topical... http://www.toqc.com/TOQCv1_1.pdf ... considering this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_quantum_computing_system
Here is a very entry level book on the subject of information theory, I enjoyed the heck out of it: http://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Univ...=pd_bbs_3/103-3349355-0179005?ie=UTF8&s=books D-Wave has a 16 qbit machine: http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2007/02/the_quantum_com.html It has to run near absolute zero degrees and uses huge magnetic fields to manipulate qbits. Quantum computing is funny, you push the qbit through this hellish cold magnetic state and query it "are you a one or a zero yet?" and it tells you "well no, but this probability is 25% and the other one is 50... and so on",sort of reminds of an interrogation by torture, and somehow that allows problems to be solved. If they can make a 1000 qbit machine they can crack any currently used encryption and who knows what else they can do at that point, maybe win at Go