From: m5@vail.tivoli.com (Mike McNally)
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 94 05:44:21 PDT
To: jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald)
Subject: Re: GUT and P=NP
In-Reply-To: <199407191751.KAA23246@netcom4.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <9407211244.AA16861@vail.tivoli.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



James A. Donald writes:
 > Existing physical theories show that Super Turing machines are
 > possible in principle though very difficult to build in practice.

That's the understatement of the year.

 > Such machines will probably not be able to solve NP complete
 > problems though they will be able to solve some NP problems
 > such as factoring.

Huh?

 > Since such machines do not operate algorithmically

This statement is exactly wrong.  Such machines *define* a class of
algorithms.

 > they have
 > no relevance to the question of whether P=NP, because this
 > question is a question about *algorithms*.

And this one.

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