Sec 16.5, due Dec 9th

Well, today is the day (I mean tonight is the night ;) ) the very last blog entry. It is a sad day and one that I wished would never come, but it is here and the last blog must be written. First, I just wanna say, Thank you for such a wonderful class! This was by far my favorite class all semester and I wish there were more classes I could take and more that I could learn! You've be a great teacher, one of the favorites! Thank you for everything, and I'll see you in our last class today. :(
1. I was curious as to how alpha multiplied by a was comparable to a discrete log. I know we learned about this is section 16.2, but it was brought to my attention again today for the reading and last night in the homework. In section 16.2 (I think) it talks about discrete logs for elliptic curves, and how beta=a*alpha may not look like a discrete log, but it was.. or something like that, I was just a little confused on that. Anyway, these have all been great sections, and I've really enjoyed this entire book! I can't believe that it's already over!! Thanks again for everything!
2. I really liked this section a lot. It was fun to see how all the cryptosystems that we have learned and used before can now be done using elliptic curves! I think that this is why I understand this section pretty well, because I've seen the basics of this all before, and that's really cool, because it's easier to understand and interesting!