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The forgotten war on beepers

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Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#221

Post by Dwedit »

the__alchemist wrote: post #4

I remember learning about these in elementary school. We were sitting in assembly in a room called "The Pod". Listening to rules and administrative things. On the list of banned items never to bring to school, along with drugs, guns, and knives, beepers were listed. I wasn't sure what they were, but from the context and too many cartoons, I assumed they were an explosive device that beeped a few times before blowing…

beepbeepbeep WHAT THE FU BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! Muahahahahaha! Muahahahahaha! Muahahahahaha!

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#222

Post by lazide »

maxbond wrote: post #198
lazide wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to bail/pretrial detention hearings. Practically, what are the alternatives? Every arrest is cite and release pending conviction? Society would be even more out of control.

The alternative is to charge them as a juvenile, and to refrain from inferring a guilty conscious from their lack of "contrition" (which is a patently ridiculous thing to expect from an 11 year old - which is the real issue with charging children as adults, not that they supposedly are more reformable, but that they cannot be held to the same standards as adults). You're engaging in a slippery slope fallacy. This was…

No, I’m not arguing if it is right or wrong. I’ve been explaining why the levers exist as that was what was being asked. And to be clear, the case I’m referring to the kid was tried and convicted (originally) of 1st degree murder with a shotgun. In juvenile court.

And if it turned out the kid did murder them, then people would be up in arms that he got released early - especially if he committed another murder before he got locked up again. Which could happen.

Cases like this too [https://www.klfy.com/local/iberia-parish/trial-for-11-year-o...].

Was it a miscarriage of justice? Perhaps, I haven’t seen the evidence. The courts eventually came to the conclusion it was! Until they did, according to the courts it wasn’t.

it was also legal while it was happening.

And 11yr olds are plenty capable of being defiant, malicious, contrite, etc. too.

And active dangers to those around them.

I wasn’t there in court when this was going on, so I have no idea if the kid was being out of control, or the judge was being out of control. I’ve seen both play out. The appeals court felt it was the judge.

The whole situation is quite terrible regardless. But that’s what the criminal justice system is for - to resolve terrible situations in some eventually sensible way. Woe to whoever gets caught in its gears though.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#223

Post by wkat4242 »

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…

To be fair, that is exactly what happens now except most of it is on WhatsApp :)

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#224

Post by asveikau »

cyberax wrote: post #206
arp242 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you underestimate the rate of wrongly accused and wrongly convicted. Estimates vary, iirc I've seen some papers claiming 5% and others claiming as high as 20%. There is a lot of over-charging going on too.

Then, most cases don't get to trial, so you have people pleading guilty to things they did not do because they fear wrongful conviction for something worse.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#225

Post by wkat4242 »

xattt wrote: post #142
ubermonkey wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. You are right. However, a ringing phone in the mid-to-late 20th century created a ton of tension and was a movie trope. People felt obligated to respond to what they assumed was a human being on the other end. Obviously, this obligation to respond has been diluted with robodialers and mixed messaging methods.

True. Conversations were dropped as soon as a phone rang. Mind you, this was also because most people didn't even have a caller ID display or answering machine so if you didn't answer you had no idea who had called. The curiosity factor was strong. These days I don't answer when I don't recognise the number.

The expectation of actually catching someone was much lower than these days though. Because of course not being at home meant not being reachable.

There's was also this unwritten rule about not calling people too late, which doesn't really happen anymore in my circles since people can now see whether you're active (eg on WhatsApp) and switch their phone on DnD when they sleep anyway.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#226

Post by cdchn »

chowells wrote: post #174
cvwright wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm ok with arresting someone who brings a gun or fentanyl, if that means we get them before they can kill someone.

You think fentanyl is magic killing dust? What are you, one of those moronic cops who thinks they'll die from seeing fentanyl? They only way you're injuring someone with fentanyl is getting them to ingest an unsafe amount of it one way or another. That's not really different from a lot of prescription drugs. Or some OTC ones, like Tylenol. Or lye and many other cleaning agents.

The dose makes the poison. The LD50 for lye is 4,090 (rats) - 6,600 mg/kg (mice). The LD50 for fentanyl is 3.1 mg/kg in rats and 0.03 mg/kg in monkeys. So, very different.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#227

Post by wkat4242 »

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #176
armada651 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pagers and phones are MY devices, and I get to decide how I will respond to them. Do you though? Because people on the other end will often demand you respond to them if you have your mobile phone with you. This is why people consider it a leash.

How do they know if you have the phone if you don’t pick up?

Because they see you're active on WhatsApp or telegram :)

I switched off the blue tickmarks in WhatsApp and even that really triggered people.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#228

Post by cdchn »

lagniappe wrote: post #31

I 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…

>- Basically 2 companies, operating with antequated websites (and prices) still provide service at the historic prices

Hold out companies for obsolete technologies always fascinate me. I remember reading there is like one guy who services candle pin bowling pin setters that run on 90s era Turbo Pascal software on whitebox 486 PCs and he's pretty much retired and drives up and down the North East in an RV doing his work.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#229

Post by wkat4242 »

op00to wrote: post #161
amputect wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that too. You definitely don't see as many of them these days. By 2006 they were kind of a punchline (cf the TV series "30 Rock" and their portrayal as a goofy dead-end tech for weirdos, sold by Dennis Duffy). This might or might not be an interesting digression (apologies if it's the latter!) but many medical professionals still carry beepers or pagers of some kind. Not like "an app on their phone that will r…

Hospitals in my area of the US still use POCSAG pagers, totally unencrypted. They do mention patient information, but I guess the obscurity makes it ok.

Pocsag is not obscure at all. A $10 rtlsdr and you're set.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#230

Post by wkat4242 »

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…

Yes!! This. I would totally carry a pager if the network still existed. Not all the time, but just sometimes when I'd like to feel free.

Ps there is still the iridium paging service which is one way and is not transmit before receive. But they want to get rid of it and stopped selling hardware. It's really hard to find now second hand.

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