Sections 19.1 & 19.2; Due November 19

Difficult: I found it difficult to understand what physicists (and for that matter chemists) believe about photons. Do they really think that a photon does not have a state until it is observed? When did science become a religion? Anyway, that's not really answerable, I just get frustrated when people try to explain something with illogical conclusions. Also, there wasn't much to be confused about in this section really. The theoretical quantum bit key exchange makes sense. They talk about methods to use to transmit these keys (fiber optic etc.) and the distance they can send, does that mean that the method is not really theoretical any more? Also, I remember in my undergraduate chemistry discussing using the chirality of a molecule to encode messages, is there any more information on this method?

Reflective: It seems that just message-sending type cryptography isn't the meat of the quantum computing idea. Isn't the way computers communicate with their internal parts a form of cryptography? They must encode electronic signals and decipher what they mean. Maybe it would be better to be focusing on efficient ways to encode these messages rather than just secure message sending that could be accomplished with a flashlight and some polaroid filters.