Outlook 2016’s New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails
1–10 of 79 posts
Re: Outlook 2016’s New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails
#2It's POP3. Seriously, one of the easiest to understand mailbox protocols ever. HOW could Microsoft stuff up something like this so badly?
Look, I know that mistakes can be made. But in this case, I just can't think of a single excuse that would be satisfactory.
Re: Outlook 2016’s New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails
#3It's POP3. Seriously, one of the easiest to understand mailbox protocols ever. HOW could Microsoft stuff up something like this so badly? Look, I know that mistakes can be made. But in this case, I just can't think of a single excuse that would be satisfactory.
Well, it has nothing to do with the protocol. Like you said, POP3 is dead simple. This is within logic that sits above the protocol.
That said, yeah, this is something they definitely should be testing. The fact that the article updated yesterday with a new knowledge base article and the status of the problem says they are looking into it, means they've been notified but not yet fixed it. If they haven't stopped that update from rolling out, someone at MS may come back to very unhappy managers on Monday, and have to explain why they thought leaving a data destroying bug live over the weekend was the right call...
Re: Outlook 2016’s New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails
#4> UPDATE 02/26/2016: ... TL;DR: Disable automatic updates...
That's just good advice for dealing with modern software, for which fixes, breakage, and feature churn are all mixed in a single awful stream. "Newer" does not mean "better."
Re: Outlook 2016’s New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails
#5> UPDATE 02/26/2016: ... TL;DR: Disable automatic updates... That's just good advice for dealing with modern software, for which fixes, breakage, and feature churn are all mixed in a single awful stream. "Newer" does not mean "better."
I almost totally agree. If it wasn't for security fixes, there would be no value in updating almost any software. If it's already working OK, just leave it alone.
15 years ago when people had problems with their graphics cards, the standard "fix" was to update the driver. Now we're still updating drivers. Weren't the problems supposed to have been fixed many years ago? It seems they introduce as many new bugs as they fix, making the net effect of updates useless as far as bugs go.
For security related bugs, stop using C++ for internet facing software.
Re: Outlook 2016’s New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails
#6> UPDATE 02/26/2016: ... TL;DR: Disable automatic updates... That's just good advice for dealing with modern software, for which fixes, breakage, and feature churn are all mixed in a single awful stream. "Newer" does not mean "better."
I almost totally agree. If it wasn't for security fixes, there would be no value in updating almost any software. If it's already working OK, just leave it alone. 15 years ago when people had problems with their graphics cards, the standard "fix" was to update the driver. Now we're still updating drivers. Weren't the problems supposed to have been fixed many years ago? It seems they introduce as many new bugs as they…
It's hard to explain to people, who aren't techies, why I, as a programmer, don't have the latest and greatest software installed asap.
I still use Visual Source Safe for my personal projects. It's never failed me in 20 years. Right click, check out, right click checkin. Perfect every time.
Re: Outlook 2016’s New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
I almost totally agree. If it wasn't for security fixes, there would be no value in updating almost any software. If it's already working OK, just leave it alone. 15 years ago when people had problems with their graphics cards, the standard "fix" was to update the driver. Now we're still updating drivers. Weren't the problems supposed to have been fixed many years ago? It seems they introduce as many new bugs as they…
It's hard to explain to people, who aren't techies, why I, as a programmer, don't have the latest and greatest software installed asap. I still use Visual Source Safe for my personal projects. It's never failed me in 20 years. Right click, check out, right click checkin. Perfect every time.
> I still use Visual Source Safe for my personal projects. It's never failed me in 20 years. Right click, check out, right click checkin. Perfect every time.
1st reaction: Horrified that you are still using VSS.
2nd reaction: Was that if it does what you need it to, well, then, who am I to judge? It doesn't matter whether the tool was created yesterday or 20 years ago.
3rd reaction: Does it really do what you need it to do? I would guess that maybe svn/git has some simple featured that would significantly improve your life.
4th reaction: Wasn't VSS known as being super buggy? Is it just luck that you've escaped failure in 20 years?
Re: Outlook 2016’s New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails
#8> UPDATE 02/26/2016: ... TL;DR: Disable automatic updates... That's just good advice for dealing with modern software, for which fixes, breakage, and feature churn are all mixed in a single awful stream. "Newer" does not mean "better."
I almost totally agree. If it wasn't for security fixes, there would be no value in updating almost any software. If it's already working OK, just leave it alone. 15 years ago when people had problems with their graphics cards, the standard "fix" was to update the driver. Now we're still updating drivers. Weren't the problems supposed to have been fixed many years ago? It seems they introduce as many new bugs as they…
> I almost totally agree. If it wasn't for security fixes, there would be no value in updating almost any software.
Software developers know this, which is why they maximize the scariness of all security fixes, and minimize your ability to separate security fixes from all other software changes. How much churn did you have to swallow to fix "algorithmic complexity attacks" you never saw, which would at worst result in a DoS? Did anyone actually attack your hash tables?
Re: Outlook 2016’s New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails
#9It's POP3. Seriously, one of the easiest to understand mailbox protocols ever. HOW could Microsoft stuff up something like this so badly? Look, I know that mistakes can be made. But in this case, I just can't think of a single excuse that would be satisfactory.
I sometimes speculate if it's coming from difference in focus of attention.
I don't use Outlook myself any more, I know some who do. I know a lot of odd behavior in Outlook seems to be caused by where it involves connection with IMAP/POP3 protocol connection. (And I wouldn't think Microsoft employees are dogfooding them, either.)
Empirically, it seems to be less of this problem occurring on the connection to the Exchange server, back when I was forced to use before. (Though at that time didn't have had so much of the connection, but had plenty of issues some involving broken database and such, I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole myself...)
Re: Outlook 2016’s New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to explain to people, who aren't techies, why I, as a programmer, don't have the latest and greatest software installed asap. I still use Visual Source Safe for my personal projects. It's never failed me in 20 years. Right click, check out, right click checkin. Perfect every time.
> I still use Visual Source Safe for my personal projects. It's never failed me in 20 years. Right click, check out, right click checkin. Perfect every time. 1st reaction: Horrified that you are still using VSS. 2nd reaction: Was that if it does what you need it to, well, then, who am I to judge? It doesn't matter whether the tool was created yesterday or 20 years ago. 3rd reaction: Does it really do what you need it…
This is horrifying indeed. I cannot imagine any reason to go on using VSS other than a very, very robust aversion to learning anything new.
And yes, VSS is very buggy, although the bugs might not show up for a single-user environment always following the happy path.