[HN Gopher] The forgotten war on beepers
___________________________________________________________________
The forgotten war on beepers
Author : unsuspecting
Score : 129 points
Date : 2024-04-17 16:47 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org)
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| Beepers with text were peak technology.
| jerlam wrote:
| Beepers are the minimal phone that we had all along.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| YC summer 24: our beeper-with-text app startup is hiring full
| stack developers
| postmodest wrote:
| Our SMS-to-Internet microblogging app startup is hiring full
| stack developers.
| Feathercrown wrote:
| Couldn't Twitter do that once?
| mulmen wrote:
| Yes. That's the reason for the 140 character limit.
| creaturemachine wrote:
| That was essentially twitter 1.0
| astura wrote:
| That was the joke.
| jtriangle wrote:
| Yes, it was glorious.
| mrmetanoia wrote:
| 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.
| elric wrote:
| Nah, Nokia 3330 with WAP, that stuff was awesome. I built a
| bunch of WAP sites way back when. Slow, clunky, but usable on a
| phone with a tiny screen and a numeric keypad. Happy days.
| adamomada wrote:
| A 386 in your pocket
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_950
| ultrasaurus wrote:
| Literal beepers were still in use as late as 2012 as backups
| for on call people, enough so that we supported them at
| PagerDuty for redundancy (the API was email->provider->beeper)
|
| https://www.pagerduty.com/blog/short-emails-for-your-pager/
| baseballdork wrote:
| They're still in use for people who work in SCIFs.
| hiatus wrote:
| > Senator Ronald Rice passed away in 2023 - the New Jersey Pager
| ban still in place - months later The Washington Post editorial
| board would call on schools to ban cellphones entirely - part of
| a new moral panic about kids and digital devices, many of whose
| parents were once prohibited from bringing pagers to school.
|
| I was waiting for the author to point to cellphones in the same
| breath. Obviously, there is a substantial difference between a
| one-way receive-only device and cellphones.
| toast0 wrote:
| > 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.wirelesscommunication.nl/reference/chaptr01/dtmms...
| karmajunkie wrote:
| > 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.
| toast0 wrote:
| If I has a beeper in school, I'm sure it would have been
| paged with 8008135...
|
| Alphanumeric, watch out.
| Terr_ wrote:
| 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
| hiatus wrote:
| Service was ~$25/month (and only worked in your area) and you
| were limited to ~100 messages a month at that price (with
| each message <100 chars long). I can't imagine browsing the
| web with that service would be affordable for any real use.
| jerf wrote:
| Prior to cell phones being powerful enough to just shove
| megabytes of JS at them and expect them to work it out, the
| web had a lot of little subsets like this. I'm sure it
| wasn't really "the web", but a few pages that used HTTP to
| access them but if you strayed outside that set it
| completely disintegrated. I believe I saw some Palm Pilot
| optimized web sites, there used to be web sites optimized
| for mobile devices back when that meant something, there
| were some Dreamcast-optimized sites, etc. It is probably
| better to imagine it as access to their bespoke services
| over HTTP, and they were all pretty useless as they lacked
| any network effect.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| 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 up!
| mttpgn wrote:
| In the late 1990s, my dad attended night classes with other adult
| learners to earn his MBA. Everywhere he went during those years,
| my dad had a beeper clipped to his belt for an on-call hospital
| rotation. During his first week of class, my dad's beeper loudly
| went off during the middle of the lecture. As my dad scrambled
| out of the lecture hall to call the number on the little screen,
| the professor accurately guessed: "You're a doctor, aren't you?"
| mongol wrote:
| That is funny, in a way that I feel hard to explain. Something
| about it being a simpler, more innocent time?
| amputect wrote:
| 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 ring your phone at you
| even through Do-Not-Disturb" (I have one of those), but
| something that is very recognizably an old school beeper.
| They often have a SIM card in them, and the newer ones
| sometimes have wifi as well for redundancy.
