Re:sorry Charlie (Score 1)

As far as QC applies to cryptography, the big gain is not in database searches, but in factoring algorithms. Peter Shorr (of IBM I believe) developed a factoring algorithm for QC's several years ago. Factoring on a current computer is an exponential time process. The time to factor scales exponentially with the size of the key. On a QC using Shorr's algorithm the time is polynomial. So for a small key there is probably going to be little difference. But, as key sizes increase, the QC speed advantage becomes more and more apparent. With Shorr's algorithm, the extracting of data at the end is done by looking at the total configuration space of the setup. The factors appear as much more probable configurations. I can't remember the exact details, but I have notes somewhere around here from a talk on QC given by some of IBM's researchers a few years back.