...more SWA

I've been holed up all winter long and haven't been out-of-town until today. At least a weekend off! I was loathe to fly on Southwest for reasons I posted about - but succumbed anyway. I've been in Love Field hundreds of times before, but honestly I don't think I've ever seen it so crowded. I guess SWA is not hurting much - despite some angry frequent fliers. When I picked up the rental car, I noticed that the total was $8 more than the total on my virtual invoice from earlier in the day. It was explained: Southwest now charges for any frequent flier points received via one of their 'preferred partners'. I guess I will decouple my car rental accounts from any link to SWA.

(no subject)

To those who still cling to a single-universe world-view, I issue this challenge: explain how Shor's algorithm works. I do not merely mean predict that it will work, which is merely a matter of solving a few uncontroversial equations. I mean provide an explanation. When Shor’s algorithm has factorized a number; using 10[500] or so times the computational resources than can be seen to be present, where was the number factorized? There are only about 10[80] atoms in the entire visible universe, an utterly minuscule number compared with 10[500]. So if the visible universe were the extent of physical reality, physical reality would not even remotely contain the resources required to factorize such a large number. Who did factorize it, then? How, and where, was the computation performed?

David Deutsch

from a New Yorker article about David Deutsch & quantum computing