From a Boston Herald article (appears to be an AP news release):
“Users don’t care about quantum computing – users care about application acceleration. That’s our thrust,” he said. “A general purpose quantum computer is a waste of time. You could spend hundreds of billions of dollars on it” and not create a working computer.
And you’re probably happy that you don’t have an account on fool.com or else you might read this article comparing the demonstration to December 17, 1903.
> comparing the demonstration to December 17, 1903
This is interesting, because TMF likes to quote Warren Buffett; He once remarked that airlines never figured out how to be profitable and “any right-minded capitalist who had seen the Wrights’ contraption take to the skies in Kitty Hawk might have shot it down and saved investors 100 years of agony.”
I hope this will not be true for quantum computing. 😎
Quote of The Day: “The machine currently runs at 16 qubits, the basic unit of quantum computing. That’s less power than most standard computers.”
Why, yes. Just a little.
Actually airlines have figured out how to be profitable. Look at Southwest, Emirates and European discount airlines
Actually it’s an interesting question: which inventions are net profitable. I think Buffett claims that airlines are not net profitable. I wonder if bussiness plans based on advertising revenue on the web (aka da dot com) are net profitable. I suspect not.
Well Google is doing pretty well for itself!
“Net profitable” means what? In the macro-economic sense the most efficient use of resources will be when there is very little (zero) net profit over the long run. Since airlines have been around long enough to become mature, they should have about zero net profit. Similarly grocery stores, etc.