fork], it can be seen as a standard setting body. It is also one of the most bureaucratic, but in a good way. Unlike many other free software projects, the Debian project is guided by a well structured [constitution][deb-cont]. This constitution guides how all of the decision making processes are made within an organization.

The Debian project is headed by a Project Leader (PL). Their roles and responsibilities are mainly discussed in §5. The PL serves in one year terms, and is voted in by the Debian developers. Each term does not have to last the full year if a developer puts forward a resolution to remove the PL. They appoint members of technical committees, make urgent decisions, or make decisions that no one else has the authority to make. I have not listed all of their responsibilities, but the PL is the main organizational unit, and all committees end up reporting to them.

Another unit is the Technical Committee (TC). TC is the group that makes the finial decisions on technical problems. They also help to mediate technical decisions between developers, if they are unable to. The main other goal of the TC is to offer general technical advice. Any developer can ask the TC about it's views on any matter.

To be honest, I find their voting system pretty wonky. The rules for voting can be found in §A.6. Quorum is based on the min(5, log(number\_devs)/2).
Then depending on the type of vote, there are a few different ways to progress. For simple yes no votes, they are simply tallied up. For votes that require a series of options to be listed, a [Schwartz set][schwartz] is used. Honestly, the Schwartz set is pretty complicated math, but the end result is that each item in a list of options is weighted differently. It would be useful in a situation where no one can decide on a first option, so then the second option would be counted.

Although this is a very brief introduction to Debian's structure, it should start to show how it is organized. It is possible to go into much deeper detail on this topic, but that is for another day. Compared to many other community ran open source project, Debian's is probably the most well structured. One of the cool thinks about this structure is that it is freely copyable. Even though any group could copy Debian's rules, without the proper people taking responsibilities, the rules won't matter too much.

[deb-fork]:  https://www.debian.org/misc/children-distros "Debian Forks"
[deb-const]: https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution    "Debian Constitution"
[schwartz]:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwartz_set   "Schwartz Set"

Schedule I classification and research of controlled substances

The DEA's classification of substances under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) is in need of an overhaul as our knowledge of these substances changes. The war on drugs has done little to help society and has made it difficult for individuals to seek help for underlying condtions that are at the root of their drug use. This blog post will look at several controlled substances and how standardization of these substances has made it difficult for researchers to study known and potential applications. Several schedule one substances (meaning high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use) currently have known medical uses but there is little attention towards fixing this classification even for cannabis where the fight is now focused on legalization. Schedule I classification makes it difficult for research labs to get samples of substances and makes testing difficult as there are strict time-consuming protocols defined by the DEA. Schedule I also greatly increases prison sentences for drug possession and other drug related crimes. 

MDMA (the psychoactive drug in ecstacy) is classified under schedule 1 yet has been found to be very effective in treating PTSD. A study performed in 2010 by MAPS (multidisciplinary association for psychedelic studies) concluded that our of a sample of 20 individuals in PTSD treatment, 83% of those who went through MDMA-assisted psychotherapy were cured compared to just 25% without it. Results from a follow-up study in 2012 showed that the treatment was still effective, showing that it could have long term benefits for those who undergo treatment. The medical community has recommended to the US government that MDMA should be placed under Schedule III, and despite two court rulings by the DEA's administrative law judge that Schedule I placement is illegal, it remains there today. The psychoactive compound psilocybin found in magic mushrooms has been found to be effective in treating depression. It has been found to be particularly effective at helping patients reverse negative cognative biases, a phenomenon in which an individual has a greater recall of negative memories than positive ones. Other studies have shown psilocybin to help with obsessive compulsion disorder and cluster headaches. GHB and cannabis are both Schedule I substances with Schedule III applications, a classification which breaks the very definition of Schedule I. GHB helps with narcolepsy and alcohol withdrawl and dependence but is schedule I, unless you call it by its phamacutical name Xyrem, then its Schedule III. Canabis has been found to help with many ailments including pain, nausea, and sleep deprivation. It has also been found to help with epilepsy with public attention being brought through CNN's Dr Sanjay Gupta's special “WEED” where he showed how cannabis was able to help a little girl. Marinol (an isomer of THC) has been classified as Schedule III and is used to treat the same conditions as cannabis leading to many critics asking the question of why THC is Schedule I. 

For these substances and for those I did not mention in this blog, it is clear that the DEA is behind science in the classification of substances. When the medical community is demanding reclassification with a successful lawsuit and yet still nothing happens, it goes to show that standards in government can be dangerous to progress. The Standard for drug classification lays out the criteria for drugs to move between the schedules yet those in charge of seeing it change do nothing about it due to the “war on drugs”. Those who oversee the implementation of a standard need to be held accountable for the maintenance of said standard.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/11/mdma-molly-therapy-ptsd-cure/10683963/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/opinion/sunday/can-mushrooms-treat-depression.html?_r=0

http://www.vox.com/2014/8/7/5967239/marijuana-legalization-drug-schedule-DEA-FDA-HHS

Standard of Curbing Human Nature For the Purpose of Manners

     Human nature can be called a number of things; primal, aggressive, or anti-progressive. Human nature can also be profiled with the desires that human beings feel in everyday life, whether its eating or relieving yourself. 

     

     The reason that is important is that modern manners do not allow for the desires to come up in daily conversation. The first example that comes to mind is passing gas. Why is it embarrassing to be caught passing gas in a public venue? All humans do it and all humans will feel the need to pass gas eventually in a public venue. Society has determined the standard of manners is to not pass something that may be causing a person pain in the moment. 

    

      Another example would be the idea that anything animal- like that humans do, burping or grunting, is looked down upon in society. Also why is that humans are trying constantly trying to push away from anything that will lead to a connection with them being an animal?

       These are all things humans will do and continue to do in their everyday lives. Therefore this raises the question, If everyone does the mentioned above why is it looked down upon in society? If a standard is decided upon consensus, how is that society was able to brain wash the western world into thinking this was wrong?

     Something that intrigued me was the standard of the manner in which babies are allowed to relieve themselves in oriental culture, especially in China. In China, babies actually have a different zipper where they are able to relieve themselves in the street and society was completely fine with it. My first reaction to hearing this fact was, "That's gross and why?"

     This raises the question, why is in Chinese culture that society is that comfortable with babies relieving themselves and Americans are not allowed to pass gas in conversation? How was society able to brain wash people into either extreme of this situation and why did each society differ in their opinions?