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The forgotten war on beepers
101–110 of 405 posts
Re: The forgotten war on beepers
#102My fire department still gives out pagers to firefighters who respond from home. 99% of the time we get alerts from a phone app, but a few times it's gone down and we have to rely on pagers and a big horn that sits near the center of our local.
Re: The forgotten war on beepers
#103Forget the beeper. The idea of arresting a child at school for anything (short of maybe violent assault) seems to be madness.
I don't know what it is in US culture and society that makes it so hostile towards anyone and anything even vaguely suspected of a crime, but this sort of thing is shockingly common, even when dealing with children. Here's another case I encountered a few weeks ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Brown_case – there are so many things wrong with the entire thing, starting with charging an 11-year old as an adult…
It is a long discussion, but the TL;DR version is
Puritanism.
Re: The forgotten war on beepers
#104In the 90's, I was a project manager for a software consulting company. I carried a beeper onsite so my superiors could reach me when needed (e.g. to discuss growing the account). During a lunch meeting one day, two of my bosses at the consulting company suggested that I upgrade to a cell phone, like they had done. I said I was reluctant to do that, because I valued my independence and didn't want to be on a short le…
There were several years where having BOTH was desirable. Cell service was expensive, and battery life was short, so many folks carried a beeper that was always on, and a phone they turned on if they needed to make a call and had no land line option.
I've never understood the "it's a leash" thing. Pagers and phones are MY devices, and I get to decide how I will respond to them.
Re: The forgotten war on beepers
#105I remember this well. Crime, drug, and gang hysteria were very big in the 90s. "Gangs are using pagers to sell drugs to children" was a quick and easy way to demonize them and ensure that they get banned hastily, without a lot of questions.
The funny thing is that in political discussion, drug, crime, and gang hysteria are back. Rates of crime and gangs are much lower than the 90s. With drugs, fentanyl and its difficulty to dose correctly is definitely more deadly. But the rhetoric is pretty similar to the crack epidemic and the period shortly after.
Re: The forgotten war on beepers
#106It really upsets me that the VHF pager networks were shut down.
VHF pagers were the last way you could recieve notifications without having to offer up your location to surveillance. All satellite pagers require transmit-before-receive, and of course LTE requires that plus actively cooperating with the towers' triangulation of the receiver.
VHF POCSAG over large urban areas is something we never should have let go of.
Re: The forgotten war on beepers
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Children don't really have property rights, and even if they did, courts have consistently ruled that the bill of rights is reduced in school settings.
Children don't have property rights but their parents do and they own their children's things. If a parent went to the school and asked for the confiscated item that school would be insane to deny them.
Children own their stuff. Parents can control the child’s things like they control other aspects of child’s life. They give some of the control to schools.
What happens when child becomes an adult? They own all their stuff from before, the parents do not keep it. It can be complicated since parents let child use stuff, but anything given to or bought by the child is theirs.
Re: The forgotten war on beepers
#108I dont own a phone, but to me a beeper is an okay compromise. During the quest to find one, I came across some really cool things. - Some beepers are made to only RX, not TX, as to not skew results of medical equipment - Basically 2 companies, operating with antequated websites (and prices) still provide service at the historic prices - Beepers are still sold today, new in box - Two-way pagers have been almost totall…
Have you found any that still have service over a significant area in the US?
Particularly the one-way (RX only) pagers.
Very interested in this.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40070092
> - Basically 2 companies, operating with antequated websites (and prices) still provide service at the historic prices
If you get a chance to add the names/links of these companies I would really appreciate it.
Re: The forgotten war on beepers
#109I dont own a phone, but to me a beeper is an okay compromise. During the quest to find one, I came across some really cool things. - Some beepers are made to only RX, not TX, as to not skew results of medical equipment - Basically 2 companies, operating with antequated websites (and prices) still provide service at the historic prices - Beepers are still sold today, new in box - Two-way pagers have been almost totall…
I’m curious about your desire to not own a phone. Have you written about the experience anywhere?
There are lots of us.
But I've learned that, aside from mentioning "I don't have a phone" it's really not useful to discuss it any further on the internet. There seems to be a large cohort of trolls who love arguing with anybody who doesn't have a phone. I guess it bothers them that some of us can be free from what so many are addicted to.
Re: The forgotten war on beepers
#110In the 90's, I was a project manager for a software consulting company. I carried a beeper onsite so my superiors could reach me when needed (e.g. to discuss growing the account). During a lunch meeting one day, two of my bosses at the consulting company suggested that I upgrade to a cell phone, like they had done. I said I was reluctant to do that, because I valued my independence and didn't want to be on a short le…
There were several years where having BOTH was desirable. Cell service was expensive, and battery life was short, so many folks carried a beeper that was always on, and a phone they turned on if they needed to make a call and had no land line option. I've never understood the "it's a leash" thing. Pagers and phones are MY devices, and I get to decide how I will respond to them.
> Pagers and phones are MY devices, and I get to decide how I will respond to them.
Oh, so you've never had the "why didn't you pick up/ call back/ answer my text/ etc" conversation with your partner? Lucky...