Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: First "Commercial" Quantum Computer Solves Sudoku Puzzles -- Quantum computing company banks on a lon

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: First "Commercial" Quantum Computer Solves Sudoku Puzzles -- Quantum computing company banks on a long-shot form of quantum computing: "Researchers believe that by combining many of these quantum bits, or qubits, they will be able to perform certain tasks that are currently out of reach. Chief among them: the ability to swiftly crack encrypted communications."

True if everything stays the same, but quantum computing opens the door to quantum cryptography. This means that you can arrange a cihper such that examining a data streem will alter it. This allows for (if nothing else) knowing that the stream was intercepted 'en route'. So it is a decrypters dream as long as everyone is using current ciphers. Making them with a lot larger keys will help in the interim, but as long as you had one early and unknown...

It is a shift in technology (or will be) that will make some profound changes, however I doubt the users see many byt the time it becomes common place.