Determinism and Quantum Mechanics

I've spoken at length in the past about determinism and free will, and the different philosophical views of various intellectuals on both sides of the camp.

As I learn a bit about quantum mechanics and it's implications, I'm intrigued and struck by the very relevant philosophical implications. I'm certain I'm not the first to notice it, and I'm also not educated enough in either field to make a truly useful analysis. Allow me to nevertheless speculate briefly on some of the consequences.

First, let's get a quick basis in quantum mechanics as relevant to philosophy. Observation of an object or a particle changes certain properties about it. This sounds unusual, but we don't have the time to run into the why or the how (and I guess no one can really explain the "how" anyway). Perhaps the simplest conceptual exercise is noting that it's impossible to know the position of an electron at any given point in time (or it's momentum). We can only predict a range of values.

If classical physics applied to atoms, atoms would collapse due to the magnetic attraction between the positively charged nucleus and the negatively charged electron. Electrons aren't all in some amazingly coincidental orbit of the nucleus that pits them at just the right speed and distance to not "fall in" - electrons just operate with a different set of rules.

One other point of some relevance is that particles (presumably of any type) that come into contact with one another form a kind of bond (commonly referred to as entanglement) with one another. Although they are separated by space, through the measurement of one particle one can therefore "know" the position of another particle. I place know in quotes because it's actually a complicated process, and perhaps infer is a better word. The fact remains that it's the process of measurement that allows this to happen. No actual instantaneous change takes place in the non-measured particle. *1

In any case, in a one-sentence summation, what this all means is that on an atomic level, things are non-deterministic - if one could somehow retrieve a state of the universe and all it's particles at one instant in time, one could not use this knowledge to infer what state they would be in at the next moment.*2 One could only make predictions of likelihood. This is a seemingly grievous blow to the deterministic models of the universe stating that we currently live in the only possible consequence of the arrangement of atoms in the big bang all those years ago.

*1: I wonder at the implications of this even as I strive to understand it fully. If this were the case, and somehow the separated particles could be contained, could we develop some kind of practical application from this faster than light speed (literally instant) knowledge of particle location?

*2: I feel compelled to reiterate that it's impossible to know the state of the universe at any given state in time, because it's impossible to know the location and momentum of a given particle - it's only possible to measure one at a time.