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Currently Quantum Computers Might Be Where Rockets Were At the Time of Goddard
schwit1 writes: If quantum computing is at the Goddard level that would be a good thing for quantum computing. This means that the major fundamental breakthrough that would put them over the top was in hand and merely a lot of investment, engineering and scaling was needed. The goal of being able to solve NP-hard or NP-Complete problems with quantum computers is similar to being able to travel to the moon, mars or deeper into space with rockets. Conventional flight could not achieve those goals because of the lack of atmosphere in space. Current computing seems like they are very limited in being able to tackle NP-hard and NP Complete problems. Although clever work in advanced mathematics and approximations can give answers that are close on a case by case basis.
Give something a fancy name and by-God it has to be a world-changing technology, right? I just don't see it. The hardware is difficult to build / maintain, doesn't scale, and so far nobody is quite sure what to even do with it.
It's just a way to suck money out of venture capitalists and keep people busy in ivory towers. There's a reason that so many companies have the word 'quantum' in their name. It's all marketing hype.
Because rockets were actually working at that point, maybe not refined, but still useful. Quantum computer is not useful in any way at this time.
Quantum computing is still at the mumbo jumbo stage where they make really bold claims about what it can do in 1 or 2 really specific instances that all of 8 people on the planet care about, but then never follow through with a quantum machine that out performs a classical one in any way.
Oh, and the answer(s) may not even be right and has to be checked using classical methods anyway.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Quantum computers cannot solve NP-Hard or NP-Complete problems -- at least, no faster than a classical computer. This is one of the most basic results in the field, and the author keeps on making hash of it. This article should not be taken seriously if it's rife with such basic errors.
Quantum computing is like having an old Ford that's broken down, and you would like to fix it. With classical computing, you spend time troubleshooting, eventually identify the problem, order parts, install them, road test it, and you eventually have a working classic Ford again.
With quantum computing, you have an old Ford that's broken down but not broken down at the same time. You simply ignore the broken down state and choose to use the working one. Problem solved.
Stripping off the D-Wave Quantum nonsense:
http://phys.org/news/2014-06-independent-group-d-wave-quantum-speedup.html
"(Phys.org) —An independent research team with members affiliated with several universities in the U.S. and Switzerland has concluded that the D-Wave Two computer shows no signs of quantum speedup"
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It does a calculation known as 'constrained minimization'. so for a function f(x1,x2,x3....) where x1 has limits on acceptable values (constraints), x2 has limits, x2,...and so on, calculate a minimum value of f(x1,x2,x3...) and say at what x1,x2,x3,.... those values occur.
In theory you could brute force this with noise (which would randomly change x1, x2 and x3, x4..., trying all possible values and filtering for ones that are within the constraints. D Wave claim to do it in quantum way, i.e. all possible values simultaneously being tested by the magic of Quantum Annealing. However their kit doesn't show that, and the results it generates under tests are often wrong, indicating all possible values have not been tested.
So we have a problem here. It behaves like a noisy system being used to brute force a calculation, and like that system it generates wrong results because noise is random and spread across time, and you cannot know if you've given it enough time to get the optimal solution. And since we can run classical techniques for constrained minimization, we can find *better* solutions, and this prove it has not actually done the task!
It also means it cannot possibly be doing Quantum Annealing because it has not tested all solutions. No amount of money will turn a brute force noise machine into a Quantum computer.
"Currently Quantum Computers Might Be Where Rockets Were At the Time of Goddard"
Designed on totally incorrect physics?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The true revolutionaries of rocket propulsion all have German last names.
To be fair, no one apart from a few vested interests are claiming that quantum computers are some sort of magical panacea. But just like modern graphics GPUs, they could be built into ordinary computers and used when the problem domain suits their capabilities.
Give something a fancy name and by-God it has to be a world-changing technology, right? I just don't see it.
So because you can't understand it, it must not be of any consequence? I think that says more about you than it does about the technology.
The hardware is difficult to build / maintain, doesn't scale, and so far nobody is quite sure what to even do with it.
That sounds like pretty much every new technology ever. The first computers were difficult to build and maintain, didn't scale well and people weren't entirely sure what to do with them outside of a few narrow use cases. The first airplanes were difficult to build and maintain, didn't scale well, and... etc. We figured it out eventually. Probably will with quantum computing too in due time.
...but a research paper. And a BADLY written one at that. One that, if submitted by one of my freshmen students, I'd probably assign a D+ if I was feeling generous.
Even after parsing the confusing sentence structure in the first couple paragraphs, I gave up before figuring out exactly how the figures (which look like snapshots of some PowerPoint lecture or presentation? What's the source??) tie in with their overall thesis - which seems to be some poorly formed analogy between the history of flight and quantum computing.
And they cited Wikipedia... ugh.
Big breakthrough just around the corner!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I think that comparing "being able to solve NP-hard or NP-Complete problems" to "travel to the moon, mars or deeper into space with rockets" is a much worse offender, since the latter clearly doesn't violate the laws of physics whereas the former probably might.
Ezekiel 23:20
Eh, Goddard quickly learned that didn't work and went on to make this:
http://i.space.com/images/i/00...
Where Goddard failed apparently was in his paranoid insistence on secrecy.
Well, that's an ignorant comment of yours. The mods need to do a little checking before modding up. ... may have been rather crude by present-day standards, but they blazed the trail and incorporated many features used in our most modern rockets and space vehicles". He once recalled that "Goddard's experiments in liquid fuel saved us years of work, and enabled us to perfect the V-2 years before it would have been possible."
Here (http://airandspace.si.edu/explore-and-learn/multimedia/detail.cfm?id=2888) is a picture from the mid-30's of Goddard with one of his rockets which was equivalent or better than the Germans' at the time.
Here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Goddard) is a statement by von Braun himself about Goddard's work:
"Nevertheless, in 1963, von Braun, reflecting on the history of rocketry, said of Goddard: "His rockets
And from the same wiki article:
Three features developed by Goddard appeared in the V-2: (1) turbopumps were used to inject fuel into the combustion chamber; (2) gyroscopically controlled vanes in the nozzle stabilized the rocket until external vanes in the air could do so; and (3) excess alcohol was fed in around the combustion chamber walls, so that a blanket of evaporating gas protected the engine walls from the combustion heat."
Quantum computing is about where teleportation, strong AI, a perfect cure for cancer, etc. is, namely it is completely unclear whether it will ever work. All this bullshit about Quantum Computing is just that: Bullshit. We do not even know whether the physics allows it, all we know is that the current theory (which we know is incomplete and inaccurate) would allow it if it was accurate.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.