|
| My wife is a nurse at a cancer treatment center, she
| coordinates care for extremely sick people who are getting
| very specialized treatments and she's kind of the front-line
| person for dealing with them and project managing emergency
| situations, so she and all the doctors she work with carry
| them. I thought it was actually pretty cool :)
|
| I asked her about it once, and apparently the hospital system
| looked at the more modern app-based paging stuff and decided
| that while it was cheaper, the reliability hit wasn't worth
| it to them. The physical hardware for these things is
| outrageously sturdy, they have a lifespan of like a decade,
| they're extremely easy to replace. Sure, your wifi might be
| out or your telephony might be down, but that's a problem
| your app has to deal with too. Apps are easier to provision,
| but it's an extra layer of stuff that can go wrong (your
| phone is getting an update or out of battery, you left it in
| your car because you were playing music with it and forgot to
| take it out of the console, it got stolen because phones are
| recognizably valuable) so they just stuck with the old
| familiar form factor that does one thing, extremely reliably.
|
| This isn't a criticism of the app-based paging systems or
| anything; they're quite reliable in my experience. I just
| thought it was a neat additional data point about the
| considerations that go in to the thought process about
| provisioning an alarm for your employees when the alarm
| almost always means either "I have a time-sensitive question
| about a patient's ongoing medical emergency" or "your patient
| is about to die".
| op00to wrote:
| 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.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| > Something about it being a simpler, more innocent time?
|
| Unfortunately, we will probably think the same about 2024 in
| thirty years...
| mongol wrote:
| Certainly. Something with AI will make this all seem like
| the best of times.
| throwawayForMe2 wrote:
| As an "enterprise" developer in the 80's, we all had beepers to
| go along with our suits and ties. People often thought we must
| be doctors, but we were just corporate mainframe developers.
| 486sx33 wrote:
| Definitely reminds me of "Dr. Beeper" in Caddyshack
| themadturk wrote:
| A law firm I worked for in the mid-90s started a helpdesk
| rotation with five or six of us taking shift with a single
| beeper. The only real complain was from the three women on the
| team, who had no belts or pockets to hang the device from
| (skirts and dresses were mandatory for female employees at the
| time, and women's clothes rarely have pockets or belts).
| ok123456 wrote:
| 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.
| drdaeman wrote:
| > confiscated and held until the end of the school year.
|
| How things like that were even remotely legal?
| buildbot wrote:
| 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.
| toast0 wrote:
| 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.
| pc86 wrote:
| This probably has more to do with the fact that 30 years
| ago if you brought an electronic device into school it was
| probably relatively cheap and there was a decent chance
| your parents didn't even know about it. And either way it
| wasn't really a necessary part of your existence. Now it's
| a $1200 phone that is most likely the primary way your
| parents communicate with you between the time you're out of
| school (around 2:30 or 3 when I was in, unless there were
| after school activities) and they return from work.
| ok123456 wrote:
| I don't know about cheap, especially for a kid. A Discman
| could easily be their Christmas or birthday present.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I don't see how it wouldn't be legal. The school has a
| variety of responsibilities surrounding its students, going
| back hundreds of years. They aren't a 'guardian', but the
| school is entrusted with a child's safety, and has
| responsibility. For example, a school may tell a child to
| "be quiet" and "sit down" and "sit in this seat" and "why
| are you not in class", even forcing you to go to school.
|
| The school is allowed to dole out punishments, such as
| detention or even denying access to the school itself. This
| isn't a normal "a bunch of random adults are around"
| relationship.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Probably one of those things where if the parent contacted
| the school, the item would have been returned but most kids
| didn't want their parents to know they had the item at school
| in the first place.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| 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.
| autoexec wrote:
| 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.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| They'd be insane to deny them because disgruntled parents
| can cause an incredible amount of trouble for schools,
| not because confiscating the phone when established by
| clearly communicated policy is actually meaningfully
| illegal.
| ianburrell wrote:
| 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.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Yes, children have property rights. If there is a homeless
| 14 year old on the street, I can't just go up and steal his
| bike.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Children don't really have property rights
|
| Yes, they do.
|
| > and even if they did, courts have consistently ruled that
| the bill of rights is reduced in school settings.
|
| Courts have ruled that there are specific interests in
| school that meet the generally applicable (not special,
| weaker) standards applicable for permissible action where
| rights protected in the Bill of Rights are involved.
|
| But establishing categories of and confiscating contraband
| is... not a disputed state power, in any case.
| ok123456 wrote:
| The underlying legal theory is that schools are 'in loco
| parentis' and can establish rules while the students are
| entrusted to the school by the parents.
| mysteria wrote:
| Typically it's to the end of the school year OR until a
| parent comes to get it.
| hn8305823 wrote:
| You could always bring your parents into this if you really
| wanted to. For some reason that rarely ever happened...
