BOW WAVE 156

Three Years On Edition

news and views on trade, insurance and risk

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Wavy Line	sam@wavyline.com
(c)2002 WavyLine.com	Issue No 156 18 Nov 02
Published free of charge to Readers
Editor: Sam Ignarski
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In this issue:

1. Welcome
2. Bow Wave Three Years On
3. Paper on Cargo Security
4. Why Digital Signatures are not Signatures
5. Chartered Shipbrokers Education In and Out of Choppy Waters
6. And Finally...

1. Welcome

This Issue of Bow Wave finds your editor in Hong Kong for a few days, en route to the Ausintermodal Conference in Melbourne on 19-20 November. A long way to go but the advance notices say this event has taken shape nicely with a large audience in prospect.

This Issue also marks the third completed year of Bow Wave. The first edition was published 156 weeks ago to 200 Readers, more or less the contents of your editor's personal e-mail address book stored on Compuserve. It has grown gradually, by fits and starts to its present count of 7550 Readers spread all around the world.

We send many thanks to our Sponsors and Readers for their support and feedback and for helping to make Bow Wave the thing that it is today. For your editor at least, it continues to be a great pleasure.

Item 2 contains a few extracts from past editions

New Readers this week include:

Anne Ryan of brokers Frank Crystal & Company of California Richard Eames of Messrs Bilbrough in London
Hong Kong solicitor Mary Thomson
Claims man Fernando E Delfin G of Grupodelmex in Mexico

News of Readers

From Capt Neal Rodrigues of PIL (UK) Ltd we have learned with regret of the passing away of Capt Hugh Stewart after a long illness borne with great fortitude and good humour.

Rather a lot about the Zine itself this week. Normal service resumes next week, technology willing.

Enjoy.

2. Bow Wave Three Years On

From Issue 1

Roy Campbell on the prospects of an E-Club

In a piece in Lloyd's List which appeared on 19NOV99 Roy Campbell, consultant with Glenfinlas and veteran with a number of different mutual insurance Clubs wonders aloud whether the Clubs as currently exist will turn to the Web proactively.

New technology has heightened the importance and value of knowledge or 'know-how' in the service industries, Campbell says. There would be no need for an expensive, big-city office. Because direct communication between insurer and insured is so much improved by the Internet, geography has become less and less relevant. Specialist claims handling work can be sub-contracted to external claims handlers.
In keeping with on-line insurers who have already made the leap to the web, underwriting and risk assessment of new business and renewals could be more readily automated, leaving the insured party to complete a questionnaire or proposal form on-line, receive a quote, accept it, and pay for it instantly.

Success on the web is about two things: community and cost. For whatever reason, P&I has been slow to attract Internet entrepreneurs. All around it, web-businesses are being born which milk the revolutionary improvements in administration and the dramatic cost-savings which the Internet and e-commerce can offer.Will the caution which is such a hall-mark of the P&I industry push its existing players slowly towards late adoption of e-commerce, Campbell asks.

It depends on the money, we think. So long as Clubs are in institutional, cost-plus management fee mode, the urge to save using innovation and technology is somewhat hesitant. The attachment to historic centralized operations which is pretty much a feature of the industry also stunts the growth of widely distributed operations.

From Issue 52

Bow Wave's Readership

We started with the e-mail addresses of friends and colleagues in relevant industries. Each day since a few people have subscribed by writing in. We also receive lists which are volunteered by readers and gratefully received. Each week approximately 80 to 100 names are added to the list and 10 to 20 names ask to unsubscribe and are removed from the mailing list. This somewhat haphazard progress ensures that we have to search for and remove duplicate listings from time to time. Also the frequent churning in the markets we cover seems to result in people changing jobs and e-mail addresses very often.

Sometimes we are asked quite forcefully to remove listings. We do so as soon as we can. We do not buy lists from vendors or engage in the practice known as spamming.

To those people who have stayed inside a single organisation for the duration of their e-mail careers we have a word of advice: take out a private subscription to another internet service provider and migrate all your personal filing onto that account lest you find yourself saying a fond farewell not only to your employers but also your accumulated electronic files.

From Issue 104

Two Years On

This issue sees the second completed year of Bow Wave, a publication started in a spirit of experimentation during a feverish period in the history of communications while the editor was temporarily becalmed and waiting out a period of gardening leave following departure from the TT Club, an organisation much in the news these days.

Since the first edition which went out to a list of 200 e-mail addressees, the readership has grown steadily. The feedback is very rapid. Those who do not want to read our lines unsubscribe at once but we gain new Readers at a slightly faster rate.

