Chapter 5, due Sept 30

1. I really enjoy learning about all of these things, although sometimes it is hard for me to wrap my brain around it. I think what I struggle the most with is that I don't think I could ever do one of these by hand, well I'm pretty dang sure that I can't. There are a lot of steps to it, and it's easy to mess up, whereas before I could do it and practice it, which helped me understand what I was doing better. I think that if I saw how to do this on the computer or something it would help me understand even more. Like the one-time pad, I understood how it worked and what it was, but I really got it when we were able to use Dr. Doud's website and actually crack a real one. So I think that if there is some sort of system we could use to crazk a real one, it would help out more. But I still like it all alot, and am very interested!
2. I really liked how we went over half of this in class before I read it. It really helped me understand what I was reading! On the other half, I will admit that I was a little lost in class with what we were doing at first, even though I understood what you were saying and as I watched you go throught the process, I just didn't know where it came from and now I do :) This DES and AES stuff is very interesting, and I thought it was cool how they held a competition to come up with something to replace DES.