Forty Years of P=NP?

An anonymous reader writes "In the afternoon of May 4, 1971, at the Stouffer's Somerset Inn in Shaker Heights, Ohio, Steve Cook presented his STOC paper proving that Satisfiability is NP-complete and Tautology is NP-hard. 'The theorems suggest that Tautology is a good candidate for an interesting set not in [P] and I feel it is worth spending considerable effort trying to prove this conjecture. Such a proof would be a major breakthrough in complexity theory.' And thus Cook formulated what was soon to be called the P versus NP problem. The rest is history. Here's the 1971 STOC Program (there were 143 attendees) and what that sacred ground looks like today."

Re:P=PN

[war4peace]

Make that two of us. And guess what, I don't even care :)

Re:P = NP?

[vlm]

Can anyone explain what all the fuss is about ?

Its strongly related to the "CS" vs "IT" division amongst "computer people". Its hard to find a topic that more strongly shows the separation.

The "IT" guys simply don't care (look at many of the posts in this article) but for the "CS" guys its proof would be pretty close to the ultimate "super bowl win" or "moon landing" or "date with a girl" moment.