Quantum computers can break many of today’s modern public key cryptosystems. Hence there are lots of three and four letter agencies in governments around the world who are very interested in getting a quantum computer built. (If we put our paranoid hats on, we can ask: are there any countries that are pursuing a secret project for quantum computing? Is it beyond possibility that China, for example, has a secret quantum computing project, and that they will beat the rest of the world to building a quantum computer? Could this be the next Sputnik? OK, enough paranoid mode!) What will the sensitive nature of quantum computers current killer application, breaking public key cryptosystems, mean for researchers in quantum computation? Will it mean that the first large scale quantum computers, when they are built, will have restricted access? Will all hell break loose once quantum computers which can break today’s public key cryptosystems? I’m not just thinking about spy versus spy schemes, but instead, I’m thinking about financial transactions, online use of credit cards, and the whole of the electronic economy. Sometimes it feels like it is a shame that the main attention grabbing algorithm for quantum computers is factoring. Other times, I think about the above line of reasoning, as it scares the bejesus out of me.
How will we make the transition from a world where public key cryptosystems are no longer secure? Will we use the unbroken cryptosystems (lattice based, and linear decoding based?) which have drawbacks which are fairly severe? Will we install quantum key distribution into our networks? And will this transition be gradual, or will it hit like a shockwave, as serious size quantum computers get built over a short span of time?
Interestingly, I don’t think the quantum computing community has had a serious dialogue about these issues. At least not that I know of. Sure we talk about these things over lunches in quantum groups around the world, but is there any consensus over how the public quantum computing community should deal with these issues?
Jerry Rice Retires (1985-2004)
And now, for a totally different kind of post…a post on American football!
Jerry Rice, the greatest wide receiver in football history, announced his retirement from the National Football League today. I grew up watching Jerry Rice play for the super bowl winning San Francisco Forty Niners and he is (probably amusingly to most of you) one of my personal heros. One of my most treasured posessions is a signature of Rice’s (“To Dirty Dave, Peace, Jerry Rice”) on a copy of an article in the Los Angeles times which described some of the research I did while I was an undergraduate at Caltech.
Jerry was the son of a bricklayer, and grew up helping his father lay bricks. One of his brothers would throw bricks up and Jerry would catch them for his father to place. An ominous sign, I suppose, for someone who would go on to catch a thousand five hundred receptions in an NFL career spanning twenty years. During those years, he won three superbowls and claimed almost every single recieving record in the NFL. He is the all time leader in touchdowns (207 versus 2nd best Emmit Smith’s 175), receiving yards (1549 versus 2nd best Cris Carter’s 1101), receiving yards (22895 versus 2nd best Tim Brown’s 14934), and the list goes on and on.
Growing up watching Jerry Rice was a treat which is hard to explain. He and Joe Montana, arguably the greatest quarterback of all time, formed an awesome duo. With Joe and Jerry in the game, one never, ever, thought that the 49ers couldn’t pull out a victory. Montana recorded an astounding 31 come from behind victories in the fourth quarter, with Rice often being a central figure in these amazing comebacks. To this day, I have a hard time not believing that a come from behind isn’t possible, no matter how the ridiculous the score is, in large part due to these two remarkable players. Thinking of Jerry brings back the halcyon days of my youth, when anything was possible, and no obstacle, no matter how seemingly insurmountable, could not be overcome.
Just the other day, I looked up a game which has stuck in my mind all these years later. My friend Luis and I were going camping with his father, and possibly also his brother Isaac. We stopped to get some supplies, listening to the 49er game on the radio. The game appeared to be over, so we turned off the radio. When we got back into the car, we heard the anouncer say “Wersching lines up to kick the winning extra point.” Now Ray Wersching was the 49er’s kicker: somehow the 49ers had come back from absolute disaster and won the game! Here, is, what happened while we were in the store:
The Cincinnati Bengals led the San Francisco 49ers by six points in the closing seconds of a game played at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium on September 20, 1987; faced with a fourth down in their own territory, Bengals head coach Sam Wyche called a running play. The 49ers had no timeouts remaining, and it was Wyche’s belief that this play would successfully run out the clock. However, Wyche overlooked the fact that under NFL rules, the clock is automatically stopped on any play that results in a change of possession – and that is what occurred on this play as the Bengals did not gain enough yardage on it to obtain a first down. There were six seconds remaining when the clock was stopped; the 49ers then took possession of the ball,
and on the ensuing play Joe Montana threw a touchdown pass to Jerry Rice, and the successful extra point attempt that followed gave San Francisco a 27-26 victory.
What I recall reading the next day was that Montana gave Rice a hand signal at the line of scrimage and then threw a long pass to Rice, who made a towering leap and grab in the end zone. The number of similar stories that Jerry and Joe orchastrated is huge, and I could go on and on about these fantastic stories.
But what I will miss most about Jerry Rice is his work ethic. And this is one of the reasons he is among my personal heros. Jerry’s workout ethic is legendary, involving a kind of focus and dedication which may be unrivaled in or outside of sport. Particularly during my years at Caltech, where I was working my butt off, I remember thinking of him as a role model: that talent is important, but hard work and talent are a vicious combo. Whenever I think I might be working hard, I think about Jerry Rice, and think, “sheesh, I’m not working hard at all!” Whatever you may think about sports, one has to say that this kind of role model is hard to come by and for this I will always thank Jerry Rice.
