The ads on scienceblogs today lead me to find out that, apparently, I can buy a quantum computer right here from Seattle based REI:
And only $70 bucks! Jeez, those D-wave investors overpaid. I wonder how you use it to factor? But the number in the bag and wait?
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D-wave systems, whose paracomputer, err, I mean quantum-maybe computer, which sparked quite a bit of controversy earlier this year, is back in the news. This time D-wave is at the big superconducting conference (SC07) being held in Reno, Nevada and is demonstrating a 28-qubit quantum-maybe…
The Optimizer has gotten tired of everyone asking him about D-wave and gone and written a tirade about the subject. Like all of the optimizer's stuff it's a fun read. But, and of course I'm about to get tomatoes thrown on me for saying this, I have to say that I disagree with Scott's assessment…
This glib article from the Wired Blog Gadgets Lab discusses some of the "crazy" ideas for building computers. Among them, of course, are quantum computers, which means, of course that a quantum computing bastardization, can't be far from behind.
Let's begin at the beginning:
Quantum Computers…
Hm, looks like D-wave has a new CEO. Not sure when this occurred (?), but a reader sends along an email with an announcement from a recruiting (?) firm:
Lonergan Partners is pleased to announce that Vern Brownell has been named President and Chief Executive Officer of D-Wave Systems....
Vern…
No, no, no. This is a Quantum Computer BRIEF. ... Like underwear, but for your computer. ... Quantumly.
I thought it meant that it only worked briefly. And then turned back into a piece of luggage.
No, that's a legal brief in a computer case. "Quantum" means it's the shortest brief a lawyer is capable of writing. Probably the number of pages equals the reciprocal of Planck's Constant.
Ah, so number of pages is measured in inverse action units!
By that argument quantum field theorists would make excellent lawyers since they usually work in natural units such that h = 1. Can you imagine if quantum field theorists had written the tax code? Would have saved a lot of trees...
Oh. I thought it was a vintage thing. Schroedinger's briefcase. You could put the numbers in, at which point they'll be both factored and not factored. I think it may explain why he always had a slightly disappointed look on his face when rooting around inside it.
Wow, no one saw Moore's law working out like That....
(well maybe Ray Kurzweil)
Ian: I immediately think of "axiomatic tax code"
...and my very strange mind immediately wonders if attempts to axiomatize the tax code would be foiled by Gödel's theorem.
Strange unrelated fact: Gödel apparently found a logical flaw in the constitution that would supposedly lead to an autocratic government but Einstein talked him out of mentioning it to the judge at his citizenship hearing. The idea was written down in German and is supposedly in the Gödel archives awaiting re-discovery...
Ask an you shall receive: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/psa/sec16.htm#B
It is clearly a brief (case) wherein you may (or may not) find your (or someone else's) quantum computer. For $70, how could you not buy one?