Jim choate writes:
While I can understand the commen wisdom such QM type machines are not a threat to the present cyrpto-cracking horsepower race I must admit I don't agree with it. First, historicaly (and emotionaly on my part) I have a hard time taking the premise that the status quo will stay the status quo. I have this belief that some bright person is going to come along and blow all our pipe dreams away. It has happened before and it WILL happen again, especially when you consider the resources available to the government.
Remember, however, that advances in technology benefit encryptors as well as codebreakers. Unless the "bright person" comes along and proves P == NP, there's still opportunity to develop strong cryptosystems. (Indeed, if a bright person comes along and proves that P != NP, then things look pretty good.)
-- | GOOD TIME FOR MOVIE - GOING ||| Mike McNally <m5@tivoli.com> | | TAKE TWA TO CAIRO. ||| Tivoli Systems, Austin, TX: | | (actual fortune cookie) ||| "Like A Little Bit of Semi-Heaven" |
The problem w/ the whole N - NP approach is that is assumes that the QM model behaves as we would expect it to, it doesn't. I think this is one of those assumptions that are better left un-made. I have worked w/ enough QM projects throug UT and Discovery Hall (Dr. Turner and Dr. Prigogine) that I am not comfortable assuming the QM world even cares about the N or NP issues we are debating.