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A Working Quantum Computer in 3 Years?
prostoalex writes "Vancouver, BC-based D-Wave Systems got $17.5 mln from Draper Fisher Jurvetson to work on a preliminary version of a quantum computer, Technology Review reports. Delivery date? Within three years: 'It won't be a fully functional quantum computer of the sort long envisioned; but D-Wave is on track to produce a special-purpose, "noisy" piece of quantum hardware that could solve many of the physical-simulation problems that stump today's computers, says David Meyer, a mathematician working on quantum algorithms at the University of California, San Diego.'"
but having a damned powerful computer in no way makes it easier for someone to design a bomb
Unless they know how to build a bomb, and their job would be easier (or produce more horrific results) with better tools.
Unless they're already a dems expert, it won't mean shit
You mean, like all sorts of ex-Soviet military scientists? Or some fairly-well-trained folks in Iran or North Korea?
And of course there is the little fact that it's fairly easy to build bombs bug enough to take out 100% of the US.
You must mean that it's possible to build enough bombs for that purpose. Or, that a handful of them, all in key cities, would be economically devastating enough to have that general effect.
which since I'm guessing you're using Bush's definition of terrorist (aka Arab)
Terrorists are as terrorists do. So far we're not running into a lot of Swedish or Japanese terrorists. The part of the world, culturally, that seems happy to blow up restaurants and buses because their religious leaders say that's what Allah wants them to do, seem to mostly be from the middle east. There are abberations (we've had a few domestic ones, and there's always the IRA, or those cultists in Japan a few years back), but it really makes the most sense to pay attention to places in the world where chanting "death to America" is part of every news broadcast, and where the more extreme margins of the cultures that support that attitude also have the time, money, and inclination to act on the urge (and have a demonstrated history of actually doing it). You didn't think that the people dead in Madrid were killed by unhappy Spaniards, did you?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Getting talked down to by someone with a higher UID than me? Don't make me put you on the Naughty list!