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I was approached by the principal while I was using my modified
| tone dialer on a pay phone in the hall and he freaked out a bit
| and I showed him it was for dialing stored numbers and he
| looked at it for a second and said "Ok. It's just that it looks
| a lot like a pager... maybe be more discrete with it"
| hn8305823 wrote:
| In the 80's I had a walki-talkie confiscated till the end of
| the year also. It "just happened" to be crystaled for the same
| freq the school narcs/maintenance used.
| gorkish wrote:
| > (not yet modified)
|
| <wink> I just used a walkman
| tonymet wrote:
| Also Walkman/ diskman / portable radios were banned
| ok123456 wrote:
| 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.
| samatman wrote:
| I 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 <three
| digit number>" "oh thats <friend>" "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.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Did people use the telephone number message to send alphabet
| messages or like '1' for 'I am home' etc?
| standardUser wrote:
| I recall in the 90's we would add 911 if it was urgent and
| 420 if it was about drugs. We would also end with our 3-digit
| 'pager code' to identify who sent the message.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Lets 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.
| vkou wrote:
| Let's also not forget the scares about the dangers of smoking,
| leaded gasoline, asbestos, licking radium paint, and drunk
| driving.
|
| Not all new inventions are a net benefit to society just
| because they are new, not all things are always good in all
| contexts, and 2024 is not the end of history, or of cultural
| evolution.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| I agree.
|
| But all of your examples are 'real'. Real physical things
| that can impact someone materially. Chemicals, products.
|
| Lot of the 'scare' things are just 'ideas'. Should we outlaw
| ideas is the problem. That is basically how anti-communism
| works, 'communism' is an idea that the right calls a 'mind
| virus' that we should ban because it can infect people.
|
| Of course, super hard to tell what is freedom of speech these
| days. I've been hearing the right scream about freedom of
| speech for years now, and all of sudden with Gaza they want
| to round people up if anybody criticizes Israel.
| vkou wrote:
| Having a television or radio blasting propaganda into your
| living room is real. It's an actual physical thing, it's
| not a concept. So is the Facebook app, and the social
| dynamics that prevail on it. So are screens in general.
|
| I'm sure that the optimal amount of all those things is
| non-zero, but it's possible that it's also not 'all day,
| every day.'
|
| It's not unreasonable for schools to restrict this, just
| like it's not unreasonable for a school to restrict you
| from bringing a mariachi band with you to class.
| FdbkHb wrote:
| You forgot people summoning demons through Dungeons&Dragons.
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/72/Occult_dnd.pn...
| bregma wrote:
| Comic books. Elvis and the rock-n-roll music. Heck, even self-
| pleasure makes you grow hair on your palms, lose your eyesight,
| and causes mental illness.
|
| Don't forget home taping destroyed the music industry and
| nothing new has been recorded since the early 1980s.
| ghaff wrote:
| And porn on BBSs predated modern Internet porn by a few
| decades and, as I recall, it was even a Time cover story once
| --when the weekly news mags were still relevant.
| rickydroll wrote:
| To me, two things are interesting in this post. First, even
| though urban legends have been documented and debunked for years,
| people still get suckered by them. Second, using photographs of
| newspaper pages is an increasingly rare form of documenting past
| events. While you can forge a newspaper page, it is more
| complicated than tweaking some HTML.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > While you can forge a newspaper page, it is more complicated
| than tweaking some HTML.
|
| With how many people are skilled in Photoshop compared to web
| development, forging a scan of a page is probably easier for a
| lot of people.
| rickydroll wrote:
| Yes, you are right, but theoretically, it's easier to prove
| the forgery if you have copies of the newspaper stored in
| multiple places. I think we need multiple archives of
| newspaper articles stored in an archival medium. We can't
| trust crypto signatures to be future-proof.
| adamomada wrote:
| "People tend to think that a pager's foul"
|
| A Tribe Called Quest - Skypager (1991)
| lagniappe wrote:
| 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 totally displaced from the
| market (lack of service and hardware) despite being more advanced
| than regular beepers.
|
| Anybody want to share a testimonial about their current beeper
| for someone who's looking for a good option?
| Nicholas_C wrote:
| I'm curious about your desire to not own a phone. Have you
| written about the experience anywhere?
