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The forgotten war on beepers

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Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#201

Post by mcmoor »

ubermonkey wrote: post #104
munchler wrote: post #96

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…

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.

One of the earliest labor principle is "if you can do it, you'll be forced to do it". Sometimes adding your capability will result in more burden to you instead of less. This is why sometimes it's a good idea to hide the fact that you're good with computer to your family; lest you become their tech support.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#202

Post by bdw5204 »

arp242 wrote: post #141
asveikau wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, In a lot of cases I think it's a proxy for racism. I think there's also a tendency towards black and white thinking, where people are either good or bad, and they're very willing to bucket people as bad rather than considering shades of gray or that authorities did something wron…

In this case it's a white kid though, and a lot of the kids from "kids for cash" were white. If we look at the prison population and include just the white population (~60%), the US still incarcerates vastly more people than other comparable countries. It's not even close. While in general racism is certainly a contributing factor, I don't see it being the main factor. I don't have the impression the other factors yo…

The main reason is that we refuse to spend money to address the root causes of crime. We won't fix urban poverty or the failing urban education system so most people choose to live in car-dependent suburban hellholes that make our youth uniquely miserable. Some of them shoot up schools, leading to zero tolerance policies and to moral panic campaigns to ban some inanimate object as the culprit that is supposedly corrupting kids.

If we had a functioning safety net and opportunities for people who grow up in the inner city to achieve a better life that doesn't involve playing professional sports, we'd be a mostly urban population like a normal country and we wouldn't have the teen mental health problems that only we have or the school shootings that we've only had for the past 30 years or so of the 400+ years we've had gun rights. We won't do that because that would involve spending our tax dollars for the benefit of people who aren't millionaires, billionaires or corporations.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#203

Post by theodric »

karma_pharmer wrote: post #106

It 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…

Hams still have and use them.[1]

I'm not a ham, because I don't want to hang out with self-appointed cops, so I got a new Chinese pager made up with a center frequency of 433.5MHz (ISM, unlicensed), then configured it to work with a Pi-Star rig radiating well under the EU/Irish legal power limit, and receive messages infrequently enough not to run afoul of duty cycle limits. Because I know there's some ham who's just salivating to track me down and quote the rule book to me, and I want to deny him (it's always a him) that pleasure. It reaches all the way to the far end of my farm!

You can get traditional alphanumeric belt loop pagers or snazzy modern wristwatch pages these days. Check AliExpress.

[1] https://hampager.de/#/

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#204

Post by sophacles »

2024throwaway wrote: post #181
caseyy wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there are many reasonable arguments. For example: your data is sold to third parties you don't know, and they use it against you or in unethical ways. For example, visiting a mental health clinic might mean your car insurance rates go up, or Facebook adjusts their algorithm to cause you more distress and hook you more, or your credit rating goes down. Objectively, you are worse off because you were tracked. See…

Citations needed. These sound like wild conspiracy theories.

I'm sure you're right. They'll keep our boring, unimportant location data safe. Just like they do with our financial data, or account info, and other such important information.

Nothing bad ever happens when people's info is leaked like that anyway right?

BTW I need to confirm some data I bought - what are your CVVs and SSN again? It's fine to post it publically here, nothing bad happens and it's already been leaked 100s of times at this point.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#205

Post by threeio »

aftbit wrote: post #74
threeio wrote: post #35

I remember having to get an exemption to have my alphanumeric pager in school because my job (pc support for a Fortune 500) required me to have it with me when I got to the office... it was ridiculous but eventually worked out. -- Alternatively I've got a modern DAPnet ham radio alphanumeric pager now that I use occasionally for notifications related to radio stuff. :) ( https://hampager.de )

Hey I was waiting for someone to mention DAPnet. Which pager did you buy? Do you run your own gateway? I have a Pilot AL-A26 which is a neat little device, but my example is filtered for 450 to 458 MHz, and on 12.5 kHz steps. I can get it to just barely work with 449.800 MHz but that's awfully close to a local repeater.

I've just got a normal DMR hotspot and I ended up with the GP2009 just because it was stupidly simple to work with.. my only issue is nigh rechargeable batteries don't last as long as I'd like.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#206

Post by cyberax »

arp242 wrote: post #141
asveikau wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, In a lot of cases I think it's a proxy for racism. I think there's also a tendency towards black and white thinking, where people are either good or bad, and they're very willing to bucket people as bad rather than considering shades of gray or that authorities did something wron…

In this case it's a white kid though, and a lot of the kids from "kids for cash" were white. If we look at the prison population and include just the white population (~60%), the US still incarcerates vastly more people than other comparable countries. It's not even close. While in general racism is certainly a contributing factor, I don't see it being the main factor. I don't have the impression the other factors yo…

The thing is, the vast majority of convicts in jail are genuinely guilty. I'd put it at 99% at least, probably more. And even many of the "innocent" people there are more likely to be of the kind: "I did not rob and kill this guy, I only fenced his watch".

What can be done with it? I now believe that the only way is more aggressive policing with almost zero tolerance. At the same time, the jail terms need to go _down_.

So if you steal bread to feed your sister's starving children, you WILL go to jail, just like Jean Valjean. But only for a couple of days, not 19 years.

Additionally, prisons and jails need to become _better_. No unpaid labor, better conditions, different tiers of jails for different offenders. Mental health resources and job training.

Oh, and alternatives to jail such as community service are great too.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#207

Post by DisgracePlacard »

2024throwaway wrote: post #173
karma_pharmer wrote: post #106

It 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…

[flagged]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/05/israel-idf-l...

Israel used phone location data to target and kill Palestinians, with a sub-90% accuracy rate, supposedly. Probably not a big concern right now in America, but it could always turn into one. So I think it'd be good if this wasn't a possibility. Better safe than sorry.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#208

Post by tyingq »

ubermonkey wrote: post #104
munchler wrote: post #96

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…

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.

I really liked that the phone was mine, work didn't call me. The pager was for work, and they had to use that to get me to come in for issues. Nice clean separation.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#209

Post by mcmoor »

wkat4242 wrote: post #67

Wow. Weird. We never had this in the Netherlands. But we got them later. In fact for a long time they were the only way to be reachable in hospitals because they banned mobile phones for fear of interference with medical equipment.

I don't really know how beeper works, why is it not interfering with medical equipment like mobile phone does? Solely because of low power?

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#210

Post by 2024throwaway »

sophacles wrote: post #204
2024throwaway wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citations needed. These sound like wild conspiracy theories.

I'm sure you're right. They'll keep our boring, unimportant location data safe. Just like they do with our financial data, or account info, and other such important information. Nothing bad ever happens when people's info is leaked like that anyway right? BTW I need to confirm some data I bought - what are your CVVs and SSN again? It's fine to post it publically here, nothing bad happens and it's already been leaked…

Unironically this. I treat my SSN as public data. CVVs might as well be too, I can just dispute the charge.
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