Announcing the imminent release of Elm Version 52.2.
Elm Version 52.2 contains all the features of previous Elm versions, including
the Crystal Ball module first introduced in Version 52.0. This enables the
system to respond to mail automatically, before you even see it, and in some
cases before it is received. Upon logging on, the user can expect such
messages as:
You had mail.
4 replied to; 5 deleted; 1 retained for personal attention; 2 expected.
A number of bugs in earlier releases have been fixed. One problem was that if
two machines, both running Elm Version 52.0, got talking, they would rapidly
fill up their disc space as each attempted to answer messages expected from the
other. A more serious problem occured in a few cases, where one machine
expected a request for information from another, and sent the information in
advance; so the machine which was to send the request, didn't. This violation
of causality opened a minor wormhole in the space-time continuum; the worm
which emerged wiped several gigabytes of data before being detected and erased.
The first attempt to fix this bug, in Elm Version 52.1, was not as successful
as we hoped. Under an improved protocol, no Version 52.1 mailer would send a
reply until it had first received the message to which it was replying. This
caused a problem when one machine waited for an expected message, before
sending its reply; the other machine, expecting the reply, waited to receive it
before sending a reply to the reply; both machines had to be rebooted several
times to clear this deadlock.
In Elm Version 52.2, an auto-generated reply contains an invisible character
in its header. This is the character: "". If you see this character in a
header, it means that the message is an auto-generated reply. It also means
your terminal isn't working properly, as the character is invisible and you
aren't supposed to be able to see it. Elm Version 52.2 can detect it, however
and although it may prepare a reply to such a message, it cannot transmit it
until at most 0.5 nanosecond before the message is received. A similar
constraint is imposed if Elm Version 52.2 decides that the message was typed
directly, i.e. was not an auto-generated reply; but the time limit is increased
to 4.3 minutes. These time limits can be altered, to take account of faster
machines or slower humans; the makers accept no responsibilities for further
violations of causality due to casual increase of these limits.
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