Origins post...

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A long time ago, I was more active as a libertarian,
particularly as concerns the computing industry. Indeed, a
couple of months after Miller Freeman canned my column (I seem
to recall it was called "Industry Watch") in Software
Development magazine, I was at a software conference and ran
into Mike Kogan (co-author of The Design of OS/2), who
greeted me with words along the lines of "Hey, if it isn't Mr.
Controversial!"

When I raised my eyebrows in response, he proceeded to explain
that my name had come up in a conversation at the conference and
that he'd heard that the reason my column was terminated was
because it was focusing on issues deemed beyond the pale,
editorially - privacy, encryption, the Clipper chip, and so on -
especially as I had a definite take on such issues.

In any event, part of my activism at the time involved using
encryption (or as it turned out, encryption-based
authentication) as often as I could online. Using authentication
meant that when I posted messages to newsgroups or mailing
lists, I'd post them with a signature hash generated by Phil
Zimmermann's popular Pretty Good Privacy program, better known
simply as PGP.

At the time, although I realized that "signing" my posts
objectively served little purpose, I figured the visible use of
PGP in public forums would generate some interest in the issue
and promote the use of such software more generally. (It turns
out I was wrong; today, most people still send their email "in
the clear," which allows anyone with half a notion to eavesdrop
the ability to do so, given access to a network, but I
digress...)

One time, I was involved in a chat among a group of Russian
translators, where there were several participants whose name
was "Alex," and someone suddenly started referring to me as
"AlexPGP" to distinguish me from the others.

The name kind of stuck.

Why do I bring this up now?

Well, recently, I've gotten nondisclosure agreements (two, so
far) that basically threaten me with Bad Things™ if
anything sent to me by email is ever divulged to third parties.
Since it doesn't take much to intercept email these days, I've
informed such clients that unless what they send me is
encrypted, that I could not guarantee that anything sent to me
would not be intercepted en route.

To that end, I've generated a brand spanking new public/private
key pair and have made the public key available. In addition,
I've also found a nice application called GPGTools, which
simplifies the process of encrypting and authenticating data.

Like this...
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32) - GPGshell v3.47

iD8DBQFD4P0PoXnRkDEymZQRAqfpAJ9SlAaLlB88W5W2vwBuzhg/hwTxeQCgoI5h
gYybNzqMaFLf83OfSrgNfXc=
=hJ01
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...except that ever since PGP was sold, I've been using its OSS counterpart, GnuPG.

Cheers...

Work magnet...!?

There was more work today from the client that inundated me yesterday, but with a much shorter deadline: tomorrow. Fortunately, the new stuff didn't take too long to deal with this afternoon, so I translated the files and sent them back.

In the middle of all that, another client calls with a 6,000 source-word job, except that most of the source is, um, handwritten! Mazuma is mazuma, however, so I've got it on the plate as well.

I've gone over to maintaining a set of working files on a Seagate USB mini-drive (5 GB!), with the kicker being that in this new mode, I schedule backups of working files from the Seagate drive to a directory on my desktop, and of recent downloads from my desktop to a directory on the Seagate. The idea here is that if I have to go on the road with my laptop, I no longer have to worry about whether I've taken all my recent work files with me, and the key here is that the primary location for work files is now "outsourced" from my desktop.

In other news, a recent upgrade of my Office 2003 files caused Wordfast to burp and require a new license number to be input into a special field (the publisher uses one of those schemes where the software comes up with a number based on hardware/software configuration and after reporting that number to the publisher, you get a "license number" to enter into a dialog box). What bothers me is that, according to the publisher, the software figures out whether it's legitimately installed in a heuristic manner, which means, technically, that I might find out that I need a new license number immediately after upgrading something on my machine, or two weeks later.

Leaving aside the fact that support is provided for the product for three years after the purchase date (a strange setup: if you don't need support, you can use the software indefinitely; if, after the three years are up, you need support, you'll have to buy a new license) and that I'm 6 months from my three-year anniversary: I would well and truly hate to be somewhere in the middle of nowhere and have software crap out on me because some copy restriction scheme turns belly up. (One reason I'd hate it is because I've experienced it. Twice. At least. It sucks.)

On the other hand, despite the occasional bump and my grousing, I have to admit that Wordfast is - dollar-for-dollar - the best translation-related software purchase I've ever made. (Wow. How do you like that? A testimonial out of thin air!)

Time to go wind down. Tomorrow, I have to really start picking at the keys!

Cheers...