Ken Kirksey writes

lost in the discussion on quantum computers and cryptography. Can anyone give me the Reader's Digest Condensed Version (TM) of the theory behind quantum computers, or maybe point me to a good journal article or two? Many thanks,

No readers digest version. It is very heavy going, and any simplified version is necessarily misleading. The key articles are D. Deutsch, Quantum Theory, the Church--Turing Principle and the Universal Quantum Computer, Proc. R. Soc. Lond., Vol. A400, pp. 96--117 (1985). E. Bernstein and U. Vazirani, Quantum Complexity Theory, Proc. 25th ACM Symp. on Theory of Computation, pp. 11--20 (1993). Set aside a long time for understanding them. If your quantum theory is weak, you will need to brush up on quantum theory first. --------------------------------------------------------------------- We have the right to defend ourselves and our | property, because of the kind of animals that we | James A. Donald are. True law derives from this right, not from | the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. | jamesd@netcom.com