As some people may understand, quantum computers are light years ahead of the most powerful supercomputers on Earth today when it comes to certain functions. One of these is the ability to break the greatest encryption in technology today, RSA. In other words, any hacker could break through the most heavily secured digital fortresses we have today, which leaves any computer open to data theft--including government agencies.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70001-0.html

What are your thoughts on this technology?

I think as far as cryptography goes, it's a two-way street. It provides codebreakers with more powerful tools -- but it also provides *codemakers* with more powerful tools.

I do wonder how much longer we'll manage with such quaint things as passwords and PIN numbers, though. Six-character encryption is about as secure as toilet paper these days.

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Man up.

We can't stop it. Perhaps the entire credit system we have in this age will need to change since everyone is already going to be a victim of ID theft soon with or without these things. It's more argument for the movement toward a transparent and interconnected global society. If we cannot hide secrets, it is time for all to be brought out in the light and figured out.
Expect a lot of turbulence.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

I think what you'll see a lot more of is "trusted source" type of protections, wherein your computer uses top-end encryption to prove its identity and establish an encrypted link to your bank's computer, for instance. At that point you can use your favorite six-character password to access your account (although in many cases such a password would be unnecessary).

It's either amusing or scary that eventually we'll be using galactic-grade encryption to pay our grocery bills. Unless the government gets its way and establishes a "back door" into all such encryption schemes (an approach that, on a practical level, I think is doomed to fail) such powerful encryption will eventually rebuild the privacy zone that Bush is encroaching on. At which point the government will have to find other ways to identify and listen to bad guys.

And guess what? I bet they find a way, following lines of evidence from known terrorists to suspected terrorists to sympathizers and associates. You know, probable cause. And then they can bring the full weight of the NSA's codebreaking ability on to those few targets. Voila: the terrorists are watched, and the rest of us aren't.

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Man up.

The complexity of (applicable) quantum computing isn't great enough to contend with our current semiconducter based computers. As far as it being a threat, I don't really think it will ever happen. The technology is only good at doing certain types of math, so it wont ever be used to make market level computers. Even if the technology gets to the point where it can compete with semiconductor type computers, the cost would be too prohibitively high to make it a real problem.

they never seem to do anything about hackers. My Dad ended up buying a bunch of encryption equipment in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Problem is he'd never been to Dubai or anywhere in the Middle East for that matter. Since he doesn't buy anything online and rarely uses his credit card I did a little research.

Ends up he got an email from Etrade asking him to use his credit card to confirm his ID. He did so. Well the link provided went to a website that LOOKED like Etrade, but actually was not them. I forwarded the email I received to both Etrade and the FBI. I could never get an answer from Etrade as to what they were doing (other than "researching it"), but the FBI said they were overwhelmed to devote much time to it. They need law enforcement personnel dedicated to research and some VERY strict penalties (ie jail time for first offense) to put a dent in it.

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All you need to know about the energy crisis:
ANWR Exploration Republicans: 91% Supported. Democrats: 86% Opposed.
Coal-to-liquid R's: 90% YES. D's: 78% NO.
Oil Shale Exploration R's: 90% YES. D's: 86% NO.
Outer Continental Shelf Exploration R's: 81% YES. D's: 83% NO.
Increased Refinery Capacity R's: 97% YES. D's: 96% NO

SUMMARY: 91% of House Republicans have historically voted to increase the production of America’s own oil and gas. 86% of House Democrats have historically voted against.

I've heard of this type of thing happening as a result of outsourcing. Our information (CC#s and such) gets sent to corporation's operation centers in other countries. Then some of the employees take the info and use it for illicit purposes.

This stuff is out of control in certain countries in Africa. People make a very good living there by ripping off Americans, and they feel justified in doing it because they have a negative opinion of us. Its a little different there, because they actually contact Americans through online means, and then get money from them through a number of different means.

This is definitly true at the moment. Personally I think the tech will work itself out in about 15 years, and it will probably be in homes within 20. Until then, I see multiple core processing taking off for the next 10 years at best, and then the cross bar latch will have it's heyday for another 10. Computing costs are always high and "impossible" at one time or another. The playstation 3 that's about to come out this spring is running at about 1 TFLOP and contains roughly 300 million transistors! That would have seemed impossible 20 years ago! Anyhow, obviously I don't know the future, but I'm sure there could be uses in physics for such a machine and the article says that the chip is relatively inexpensive and that they can get 10 qubits on one chip alone. every qubit doubles speed, so if they put about 5 chips together they would have a couple teraflops there alone. so that solves a major issue. Decoherance is obviously going to be a problem still,but they have made some strides in recent years. As far as practical matters are concerned, who knows. I'm actually more excited about the physics applications then the encryption, but man. The computer world is unreal to me sometimes. I mean, think about it. The average computer doubles in speed every two years. How much more efficient have cars become in 20 years? In two years your car is lucky to have a new cupholder design.