Robin Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Apparently factorization based crypto is on the way out anyhow (as an > article in Scientific American is reported to claim).
I haven't seen that SA article but I saw the Slashdot blurb. They have confused "quantum cryptography" with quantum computation, when they are entirely different things. Quantum cryptography (basically communicating a message over an optical fiber in such a way that any attempt to eavesdrop is supposed destroy the readability of the message) has been done over quite long distances, 10's of km or even more. Quantum computation is mostly a theoretical speculation. The largest quantum computer ever built held seven bits, and factored the number 15 into its factors 3 and 5. Building larger ones seems to have complexity exponential in the number of bits, which is not too much better than using an exponential-time algorithm on a conventional computer. It's not even known in theory whether quantum computing is possible on a significant scale. There are just some theorems about what properties such a computer would have, if it can exist. One of them, however, is being able to factor in P-time, and that caused lots of excitement. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
