I've had similar philosophical thoughts about a transaction rollback. Consider this definition from go's database/sql package. func (tx *Tx) Rollback() error Rollback can fail, indicated as such by it can return an error. What are the cases where rollback could fail and what's the recovery mechanism? Does a failed rollback mean (logically) that the transaction is still open and uncommitted? But really, invoking rollb…
This Message Does Not Exist
71–80 of 278 posts
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
if the message never achieved a physical form such as printing, does the message exist? if the message stopped existing, but nobody was there, did it make the trash-can sound?
What substantial difference is there between a message being manifested physically via printing as opposed to having it be a collection of bits in specific states on your hard drive (or memory, for that matter)?
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#73I find the message self explanatory. Outlook is server authoritative. Message does not exist on server and thus it can't be saved. But it is available on that client - client was able to load it before it was removed from server - and such it can be copied out or discarded from client.
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#74Oh, finally a chance to put my Philosophy degree to use! The error says the "message" does not exist, but the message is not the same as the text. The message is an object that can be saved or discarded, and it contains text. The text still exists and can be copied, but the message is gone and can't be saved anymore.
if the message never achieved a physical form such as printing, does the message exist? if the message stopped existing, but nobody was there, did it make the trash-can sound?
I know the answer for the case where this question refers to something on my pc. I have disabled audio warnings, alerts, etc so if the message stopped existing and I wasn't around to notice then it clearly does not make a trash-can sound.
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
What substantial difference is there between a message being manifested physically via printing as opposed to having it be a collection of bits in specific states on your hard drive (or memory, for that matter)?
isn't paper substantial while magnetic patterns are insubstantial?
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#76Oh, finally a chance to put my Philosophy degree to use! The error says the "message" does not exist, but the message is not the same as the text. The message is an object that can be saved or discarded, and it contains text. The text still exists and can be copied, but the message is gone and can't be saved anymore.
Ceci n’est pas un message?
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
What substantial difference is there between a message being manifested physically via printing as opposed to having it be a collection of bits in specific states on your hard drive (or memory, for that matter)?
isn't paper substantial while magnetic patterns are insubstantial?
Is the goal to have it be readable to the naked, nominally working human eye? If so then I’d wager you could use magnetic paper as storage if you were a particularly persistent driver developer.
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#78We used to hear that LLMs hallucinate but, apparently, we are witnessing the hallucination of apps now! This reminds me of another quiet funny error message, again, from Microsoft about a Windows Phone error message telling users to "insert CD and Restart Your Computer " ( https://thenextweb.com/news/this-is-the-funniest-windows-err... )
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's still funny that the text of a message can exist without being a message itself. That must make sense in the specific context of Outlook, but it shows that the conceptual design of the software does not match how we want to think about the domain abstractly.
I don’t think the model is that far off. In real life I can read a letter and retain the contents in my mind, then burn the letter.
If it can show you the content, the container must exist!
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#80This is the most Microsoft error message I have ever seen
Wouldn't a more microsoft message be about competing products failing to exist? I've seen teams messages on firefox and safari about features not existing "download the teams native app!"