John F. Dooley

Peer assessments using the moodle workshop tool

In this Tip, we describe our experiences over the past four years in using the Workshop tool in the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) to allow students to do peer assessments of student written journal article reviews. In our junior-level Software Development course, students are required to read and review several journal articles, producing a written review of 2-4 pages. Students are then required to use the Workshop tool to read and assess the work of several of their peers using an instructor-supplied rubric. In this Tip we describe the Workshop tool, how it is set up for student use, and the results of several experiences with this approach.

A Brief History of Cryptology and Cryptographic Algorithms

The science of cryptology is made up of two halves. Cryptography is the study of how to create secure systems for communications. Cryptanalysis is the study of how to break those systems. The conflict between these two halves of cryptology is the story of secret writing. For over 2,000 years, the desire to communicate securely and secretly has resulted in the creation of numerous and increasingly complicated systems to protect ones messages. Yet for every system there is a cryptanalyst creating a new technique to break that system. With the advent of computers the cryptographer seems to finally have the upper hand. New mathematically based cryptographic algorithms that use computers for encryption and decryption are so secure that brute-force techniques seem to be the only way to break them so far. This work traces the history of the conflict between cryptographer and cryptanalyst, explores in some depth the algorithms created to protect messages, and suggests where the field is going in the future.

Moving to CC2001 at a small college

In this paper, we describe the process, problems, and successes of moving a Computer Science major at a small liberal arts college from CC1991[1] to CC2001[3]. Our current computer science major is largely based on CC1991 and on A Revised Model Curriculum for a Liberal Arts Degree in Computer Science[2]. We discuss issues with the number of required courses, the mathematics requirement, staffing, and transitioning to the new curricular model within a small department.

1929–1931: A Transition Period in U.S. Cryptologic History

Abstract The years 1929 through 1931 were among the most turbulent in American cryptology. During this period, the joint War and State Department Cipher Bureau of Herbert Yardley was closed. The Army created the Signal Intelligence Service under William Friedman. Finally, the Army and Navy began their first tentative steps towards inter-service cooperation. This article examines these events in detail and also takes a look at the relationship between Yardley and Friedman.

Software engineering in the liberal arts: combining theory and practice

This paper describes the organization of a junior/senior level software engineering class offered at Knox College, a small, selective liberal arts college. It presents the reasoning for the design of the course and gives some results from the course. The course is somewhat novel in that it uses non-standard texts, depends heavily on journal articles for a theory component, and requires a large amount of writing and individual and team oral presentations.

Review of Prisoners, Lovers, & Spies by Kristie Macrakis

Kristie Macrakis is a Professor in the School of History, Technology, and Society at Georgia Tech. Dr. Macrakis earned her PhD in the history of science at Harvard. For her fifth book, Macrakis has written an interesting and accessible work on the history of steganography in general and of invisible inks in particular. The book takes the reader from ancient Rome and the love poems of Ovid to modern chemical inks and computer-based ‘‘image steganography.’’ It includes an extensive bibliography, an appendix on secret ink formulas and experiments, and over 35 pages of detailed notes. The world of secret inks is divided into two types. Organic inks are those derived from the juices of fruits and vegetables (e.g., lemons, limes, oranges, onions) and other organic substances (e.g., urine, blood, starches). These inks can normally be developed using heat or water. Sympathetic inks are those that are normally derived from other chemicals and must be extracted from compounds (e.g., tannic acid, cobalt chloride, alum [aluminum potassium sulfate], iron sulfate, phenolphthalein). Sympathetic inks require a separate chemical reagent as a developer. Macrakis starts with a discussion of secret inks in the ancient world. The most fascinating descriptions are those of Aeneas Tacticus from the fourth century BCE. In his How to Survive Under Siege [4, section 31], Aeneas described a number of different methods of transmitting secret messages. These range from the story of Histiaios the tyrant of Miletus, who around 499 BC tattooed a secret message to his son-in-law on a slave’s head (a story also found in Herodotus [3]) through a cipher that used dots over certain letters in a book to mark out a message, to the famous story of writing a message on a pig’s bladder. The bladder is inflated, the message is written and the bladder is deflated. It is then stuffed in a flask of the proper size, and the flask is filled with oil and stoppered. At its destination, the flask is emptied, and the bladder removed and re-inflated. The recipient can then wash the bladder off and inscribe a reply and send it the same way. Aeneas talked about secret writing but did not give any indication of what type of ink he used. Macrakis also tells us about Ovid (43 BC–18 AD), particularly his The Art of Love, written in 2 AD, in

Curricular Assessment: Tips and Techniques

This session seeks to initiate a discussion regarding simple approaches through which faculty can gain meaningful insights into components of their courses and/or programs with only modest expenditures of time and energy.

Review of George Fabyan by Richard Munson

George Fabyan was a businessman, a millionaire, a collector, a patriot who donated time and energy to helping the United States during World War I, and the founder of one of the first private research laboratories in the United States. He was also a bit obsessive, a great salesman and self-promoter, something of a megalomaniac, a believer in the idea that Francis Bacon hid secret messages in the works of Shakespeare, and by most accounts, a pretty terrible and controlling boss. He was alternately generous and miserly where his employees were concerned, and he regularly took credit for their research work. Richard Munson has written a panegyric of Fabyan in the form of a biography. An idea of how Munson feels about Fabyan may be seen in the subtitle of the biography: ‘‘The Tycoon Who Broke Ciphers, Ended Wars, Manipulated Sounds, Built a Levitation Machine, and Organized the Modern Research Center.’’ While Munson does a good job of covering Fabyan’s entire life, in this review I will place emphasis on Fabyan’s running of the Riverbank Laboratories in Geneva, Illinois, and his involvement in cryptology and his relationship with William and Elizebeth Smith Friedman. George Fabyan was born in 1867 near Boston. His father owned a prosperous textile company that George inherited, along with a

Review of Inferno by Dan Brown

3 million trust fund. Fabyan was a restless soul, dropped out of school, wandered for several years, and finally settled into management at his father’s Chicago office beginning in 1893. George was an astute businessman and took an already well-off company and made it even more prosperous and successful. Beginning in 1905, Fabyan bought the first plot of what was to become a 325-acre estate along the Fox River in Geneva, about 40 miles southwest of Chicago. Split roughly in half north-to-south by Illinois Route 31, the estate, called Riverbank, would become Fabyan’s home and the site of one of the first private research facilities in the United States: Riverbank Laboratories. Riverbank includes a Japanese garden, a windmill (Figure 1), a lighthouse (Figure 2), bridges over the Fox River, two swimming pools, the Laboratory buildings, and the Villa, the Fabyan’s country house, expanded and remodeled, beginning in 1907, by Frank Lloyd Wright (Figure 3). Fabyan began to create the Laboratories around 1912 to satisfy three interests of his: sound, Shakespeare, and ciphers. All of these interests emerge from Fabyan’s

John Matthews Manly: The Collier's Articles

Midway in the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard it is to tell the nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh— the very thought of it renews my fear! It is so bitter death is hardly more so. But to set forth the good I found I will recount the other things I saw. How I came there I cannot really tell, I was so full of sleep when I forsook the one true way. [1, Canto I: 1–11]