Merry Christmas to Everyone

I have not sent a single Christmas card during my 40 years on this planet and the lazyness has become a principle of sort along way.  So don't expect a card from me in the mailbox.  However, I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.  Since the economy couldn't possibly get any worse next year, I'll see you all smiling from cheek to cheek next year.

Origin of the most popular four-letter word

Thanks to Marc Canter, I learned where the word F.U.C.K. came from.  Its actually an acronym that stands for "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" and was used in old England as a technical term to charge anyone caught in illegal cohabitation, obviously a very common offense.  When I first came to America 26 years ago, I couldn't speak a word of English.  The very first word I learn at my Junior Highschool was — you guessed it — fuck.  The word was so useful that I could spend a whole week with just that word and meaningful silences.

PGP 8.0 SDK Problems

SDK is not released yet, but libraries are included in PGP 8.0 installation.  So I spent a few hours trying to make it work with my PGP code written for an older version of the SDK (v1.7.8).  Two immediate problems, SDK library file name have changed and quite a number of functions have been removed.  I guess they don't care about backward compatibility from the developer's perspective.  So I am halting my PGP work until PGP 8.0 SDK is released.

Carol on Shared Authentication

I have always thought that security companies are too focused on technology and generally clueless about what users and markets want.  Bruce Schneir, for example, discovered that security is a process and not some magical mixture of technologies.  Its great that he was able to shift from technological perspective to operational perspective.  Carol Coye Benson writes from marketing perspective, a step beyond operational perspective, on shared authentication.  She is right on the ball.

PGP 8

PGP 8.0 download links got fixed and the entire site got overloaded.  Luckily, I was able to download and install.  It seems more user friendly than older versions.  It installed a service named PGPsdkService although PGP 8.0 SDK was not released today.  Its interesting to note that PGP 8.0 doesn't support Windows 95 which still has 3% marketshare but does support Macintosh OS X which has a fraction of 2% marketshare enjoyed by Macintosh.  Blame it on momentum and coolness.  Now, all I need is the SDK to start playing with PGP 8.  I'll have to support GPG too but money follows money so I must follow PGP 8 first.

PGP and GPG

I have been looking into PGP and GPG lately with an eye toward supporting them in an upcoming digital signature software I am designing.  All the different versions of PGP out there is pretty confusing.  PGP developer information is pretty lame also.  PGP 8 is supposed to be released today along with source code, but broken links and delayed SDK makes its release a non-event.  GPG is apparently pretty solid but its GPL-based and installation sucks.

My Father’s Autobiography

My father's autobiography is finally out.  Unfortunately, the book is written in Korean, so only those of you with 'Korean software' installed upstair can 'run' it.  If you are, you can order the book at kyobobook.co.kr or seoulbook.co.kr.

Title of the book translates roughly to "Arrest Corrupt President First."  It talks about my father's encounters with former dictators, presidents, revolutions, coup d'etat, etc.  His account of a 'man-to-man' meeting with Park Chung Hee, the former dictator of Korea is particularly outrageous.

Year End Rituals

My year end rituals is work.  I worked 18 hours on Thanksgiving Day and 21 hours the day after to meet a deadline.  Same thing happened year after year, for the past 20 years.  November and December are my nightmare months.  At 40 years young, this ain't good.

Busy Signal

I haven't updated my blog in a while now.  Primarily, I have been busy.  For the past few days, for example, I have been working on an Adobe Acrobat plug-in for a client.  Its basically allows you to digitally sign Acrobat documents.  Digital signature part is no brainer, but Acrobat SDK is a beautiful nightmare.