Italy
Well I’m back from a one week trip to Italy to teach at “GII Scuola di Dottoratio in Ingegneria Informatica” held at the University of Siena.
We arrived into Rome on Saturday after spending a good portion of our time on the Detriot/Rome flight playing the inflight trivia game. Nothing like a slow trivia game to pass the hours. In Rome we stayed in the Hotel Forum, which is very centerally located, just a stones throw from these ruins
and a hop skip and a jump to a certain, very famous, fountain:
On Sunday we made our way to Florence, where we did the requisite looking at some cathedrals
Unfortunately we didn’t get the chance to see it, but apparently Galileo’s embalmed finger is in Florence. I wonder which finger it was? Actually I also would have liked to see if the church where Galileo sat timing the period of the swings of the chandeleers allowed h
After Florence, we headed to Siena. Siena is a very beautiful medieval town on a hill. It is filled with tourists. We were there just after Siena’s famous Palio horse race. In the Palio di Siena, the seventeen different neighborhoods (contrades) of Siena compete against each other for grand bragging rights and a whole lot of pride. While we missed the actual race, the team that won this years race had not won in over forty years. Needless to say, this meant that they were still celebrated when we arrived, and, we were told, would continue to celebrate for as many days as years since they had last won the Palio! Part of this celebration involves things like going into enemy contrades late at night and pounding drums and singing songs taunting the enemy.
While in Siena, I taught here
Well, actually the venue where I taught was the school of Economis at the University of Siena, whose entrance is just to the right of this large church. I taught twelve hours of lectures to computer science and engineering graduate students on quantum computing. The lectures went well, I think, and they really treated us very nicely in Siena.
Before leaving on Saturday, I got a chance to do some siteseeing. I felt right at home…here are some Popes
Before the twenty four hour trip back home, I bought myself a nice big book of Sudoko. If you haven’t tried Sudoko, please take it from me and avoid Sudoko at all costs! This little logical number game is very addictive. I must have spent twelve hours on the trip home working on these puzzles.
Back In Seattle
Back from Italy! In case you thought I’d fallen off the edge of the earth (what the earth isn’t flat?)
Travel
Posting will be light.
May or May Not Refer to God
Via Leiter Reports, we find Mark Fiore’s Superintelligent Design. Which might make you happy. This story, found via Chris Mooney, however, will quickly destroy any good mood the previous cartoon may have induced. So I recommend reading the cartoon again and leaving it at that.
Comic Relief on Finals
Quotes which I put on the final for my quantum computing class:
“I didnt’ fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.” — Benjamin Franklin
“People will accept your idea much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.”–David H. Commins
Unfortunately I didn’t put a comic on the test. It always seemed that the exams I took in intro level physics and chemistry courses at Caltech, or the ones I saw in similar courses at Berkeley, always had either a Far Side or a Calvin and Hobbes comic on them. In fact, I have a conjecture about this. I’m convinced that you can identify the exam by the comic on the front of the exam. Far Side: physics. Calvin and Hobbes: chemistry. But this just may be a result of my local experience.
Dean of Evolution
OK, so I know I said no more politics. But opening the paper every morning and seeing a new pro-intelligent design politician blather at the mouth (today was John McCain’s turn), it’s good to see another famous political blatherer actually blathering something sensible. So I present, via Pharyngula, via “Face the Nation” Howard Dean:
Mr. Harris: Were you troubled by President Bush’s endorsement that intelligent design should be taught alongside the evolution to schoolchildren?
Dr. Dean: The president has been anti-science for a long time. This is the most antiscientific regime that I’ve seen in America in my lifetime. I’m a trained physician, as you’re aware. I’m insulted by that. It’s going to harm America. What serious business is going to invest in America if a scientific education is influenced by politics? Science ought to be taught as science. If you want to teach religion, that’s a separate debate. But science should be taught as science.
Schieffer: What is intelligent design? What do you think of that idea?
Dr. Dean: I think it’s a religious idea. And actually, Einstein thought that there was some merit to it. Who am I to question Albert Einstein? But that is not–a religious idea is different than a scientific design. The idea that–and I don’t think science and religion are incompatible. That’s the thing that amazed me about this. You don’t have to disbelieve evolution in order to be a religious person. So I don’t understand why these folks continue to try to have this debate. But the truth of the matter is, intelligent design is a religious perception and a religious precept. That’s fine. That should be taught wherever religion is taught, if that’s the desire of those people who are religious.
Science is science. There’s no factual evidence for intelligent design. There’s an enormous amount of factual evidence for evolution. Those are the facts. If you don’t like the facts, then you can fight against them. The Catholic Church fought against Galileo for a great many, many centuries. But it never pays to ignore the facts. Reason we’re in trouble in Iraq right now, president didn’t care what the facts were. Reason we have a $7 trillion, almost $8 trillion national debt, president didn’t care what the facts were. The facts matter. The truth is, you can’t run a business, a state, a country or a family if you don’t care what the facts are.
Not perfect, but hell I’ll take anything I can get these days.
Arxiv Trackbacks
Over at Musings, I just learned that the Arxiv now has trackback capabilities. Now we can spend all our time that we normally spend counting citations, instead counting trackbacks!
Comment Preview
I’ve added comment preview. Let’s see if it works.
Update: doh, not working. Will work on this tomorrow.
Update update: it’s working, thanks the kind help of il filosofo!