Because a quantum computer has access to operations that a classical computer does not have access to. A quantum computer can evaluate a function on all classical inputs at once; the problem is that you cannot read out the complete result (you can do so by repeating the calculation exponentially often, but then, you lose the advantage over classical computers). Therefore quantum algorithms are about bringing the interesting features into a form that can be easily (efficiently) read out.

Nonlocality doesn't just mean that particles affect each other over large distances (for that, long-range forces are more than enough), it means that they do so instantaneously. And anyway, even if you accept nonlocality, there's still the noncontextuality problem.

Sounds to me like the kid has the makings of a very lucrative suit for denial of civil rights under color of law.

If you want to stop the authorities from misbehaving, hit 'em in their budget.

I think of it as being analogous to injecting separate beams of light at different angles, having them bounce back-and-forth between the walls at different distances between bounces, and emerge at angles corresponding to the angles at which they entered.

Of course it's not angle of flight that's in question, but another property of the light propagation that can be varied to allow different beams to propagate down the fiber and be separable at the far end. But they're still separate because each beam's cross section at a given plane cutting the fiber has a different distribution of phase and intensity, resulting in different propagation mechanisms that conserve a property which can be used to separate the beams when they emerge.

any House GOP member voting for this abortion is going to get skewered

And while we're at it, let's mount primary challenges against all the ones in the senate that turned coat.

Normally I side more with the D's than the R's (not that I have much faith in either), but this time I'm damn glad there's an R majority in the House.

Why the HELL do you usually side with the Ds? They consistently do the opposite of what they promise. It's the Ds that bring you war, censorship, racisim, and a whole host of other junk that they promise to be fixing: Like government in general they're a problem masquerading as its own solution.

The Rs have their own pathologies. But compared to the Ds they're pikers.

The term "weapon of mass destruction" has meant things like grenades, flamethrowers, and improvised explosives for at least a century in law. The term is defined in every state's gun laws, and has nothing to do with NBC weapons. Bush's use of it to describe chemical weapons, which is the first time many people heard the term, was non-standard.

Um, no. You've got it precisely all fucked up and backwards.
 
The term WMD has been applied to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons since the end of WWII - though the term originated before the war. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_of_mass_destruction) It didn't start to creep into the criminal statutes until the late 1990's.

What's "adult?"

Grown up.

"will begin to delete scores of blogs that have existed since 1999 on Monday"
So those which were started in 1999 on another day are safe for now? :-)

At superliminal speeds?

You're all wrong. What Jesus did here was to reveal the Cheat Code to get into heaven. When you're at heaven's door, you'll be asked several questions. You have to answer the first two with "yea", and the next two with "nay". Any further questions you should not not answer at all.

But Bell's inequality shows that quantum mechanics isn't compatible with local realism. So you'll at least have to give up locality if you want to maintain that assumption. Moreover, you'll probably get problems with noncontextuality (even in the de-Broglie-Bohm interpretation the measured momentum is not one of the particle's intrinsic properties, but the measurement value only arises through interaction with the measurement apparatus).

I wish I'd had the equivalent when starting at my first University back in 1975.

Typo: Back in 1965.

By the way: Charter Oak's mandatory "cornerstone" class was a wonderful experience, and just what I needed. Think of it as a boot camp on how to research and write academic papers (and read them). VERY enabling.

I wish I'd had the equivalent when starting at my first University back in 1975.