stevem, obviously though using symmetric ciphers you can do a Diffie-Helman (or RSA, or whatever) exchange of the keys in public. If you've signed up for this nutcake's cipher, though, you've bought into the idea of that being an unacceptable risk. So you're either screwed, or you might as well be using existing strong crypto.

MrHappy, I hope you didn't use DES for anything that was supposed to last "decades..." or that someone doesn't workaround your keystrength with a rubber hose.