The Arguments within

Reference the link/post below : http://anujvelu.blogspot.com/2010/01/ais-internet-interfacing-dangers.html#links Hello Sir . So, a nice self-examining post. The risk assessment for a new, upcoming event, huh? Anyways, to help matters, let me just cross it a little bit, and that would also make the exercise a little more interesting,:- It seems to me that the theories on Security systems and policing are based on the lines that an innocent man has nothing to fear and therefore nothing to hide.Infact it is as much possible and easy, a child's play, to create scenarios whereby not having an open system AIS-system could also be shown to be leading to incidents.Yes, anyone can do that. But as i say the premise of secuirty and therefore the allied businesses in today's world is coming from the point - nothing-to-fear-and-hide, and thus the transperency demand; opacity is being dispensed away with, unless it can be sufficiently proven that opacity is severly needed to help the matters...

Are these really cost-saving decisions? :-- 1) To have pirated softwares to run the computer systems. 2) To have duplicate, counterfeit parts installed in the systems when the originals are available in the market. 3) To put ‘unauthorized person’ (somebody whom the manufacturers of a device do not certify) to attend or service the device. 4) To replace the device with a human substitute when the device has become dysfunctional. 5) To deny communication , even a ‘BCC’ or ‘CC’ labeling of messages to certain recipients , all for the only reason of cost-savings, ! (where purposefulness is not questionable, only the cost) 6) To refuse communication to ship’s other staff by the Master or other management rank, with the office management in the name of cost incurred! 7) To “enforce” rules like switching off the lights, using the stationery items precariously, etc to say -- cost saving! 8) To hold cost-saving at higher regard than “safety first”, for example in a decision to lay-off regardin...

Alternation and Duplication are two widely known methods of handling breakdowns on board ships. The concept of managing ship equipment and machinery talks mainly of the PMS only, which is the Planned Maintenance System, and, maybe, never talks on the breakdown maintenance of devices. In fact the ISM and other regulations such as ISGOTT have such heavy hurdles in place that no intelligent ship-staff will want to call repairs as his forte, if his ship-owners are a truly regulations-compliant people. Filling the forms, risk assessments, following-up the manuals, skills of the crew, -- these all are discouraging to achieving the repairs of any device or even the simplest of pipelines repairs. therefore the two methods talked above have been resorted to. In fact the cost incurred to achieve Alternation and Duplication (A&D) appears to be taken up for recovery by method of crew size cut-down and minimal stoppages or lay-offs Intelligent ship-owners will also appreciate that they can neve...

Not to endorse the Rakhi Sawant work, but i still see many of our people scared of taking bold acttions only because it might bring them to public glare, which they deem to be 'unwanted' . Earlier, in my child hood days, coming (appearing) of Doordarshan was a big public achievement for people. But, in the days post the media-revolution, people have started becoming scared ..well, some of them. While the rest have taken roads to celebrity-hood. What's immature in our social outlook towards media-attention, our in-depth understanding of the power of media as the fourth estate(the fourth pillar) of Democracy??? In ruralistic outlook, whose denizens replete our armed and police forces, the lacking knowledge of media-mangement as a celebrity maker and the cornor-stone of democracy leads to all sorts of internal game-bit to happen. We Indians have always been criticised for our crab-mentality, or the leg-pulling activities where ourselves scathe the progress and advances of ou...

Characteristics of reasoning minds: It is my general observation that people who are very reasoning are: 1. Very sleazy in their thoughts. They don't like to get chained by any imposed class of thoughts, not the least the social taboos. Therefore, they are endless, thinking the unthinkable. 2. Consumers of some addictiv product like cigerrettes, or tobacco, etc. Their minds are running like jet planes all the times. Hence they stomach needs it's fuel continuously to keep the acid level low. 3. Very argumemtative and hence more disliked by others. Being reasoning, have opinions on most matters. therefore, have a tendency to break the previously held beliefs, thus making a huge league of those who dislike them. 4.

The Global Position Satellite navigation system is an indispensable part of a modern seafarer's life. On a sidetrack , navigation used to be carried out by Star-gazing in the days of yore. The sextant, a star sighting instrument, was invented by the Chinese, although most of us Indian maintain that we taught the world the art and science of Navigation. My personal quest into how the art and science of navigation came to human kind has yet indicated the we Indians would only do a river navigation, which was called 'Nav gath' in Sanskrit which perhaps is the etymological base for the Navigation. But river navigation, which harnesses 'terrestrial navigation' is vastly different from ocean navigation, which uses the 'celestial navigation' . Celestial navigation is the first place where the need for chronometer, or a time measuring device, was first felt by mankind. The purpose was to be able to measure the movement of sun across the longitudes. The "long b...

Most people in Indian Merchant Navy are wary of one particular breed of Technical Managers( aka Superintendents) . And that is the Indians themselves. It is humorous to find that quite many of us are aware of some problem existing in our management approach, although we believe that it is in someone else among us but not me. We realize deeply that the Indian style of management focus a lot on exacting hard work from people, so much that where there is no work, we begin to feel uneasy for not getting opportunity to do our most cherished thing..the hard work! It is agreed that all the arguments that would stand in favour and against our desi notion of Hard Work, ..(Hard work key to success, Hard work can win all battles, Foreigners do more hard work than us, ....and so on), the idea of slow and easy approach is completely abhored by our such the (someone-else-) Managers. My close friend just now rang me up from China, to tell how hard his life has become, on the same ship on whic...