"Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation"

[Tim Lund]

A bad IT day at the office, but I found something almost sublime in this error message. Anyone else encountered such creativity coming from a computer?

[mosy]

Well, at least it wasn't a BSOD (blue screen of death).

I had to resort to Wikipedia - here is:

The theory of invocational media identifies the event of invocation as the defining feature (or force) of digital computing. By this theory, invocational events (invocationary acts) should be considered to be conditions for the formal and mathematical principles by which invocations are composed, and not vice-versa. That is, running a computer program (which is usually considered to follow its writing) is always (paradoxically) prior to its writing.

Edit: Oops. Forgot the Wikipedia link. Sorry Wikipedia *slaps wrist*: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invocational_media

I'm subliminally on Cloud 9 after reading that - I just hope that I don't commit unintentionally an invalid invocationary act on my home PC. *scared now* Well I will be if it happens and hopefully not with BSOD and System Restore cannot restore...

Once I worked on a big system (a right complicated dinosaur) that they daren't change for love nor money. I doubt they'd heard of invocation at the time...

[Tim Lund]

GSOH, Mosy

What a fine piece of social theory BS. I just love this:

This theory draws on the philosophical monism and empiricism of Deleuze and Guattari and a theory of technology from actor-network theory. It offers an interpretive framework to trace unbroken connections between the lowest technical levels of computer operations through the phenomenological experience of users, the conceptual frameworks in discourse, and political and economic structures, all of which are increasingly mediated by information technologies.

It's part of a pattern. Real, useful, creative, hard thought is done by scientists, mathematicians and engineers, in the course of which new words and concepts are coined, or new precise meanings are given to previously vague words - think 'energy' and 'force' in physics - and then a bunch of social theorists come along, tricking themselves out in this newly prestigious language, mixing it up with some inflated language of their own ("discourse")to try to give it a spurious respectability - and they're off - pages and pages of garbage, Masters and PhD theses, volumes of hot air.

If you're not heard about it, read here about Sokal's hoax.

[bamford]

My you do need a gsoh.

The error message perfectly understandable, whereas the rest of the BS, Wikipedia or not, is more ridiculous than sublime.

"Exception [error message] has been thrown [as in a wobbly] by the target of an invocation [the remote terminal (or whatever) you were trying to acccess]."

Check your computer syntax.
Simples.

[michael]

My current favourite: "He's Dead, Jim" from Chrome.

http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bi ... er=1270364

[Tim Lund]

My you do need a gsoh.

The error message perfectly understandable, whereas the rest of the BS, Wikipedia or not, is more ridiculous than sublime.

"Exception [error message] has been thrown [as in a wobbly] by the target of an invocation [the remote terminal (or whatever) you were trying to acccess]."

Check your computer syntax.
Simples.

Thanks, Bamford - I'm feeling better now. I went in the next morning, and ten minutes after I'd left - about 8.00 in the evening - someone in the US had fixed it, about 48 hours after the original problem was encountered. A case of dll hell, as it happens. Simples, you might say.