Earlier quoted context omitted.
YC summer 24: our beeper-with-text app startup is hiring full stack developers
Our SMS-to-Internet microblogging app startup is hiring full stack developers.
Couldn't Twitter do that once?
The forgotten war on beepers
11–20 of 405 posts
Re: The forgotten war on beepers
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Obviously, there is a substantial difference between a one-way receive-only device and cellphones. Motorola released their two way pager, the Tango in 1995. In 1996, they had an app for the Tango to access the web [1]. You can't make a call with a pager, but nobody makes calls anymore; there's not a lot of difference in capability; although there's a large difference in distribution. [1] http://www.wirelesscommunic…
> not a lot of difference in capability Ahh yes, I remember fondly the days in the 90's I spent watching porn on my beeper as a teenager. Good times.
If I has a beeper in school, I'm sure it would have been paged with 8008135...
Alphanumeric, watch out.
Re: The forgotten war on beepers
#13The policy at my school was that any "electronic device," be it a cellphone or pager, would be confiscated and held until the end of the school year. I had this happen to a (not yet modified) Radio Shack tone dialer.
Re: The forgotten war on beepers
#14Beepers with text were peak technology.
It wasn't until the two-ways that I even kind of wanted one. I remember being at the mall with a group of kids and one of the girls got paged by her mom and we had to go around to find a pay phone for her to check in and I recall thinking 'well that's stupid, I just check in when I get somewhere and when I leave, she's just carrying an annoying reminder to go find a payphone'
Once kids started sending little messages with them, I wanted one. Then they had fun colors and transparent cases. Luckily my nokia brick phone was just a few years away, half a life-time then, but just a few years in hindsight. ;)
None of my friends at that time were drug dealers, but they liked to joke they were because of the stigma.
Re: The forgotten war on beepers
#15The policy at my school was that any "electronic device," be it a cellphone or pager, would be confiscated and held until the end of the school year. I had this happen to a (not yet modified) Radio Shack tone dialer.
> confiscated and held until the end of the school year.
How things like that were even remotely legal?
Re: The forgotten war on beepers
#16I got my pager at 18 (no one cool called it a beeper, this was when 'cool' was still a thing), and yes, my weed dealer had one, and knew my beeper code (it was a beeper code but you sent it to a pager, young people just do this). Beeper code is worth explaining: you'd send a number to be called back at, and there was room for more digits, so everyone had a three-digit number which was theirs, and you just kinda had to know it. Which could be tricky, so there would be conversations like "ok who is " "oh thats " "ah right". This let you page people from places which weren't your home.
The whole thing sort of worked, but we were happy to ditch it for cell phones when they became affordable.
Re: The forgotten war on beepers
#17The policy at my school was that any "electronic device," be it a cellphone or pager, would be confiscated and held until the end of the school year. I had this happen to a (not yet modified) Radio Shack tone dialer.
> confiscated and held until the end of the school year. How things like that were even remotely legal?
In most cases they are not, but you need to have a good relationship with your parents and they need to care enough to bother the school about it. Otherwise, they won’t listen to you, a child.
Re: The forgotten war on beepers
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Obviously, there is a substantial difference between a one-way receive-only device and cellphones. Motorola released their two way pager, the Tango in 1995. In 1996, they had an app for the Tango to access the web [1]. You can't make a call with a pager, but nobody makes calls anymore; there's not a lot of difference in capability; although there's a large difference in distribution. [1] http://www.wirelesscommunic…
> not a lot of difference in capability Ahh yes, I remember fondly the days in the 90's I spent watching porn on my beeper as a teenager. Good times.
Pshaw, but what about the blisteringly high resolution of a TI-83? Find somebody who already has what you want and a link-cable. :P
Re: The forgotten war on beepers
#19Lets not forget the :
Rock-Satan scare of the 80's.
Rap-Drug Scare
Walkman will let kids get snatched up.
The pager
Trans people are coming for your husband.
Seems like every decade people have to freak out. But it isn't just the common generational trope. The religious right has to always have another issue that can be used as the poster boy for the war on Lucifer. If you don't have a boogie man, then how do you keep the troops lathered up and ready to fight.
Re: The forgotten war on beepers
#20The policy at my school was that any "electronic device," be it a cellphone or pager, would be confiscated and held until the end of the school year. I had this happen to a (not yet modified) Radio Shack tone dialer.
> confiscated and held until the end of the school year. How things like that were even remotely legal?
My kid's school now just confiscates until the end of the day. Even that might not be strictly legal, but it's unlikely to get challenged.