[bisceglie]

John did not make the 'impossible bit' possible, he discovered its inclusion in the spec and recognized whatever it was as impossible to implement.

[dpritchett]

So it was an NP-complete problem with a fixed time requirement?

Edit: That was rude. My apologies.

[kscaldef]

More likely it was simply logically inconsistent. That's not at all rare in requirements documents.

[eru]

A P problem with a fixed time requirement is also not possible.

(But NP may be possible to solve in polynomial time. Who knows?)

[SandB0x]

John knew?