Live data from Hacker News

The forgotten war on beepers

newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org

131–140 of 405 posts

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#131
post #112
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want them to lie? My dad was like that. I admitted to several things I didn't do in order to reduce the amount of caning. This led to a funny incident at school. Somebody did something, and another grassed. The bully came to question me - I had no memory of telling on him, but the way he described the comments, I though oh that does sound like something I'd say. I took the beating. Then the actual grass came u…

Unclear what a 'grass' is. Are you referring to falling down?

"Grass" means "report to the authorities." Seems to originate in Britain as rhyming slang between copper and grasshopper, though I looked up the etymology for this post.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#132
post #112
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want them to lie? My dad was like that. I admitted to several things I didn't do in order to reduce the amount of caning. This led to a funny incident at school. Somebody did something, and another grassed. The bully came to question me - I had no memory of telling on him, but the way he described the comments, I though oh that does sound like something I'd say. I took the beating. Then the actual grass came u…

Unclear what a 'grass' is. Are you referring to falling down?

Grass is British slang for informing on someone

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#133
post #125
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remorse for what? Something he didn't do? There is nothing to be remorseful about. This is the sort of non-logic where you're presumed guilty and/or punished for asserting your innocence. Aside from the obvious absurdness of it, it's also literally unconstitutional as it violates your 5th amendment rights, which is why another judge reversed the decision later on. And considering all of this is about an 11-year old m…

If the court finds you guilty, then by definition within the system you did it. It doesn't mean you actually did, but it does mean the system says you did. Which is the point of my comment. It doesn't mean it actually makes sense in real life, but it's why the system does what it does. And the reason why the system will prosecute kids like adults sometimes - the nominal reason is because they don't think it's worth g…

No one found him guilty of anything at this point. How can they when deciding in which court he should be judged? That happens before the trail. You're talking complete bollocks utterly disconnected from anything to do with this case.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Not at our house. We decided early on that the phone was for the owner not everybody else. One of my sons even leaves it in a drawer, takes it out once a day to check.

That’s pretty cool. Your son has a better relationship to technology than a lot of adults. Probably reflects some good parenting, nice work.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#135
post #133
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the court finds you guilty, then by definition within the system you did it. It doesn't mean you actually did, but it does mean the system says you did. Which is the point of my comment. It doesn't mean it actually makes sense in real life, but it's why the system does what it does. And the reason why the system will prosecute kids like adults sometimes - the nominal reason is because they don't think it's worth g…

No one found him guilty of anything at this point. How can they when deciding in which court he should be judged? That happens before the trail. You're talking complete bollocks utterly disconnected from anything to do with this case.

You might want to actually read my comment. He was arrested pending trial. They have to decide where to put him, pending trial.

If the judge expects to try him as an adult for the reasons I listed, then they're going to put him in an adult jail.

If the judge expects to try him as a juvenile for the reasons I listed, then they're going to put him in a juvenile jail.

Either way, someone does have to make the call. And there are circumstances where the call that was made is appropriate.

Since it's 'detention pending trial', if he gets acquitted or charges dropped then per the system he 'suffered no penalty'. Same as anyone else arrested and put on trial. We know that isn't true though, since anyone in jail is still in jail and jail sucks. If he is found guilty, then he gets transferred.

Clearly it was a bad call on the Judge's part doing what they did, which is why it got reversed - eventually.

But as anyone who has dealt with the courts is well aware, everything is glacial - unless it's going to make your life a pain in the ass. That usually happens quickly.

But like everyone else, one you're in the system, you're going to have a bad time regardless.

What else do you propose is going to happen though?

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#136
post #112
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want them to lie? My dad was like that. I admitted to several things I didn't do in order to reduce the amount of caning. This led to a funny incident at school. Somebody did something, and another grassed. The bully came to question me - I had no memory of telling on him, but the way he described the comments, I though oh that does sound like something I'd say. I took the beating. Then the actual grass came u…

Unclear what a 'grass' is. Are you referring to falling down?

[deleted]

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#137
My favorite pager moment: Was part of a large consulting effort - lots of people. One of the execs was doing a demo of the system and they were playing DNS games with dev/test/stage/prod. They did a quick restart - which is when we all found out stage and prod apparently used the same credentials. About 30 seconds or so after the restart kicked off, about 50 pagers went off.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#138

In 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…

I had the same thought process in the 90s, and it is the reason why I still don't have a smartphone :)

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#139
post #98

The 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.

Also Walkman/ diskman / portable radios were banned

Yep. At best, the "electronic device" was a distraction, and at worst, it meant you were a drug dealer.

I can't imagine having a smartphone in grade school or high school. It's so alien.

Post reply on HN