The ads on scienceblogs today lead me to find out that, apparently, I can buy a quantum computer right here from Seattle based REI:
And only $70 bucks! Jeez, those D-wave investors overpaid. I wonder how you use it to factor? But the number in the bag and wait?
O brave new quantum world!
No, no, no. This is a Quantum Computer BRIEF. … Like underwear, but for your computer. … Quantumly.
I thought it meant that it only worked briefly. And then turned back into a piece of luggage.
Ah, so number of pages is measured in inverse action units!
By that argument quantum field theorists would make excellent lawyers since they usually work in natural units such that h = 1. Can you imagine if quantum field theorists had written the tax code? Would have saved a lot of trees…
No, that’s a legal brief in a computer case. “Quantum” means it’s the shortest brief a lawyer is capable of writing. Probably the number of pages equals the reciprocal of Planck’s Constant.
Ian: I immediately think of “axiomatic tax code”
Oh. I thought it was a vintage thing. Schroedinger’s briefcase. You could put the numbers in, at which point they’ll be both factored and not factored. I think it may explain why he always had a slightly disappointed look on his face when rooting around inside it.
Wow, no one saw Moore’s law working out like That….
(well maybe Ray Kurzweil)
…and my very strange mind immediately wonders if attempts to axiomatize the tax code would be foiled by Gödel’s theorem.
Strange unrelated fact: Gödel apparently found a logical flaw in the constitution that would supposedly lead to an autocratic government but Einstein talked him out of mentioning it to the judge at his citizenship hearing. The idea was written down in German and is supposedly in the Gödel archives awaiting re-discovery…
Ask an you shall receive: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/psa/sec16.htm#B
It is clearly a brief (case) wherein you may (or may not) find your (or someone else’s) quantum computer. For $70, how could you not buy one?