🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <RODNEY.89D...@dali.ipl.rpi.edu> rod...@dali.ipl.rpi.edu (Rodney Peck II) writes:
>>>>>> On 14 Dec 89 01:14:14 GMT, rave...@isi.edu (Paul Raveling) said:
>[...]
>Paul> 	UCLA and Berkeley had 6 tie lines.  He called Berkeley,
>Paul> 	then forwarded the connection to UCLA, then to Berkeley...
>Paul> 	and so on until all the tie lines were locked up in an
>Paul> 	infinite loop.  It took several hours to free them.

I once worked for a large company that had taken delivery of an early
digital phone system.  It was the prototype actually, which explains what
happened.

One of the features was "call forwarding".  If you were going to somebody
else's office you dialed their number, and when it rang you punched "*T"
and your calls were forwarded.  Pretty slick.  The only catch was that if
you closed the loop (*T back to yourself) it couldn't be opened again.
Your phone was out of action.  The only cure was to take the whole phone
system down and reboot.  Now engineers, despite their nerdy reputation,
can be playful.  Finally the company had to issue orders forbidding the
practice on pain of dismissal.  V1.2 of the software fixed it, but it sure
was a pain in the neck.