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Comment Re:Exponential Speedup?? (Score 3, Informative) 112

by Catullus (#33608558) Attached to: Two-Photon Walk a Giant Leap For Quantum Computing

This comment isn't accurate. There are problems for which quantum computers are indeed exponentially faster than our best known algorithms running on a standard computer. The most important of these is probably simply quantum simulation - i.e. simulating quantum mechanical systems. This has umpteen applications to physics, chemistry and molecular biology (e.g. drug design).
Games

Submission + - Are all the best games NP-hard? (bris.ac.uk) 1

Submitted by Catullus
Catullus writes: Following in the footsteps of Tetris and Minesweeper, the simple yet addictive multiplatform game Flood-It is the latest puzzle to be proven to be hard — NP-hard, to be exact. This means that there's no way to write an efficient program to beat the game, unless P=NP. This research by computer scientists from Bristol University raises the intriguing question: are these games fun precisely because they're hard for computers to solve, and need a spark of human creativity?

Submission + - Guardian gagged from reporting UK parliament (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The prominent UK newspaper The Guardian has been legally prevented from reporting a question in UK parliament. This is fairly absurd given that the question is a matter of public record (#61) — but the country's special libel laws mean that the newspaper cannot inform the public of what parliament are up to.

The question concerns the oil trading company trafigura, the toxic waste scandal they are involved in, and their generous use of libel lawyers to silence those who would report on the whole thing.

(Dear editors, the reason you should use this submission rather than the one already made is that I've provided more context in the form of what the gagged question is, and what it's about.)
Censorship

Scientology Given Direct Access To eBay Database 684

Posted by kdawson from the finger-on-the-scale dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Church of Scientology can delete auctions from eBay with no supervision under the VeRO program, and has used this to delete all resale of the e-meters Scientologists use. This is to stop members from buying used units from ex-members instead of buying from the official (and very expensive) source. Given Scientology's record of fraud and abuse, should eBay give them this level of trust? Will this set a precedent for other companies that want to stop the aftermarket resale of their products?"
Software

UK Report Slams EULAs 239

Posted by kdawson from the signing-it-away dept.
draevil writes "Britain's National Consumer Council has completed an investigation into the practice of software End User License Agreements(EULAs) with the conclusion that many consumers are signing away their legal rights and agreeing to unfair terms, which they could never have scrutinized before purchase. The report also acknowledges that even if the EULA were available prior to purchase, it would be unreasonable to expect an average consumer to understand the terms to which they were agreeing. Here are the full report (PDF) and a summary." The NCC recommends that the European Commission bring softwre licenses under the same consumer protections that apply to other products in the EU.
Moon

NASA Plans Lunar Mobile Phone Network 164

Posted by samzenpus from the dark-side-of-the-moon-minutes-cost-more-money dept.
If NASA and the British National Space Centre succeed in their 'MoonLite mission' you won't be able to say, "In space no one can hear your ringtone." They plan on building a satellite system/phone network that would provide full four-bar signal coverage for colonists living in the base NASA wants to build at the south pole of the moon after 2020.

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