{"id":6077,"date":"2012-03-12T09:08:36","date_gmt":"2012-03-12T09:08:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2012\/03\/12\/incremental-progress-in-quantu\/"},"modified":"2012-03-12T09:08:36","modified_gmt":"2012-03-12T09:08:36","slug":"incremental-progress-in-quantu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2012\/03\/12\/incremental-progress-in-quantu\/","title":{"rendered":"Incremental Progress in Quantum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/tech-policy\/news\/2012\/03\/opinion-the-problem-with-software-patents-they-dont-scale.ars\">Links Dump item about software patents<\/a> this morning includes a lament that there are so many silly little software patents, organized so badly, that finding one you might be infringing would take forever. This may or may not be a convincing argument against them, but for a physics geek like me, my first reaction was &#8220;You just need a quantum computer running <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Grover's_algorithm\">Grover&#8217;s algorithm for searching an unsorted database<\/a>.&#8221; And I suppose there&#8217;s a background element for a satirical SF novel in that&#8211; quantum computers ultimately being developed not by banks or the NSA, but by lawyers looking to speed the process of document discovery.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, this in turn reminded me that I have a bunch of quantum-related tabs open in Chrome, and I really ought to do something with those. So, here&#8217;s a special quantum-themed links dump sort of post:<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Scott Aaronson, a noted critic of the quantum computing claims by D-Wave, who famously (well, nerd-famously) declared their supposed quantum processor about as useful as a roast beef sandwich, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scottaaronson.com\/blog\/?p=954\">made a visit to their facility<\/a>, and moderates his stance somewhat.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Every few weeks, there&#8217;s a story about some new promising quantum computing technology. The most recent is <a href=\"http:\/\/physicsworld.com\/cws\/article\/news\/48853\">the demonstration of topological error correction<\/a>, which might be essential for making quantum processors that can withstand the noise that inevitably creeps into any real system. This would be good fodder for a ResearchBlogging post, if I had the time to understand it in detail, but I don&#8217;t. So you get this passing mention.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Matt Leifer has written another <a href=\"http:\/\/mattleifer.info\/2012\/02\/26\/quantum-times-article-on-the-pbr-theorem\/\">article about the theorem ruling out some kinds of interpretations<\/a> that made a bunch of news a little while back. It&#8217;s for the &#8220;Quantum Times,&#8221; the newsletter of an APS group on quantum information, so it&#8217;s not exactly at the level your dog might want to read, but if you know a little about it, and want to know more, it&#8217;s a good piece.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s three browser tabs closed. Only 20-odd left&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Links Dump item about software patents this morning includes a lament that there are so many silly little software patents, organized so badly, that finding one you might be infringing would take forever. This may or may not be a convincing argument against them, but for a physics geek like me, my first reaction&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2012\/03\/12\/incremental-progress-in-quantu\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Incremental Progress in Quantum<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics","category-quantum_computing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}