Internet is dying - diagnostics

[Robert Heller]

At Sun, 22 Oct 2017 20:44:53 +0200 "Ubuntu user technical support,  not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:

> 
> Am Sonntag, 22. Oktober 2017, 10:52:03 CEST schrieb compdoc:
> > On 10/22/2017 09:59 AM, Volker Wysk wrote:
> > > What I didn't get, was the English phrase "take something out of the
> > > loop".
> > > Now I get it. I's sort of a pun.
> > 
> > Im interested to hear why you think the phrase is a pun? Its a common 
> > phrase here, so I cant see it with fresh eyes.
> 
> Well, sort of a pun. To me this sounds like there are several things, with 
> circular dependencies. So when you take out one, you've stopped there being a 
> loop/a circle. You affect the whole thing.
> 
> I can't see there being a loop, therefore it sounds like a pun for me. (A 
> little).

I guess it is more of a historical / English / very old school computer & 
engineering thing.

Many things do involve a "loop", including almost all of the *early* 
experiments with electricity (from the + of the battery, to one end of the 
knife switch and from the other end of the knife switch ...  eventually to the 
- of the battery).  Sometimes something is wrong along the way and a way of 
testing is to remove (bypass) one thing or another -- "taking it out of the 
loop".  If removing the "defective" thing yields a result (positive or 
negative), that yields knowledge of some sort.

In this case there isn't an actual "closed" loop, but instead a linear
sequence of "things", any one of which might be "defective". Bypassing each
"thing" will tell us which thing is misbehaving, yielding knowledge of some
sort.

"Taking it out of the loop" has become a general usage thing, to the point of 
being expanded to "Taking him/her out of the loop" when refering to bypassing 
someone in some organization for some reason (maybe that person is not passing 
information along?  maybe that person is passing information along to someone 
else he/she should not be passing information along to?  Or something else?).

> 
> Bye
> Volker
> 
> 

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