But it does seem clear that the area where insurance intersects with shipping, transport, finance and trade has a large following around the world, and the electronic newsletter demonstrates how well the internet can be used to correspond with widely spread individuals with a common interest or affinity.

We plan to continue in the spirit of experimentation and to try and expand what we can offer to Readers.

3. Paper on Cargo Security

The estimable Eye for Transport E-Zine is offering a free report to Readers which contains "a complete overview of the latest Customs and Government Initiatives together with an overview of the most common technologies being used to secure the cargo and supply chain". To see a table of contents and to request a copy go to:

http://www.eyefortransport.com/report/security.shtml

4. Why Digital Signatures are not Signatures

The November Crypto-Gram Newsletter issued by Bruce Schneier that font of good sense on the issues of on-line security contains a very good piece on the limitations of digital signatures in the lives of people. He writes:

"The math is complex, but the mechanics are simple. Alice knows a secret, called a private key. When she wants to "sign" a document (or a message, or any bucket of bits), she performs a mathematical calculation using the document and her private key; then she appends the results of that calculation -- called the "signature" -- to the document. Anyone can "verify" the signature by performing a different calculation with the message and Alice's public key, which is publicly available. If the verification calculation checks out then Alice must have signed the document, because only she knows her own private key...

...The problem is that while a digital signature authenticates the document up to the point of the signing computer, it doesn't authenticate the link between that computer and Alice. This is a subtle point. For years, I would explain the mathematics of digital signatures with sentences like: "The signer computes a digital signature of message m by computing m^e mod n." This is complete nonsense. I have digitally signed thousands of electronic documents, and I have never computed m^e mod n in my entire life. My computer makes that calculation. I am not signing anything; my computer is."

Read the whole article at:

http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0011.html#1

5. Chartered Shipbrokers Education In and Out of Choppy Waters

For over 50 years the London Guildhall (now London Metropolitan) University has been teaching classes of students of the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers courses. This year, following the merger, the university decided not to run any of these (nor several other professional part time evening) courses unless they had a minimum of 10 students signed up in advance - and they caused quite a stir when they announced this decision one working day before the annual course was due to commence.

Two of the long-standing part time visiting lecturers there - Readers Jeffrey Blum and Captain Kenneth Long, who are also the Joint Education Officers of the ICS London Branch - came up with a working alternative by making an arrangement with the College of Central London in Hoxton as a venue for these courses and are now in their sixth week of running eight courses on four evenings to classrooms of between 11 and 25 students per course, a total of 53 students - and still more students are in the process
of registering to join the classes next term, albeit half-way through the academic year, because they have heard on the student grape-vine of the value of these classes.

Jeffrey and Kenneth along with another ICS lecturer Rita Barnish have now established a new company - Maritime Education & Training Ltd - to run these (and other) courses henceforth.

Would be students can contact Jeffrey Blum at:

IntlinkInt@aol.com

6. And Finally.....

Many thanks to Jon Liss, the crane and equipment specialist for this Californian meditation on the passage of time.

30 Year Difference

What a difference 30 years makes

1972: Long hair
2002: Longing for hair

1972: The perfect high
2002: The perfect high yield mutual fund

1972: KEG
2002: EKG

1972: Acid rock
2002: Acid reflux

1972: Moving to California because it's cool
2002: Moving to California because it's warm

1972: Growing pot
2002: Growing pot belly

1972: Trying to look like Marlon Brando or Liz Taylor 2002: Trying NOT to look like Marlon Brando or Liz Taylor

1972: Seeds and stems
2002: Roughage

1972: Popping pills, smoking joints
2002: Popping joints

1972: Killer weed
2002: Weed killer

1972: Hoping for a BMW
2002: Hoping for a BM

1972: The Grateful Dead
2002: Dr. Kevorkian

1972: Going to a new, hip joint
2002: Receiving a new hip joint

1972: Rolling Stones
2002: Kidney Stones

1972: Being called into the principal's office
2002: Calling the principal's office

1972: Screw the system
2002: Upgrade the system

1972: Disco
2002: Costco

1972: Parents begging you to get your hair cut
2002: Children begging you to get their heads shaved

1972: Taking acid
2002: Taking antacid

1972: Passing the drivers' test
2002: Passing the vision test

1972: Whatever
2002: Depends

BOW WAVE is published each week to around 7550 Readers in the transport,insurance,shipping and finance industries.

Thanks for reading BOW WAVE