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Dave Bacon is a theoretical ski bum who is also a pseudo 
On President's day I attended the sSQUINT followup conference to SQUINT 2008. sSQUINT? Never heard of it? Neither had I. But when I learned that the "s" stood for "ski" (or maybe "snowboard") and that some of my fellow quantum informationers would be trekking to Wolf Creek Ski Area, well I had to submit a paper. Mine paper was about mogul formation as a self-organizing system. Another paper was on the ski bum as an outcast and iconoclast. Much to our delight the weather gods gave us some beautiful blue southern Colorado sunshine. For your delight, pictures below.
One quantum information theorist off the rock,
A second quantum information theorist off the rock,
And a third quantum information experimentalist/theorist off the rock,
This is the arm of a daring jump off Knife Ridge,
You can't see it in that picture, but my ski is somewhere near that arm. Rental equipment cranked to the full just ain't up to double blacks! Finally, our group involved outreach to under-represented people, like snowboarders, shown here in full rarely witnessed grace
Comments
Quantum computing is dead:
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/237493102/article.pl
Posted by: JohnQPublic | February 19, 2008 3:58 PM
Only if you don't care about RSA, chemistry, and physics :)
Posted by: Dave Bacon | February 19, 2008 5:01 PM
I. AM. JEALOUS!
Posted by: mick | February 19, 2008 5:15 PM
Oh, and I'm jealous of the skiing not the Slashdot stoushing.
Why is it that every time I read Slashdot I feel sick inside?
Posted by: mick | February 19, 2008 5:20 PM
Obviously, I'm teasing. But RSA the encryption algorithm? That's already being done with classical computing (which I know you know). What's the real promise then? Faster RSA? Or I can crack it without the private key?
Posted by: JohnQPublic | February 19, 2008 6:17 PM
I meant breaking RSA :) Quantum computers break RSA.
Posted by: Dave Bacon | February 19, 2008 6:32 PM
I take it that also applies to TDEA, too.
Posted by: JohnQPublic | February 20, 2008 11:52 AM
You mean TDES? No, I think ciphers aren't much more susceptable to quantum attack than classical attack (their recent record, however, leaves much to be desired :) )
Posted by: Dave Bacon | February 20, 2008 1:29 PM
TDEA refers to the algorithm itself. But, yes, triple DES. I was curious why specifically RSA and not ciphers in general.
Posted by: JohnQPublic | February 21, 2008 10:09 AM
SQuInT can now legally be called, "healthy."
Posted by: JM Geremia | February 22, 2008 9:57 AM
Question: in your research efforts, have you ever successfully cracked an RSA encrypted message with quantum computing?
Posted by: JohnQPublic | February 26, 2008 1:30 PM