Everyone's Favorite Thing

I know Blog interest in the Quantum is about as large as a qubit, but I just wanted to offer this link to a decent article on Quantum Computing. Quantum Computing, using possible quantum states to analyze the problem simultaneously, is not one of those technologies that is (always) "5 years away" ™, but "50 years away." Still, simple (2 qubit) quantum computers exist, and Peter Shor, who gave a talk at Carnegie Mellon which I attended, is famous for Shor's algorithm, which allegedly can be used to break public-key cryptography using a quantum computer, if one was available.

The reason we have secure passwords is that software on classical computers cannot factor the products of large prime numbers fast enough. In 2010 (twenty ten, two thousand ten, or two oh one oh) a 232-digit number was factored using hundreds of (classical) computers over a span of 2 years. So someone breaking your password to your porn collection is probably (currently) not worth it. Anyway, enjoy.