Author Archives: Pontifex Praeteritorum

Observation

For every talk in computer science and physics there is now at least one relevant xkcd comic (is it coincidence that this occurred near the same time of IPv4 exhaustion?  I think not.)

Posted in General | 4 Comments

TQC 2011 in Madrid, Deadline January 24

The TQC 2011 deadline for submissions is fast approaching: January 24, 2011. You know you want to visit Madrid in May, right?

Posted in Conferences | Comments Off

TEDxCaltech Streaming Link

TEDxCaltech streaming

Posted in Caltech, Go Ahead, Waste Your Time, Physics, Science | Comments Off

Mythical Man 26 Years

This morning I was re-reading David Deutsch’s classic paper “Quantum Theory, the Church-Turing Principle and the Universal Quantum Computer”, Proc. of the Roy. Soc. London A, 400, 97-117 (1985) This is the paper where he explicitly shows an example of … Continue reading

Posted in Off The Deep End, Quantum Computing | 13 Comments

QIP 2011 Open Thread

So what’s going on at QIP 2011? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? update: It looks like pdfs of the talk slides are available. Were the talks videotaped (err, I guess I’m showing my age: were the talks recorded in video format?) more … Continue reading

Posted in Conferences, Quantum Computing | 7 Comments

TQC 2011 and a Bonus! Rant!

So most of my conference announcements are going out on qspeak now (and will be digested every week in a post here.) But since I’m helping out with this one it, I thought I’d post a separate note here. TQC … Continue reading

Posted in Computer Science, Conferences, Quantum Computing | 6 Comments

Consequence of the Concept of the Universe as a Computer

The ACM’s Ubiquity has been running a symposium on the question What is Computation?. Amusingly they let a slacker like me take a shot at the question and my essay has now been posted: Computation and Fundamental Physics. As a … Continue reading

Posted in Computer Science, Go Ahead, Waste Your Time, Off The Deep End, Physics, Quantum Computing | 4 Comments

Seth Lloyd at IQC

Some fun short clips of Seth Lloyd at the IQC. Love the first one. Disagree with the second one. The third is a great hope. Disagree strong with the fourth one (since I think the definition of a computer must … Continue reading

Posted in Go Ahead, Waste Your Time, Quantum Computing | 7 Comments