Dangling pointer. Case closed.
Period. Period period. :)
This Message Does Not Exist
161–170 of 278 posts
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#162Earlier 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 would assume Outlook means that its locally-cached copy of the message exists, but the original server-side (probably IMAP) message no longer exists. And that without that message, there's no server-side resource to update — just a resource representation of a snapshot of that server-side resource, still temporarily persisted in a client-side read-through cache.
> the original server-side (probably IMAP) message no longer exists.
Doesn't Outlook rely on the Exchange mailstore?
It's a long time since I was near to Outlook and Exchange, but I thought the Exchange mailstore was some kind of X400 abomination, and that the IMAP capability was a bolt-on.
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#163Leave it to Microsoft to come up with nonsensical stuff, be it names or something like this. They must have an ample supply of specialists for braindead language.
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#164Oh, 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.
The question remains: how can something that does not exist contain anything?
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#165Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#166I think this is an example of the "answering machine paradox," which philosophers have been writing about since the 1970's. https://philpapers.org/rec/SIDTAM > According to an intuitive semantics for 'I,' 'here' and 'now,' 'I am not here now' should always be false when uttered. But occurrences of 'I am not here now' on an answering machine seem to be true (when the speaker is not home). (If you're interested, you ca…
This is ludicrous. Failure to distinguish the person (“I”) from their recorded voice does not make a philosophical problem. It's pure and unadulterated stupidity.
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#167The problem is that the message does not speak the truth. If you can read a message it clearly must exist because you cannot read non-existent messages, can you? Can anyone? CAN ANYONE HERE READ NON-EXISTENT MESSAGES? The message should have said "This message is not saved on the server. If you close this window without copying and saving its text you cannot retrieve it from the server ever again.
While this is the most sane and logical sounding way to put it, it would lose the 'philosophical' vagueness of the original notification. I still prefer the original wording
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#168The commentary is golden. Trying to guess what is going on. I guess they refer to the original message (on the server) and its local copy. Both referred to as "the message".
Which only goes to show that the bad habit of using imprecise terms is liable to produce total confusion.
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#169Oh, 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.
The question remains: how can something that does not exist contain anything?
The message object used to contain those contents, but then the message object was deleted, although the contents value was still available in a UI in temporary memory.
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
If those users aren't reading the error dialogs anyways, why do the error dialogs need to pander to those users? I wonder if the "make it dumb enough for every user to understand" approach leads to user comprehension plateauing prematurely.
Shareholder-driven growth targets mean it's no longer good enough to target the 20th percentile users, who might have reading comprehension at a 5th grade level. You have to hit the 10th percentile, or the 5th. Be glad that you still get text instead of pictures.
Tangentially related, I used to work at a company where the C level was demanding all of our help documents be videos. They couldn't understand that it made them unsearchable, took way more time, did not allow branching or decision making in the processes, if anything in the workflow or even UI changed the entire thing would need to be redone, takes up a ton of space, is not easily skimmable etc. "but it's easier than reading!" "are you telling me you've never learned how to do things on YouTube?" Etc. I refused and resigned not long after.