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| I don't carry a cell phone, and stopped using email _years
| ago_.
|
| When I do discuss these experiences, most people aren't able
| to believe me. "How?" is a typical response... which to me
| seems equally strange a question.
|
| It does make parking difficult ("pay with the app!"); last
| time I had a court action, the judge required me to sign a
| document stating I did not use email, because this is "a
| required piece of information."
|
| Until this year, I handed out my numeric pager as "my phone
| number," which grateful reduced successful contact [to my
| chagrin].
| karma_pharmer wrote:
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| I wouldn't argue with you. I'd just observe that you cut
| yourself off from a lot of modern conveniences. (I
| certainly grew up without cell phone until well into my
| adult life and largely without Internet as well.) You don't
| need electricity or indoor plumbing either--although those
| are arguably at a different level.
| asdff wrote:
| Modern conveniences is right. Everything is two factor
| authenticated now. Even if you avoid that in your private
| life your workplace is liable to roll it out if they
| haven't already.
| codedokode wrote:
| Maybe because phones allow to track people? It is a spy in
| your pocket.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Which companies? Where can we read more about the no-TX design?
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I heard about it years ago probably from WP:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pager#Security
|
| It's very inefficient because every tower must broadcast
| every message. This is why you can find an archive of pages
| from the morning of September 11th online, they transmitted
| unencrypted to a huge area.
|
| So that raises costs and limits the coverage area. Fine for a
| hospital with 100 idk doctors who need paged, not fine for
| continental coverage of 100 million users.
| karma_pharmer wrote:
| _It 's very inefficient because every tower must broadcast
| every message._
|
| No, it's incredibly efficient because the messages are
| _tiny_.
|
| If you need to send a long message, then you page the
| person with "you have a long message from XYZ, please use
| higher-bandwidth mechanisms to retrieve it".
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| I happily used PagerDirect[.net] 2020-2023 -- their service
| includes a receive-only pager, either numeric or
| alphanumeric. They also have Tx pagers, but I have no
| experience with that service.
|
| An issue with Rx-only paging is that your device must be on
| 24/7, and within RF range -- if offline/out-of-range, you
| will never receive that page.
|
| I only stopped because I moved outside of their reliable
| service area (but they provide service to practically any
| metro center with greater than 100k people). When I lived 3
| miles from "downtown" the pager was a great asset (for call
| screening, e.g.: spammers never "figured out" how a pager
| worked).
| karma_pharmer wrote:
| 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.
| asdff wrote:
| Hospitals have become a sort of a standardized customer
| threeio wrote:
| 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)
| aftbit wrote:
| 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.
| function_seven wrote:
| My brother gave me a beeper as a Christmas present in 1996. It
| was cool, but it got _really_ cool when I bought an 800-number
| from LDDS Worldcom. The only thing I was charged was (IIRC) 6C/
| per minute, and no call setup charge.*
|
| I got paper bills in the mail for $0.34. Friends could page me
| from a payphone without having to drop a coin.
|
| *(EDIT: I think I misremember a bit. If the call originated from
| a pay phone, I think I was charged additional for that.)
| dpifke wrote:
| I had a beeper in high school around the same time, because it
| came with a voicemail box and was a lot cheaper than a separate
| phone line. (Around $5/month in 1992 dollars, IIRC.)
|
| It was a way to get messages from friends without my parents
| and siblings eavesdropping, and despite said siblings
| monopolizing the home landline.
| zzzeek wrote:
| it's important to note that the fake panic over beepers is not
| related to the current concerns that kids shouldn't be on their
| phones all day long and at school. The former is a "fake moral
| panic" based on the premise that all kids were doing / selling
| drugs. the latter is a concern regarding
| mood/attention/bullying/self-esteem well established by
| statistics and experts (though not all experts, it's hotly
| debated. For parents with kids, not so much debate as it's
| extremely obvious).
|
| The article refutes this: "months later The Washington Post
| editorial board would call on schools to ban cellphones entirely
| - part of a new moral panic about kids and digital devices, "
|
| There's no "moral" panic about devices right now and this is
| straight up strawman. it's about mental health and learning.
| duped wrote:
| Seriously, talk to a teacher about dealing with cell phone use
| in class. A friend relayed a story to me recently of a parent
| (whose child is constantly on their tablet during class) who
| had the audacity to respond to teachers' complaints by saying
| their child "shouldn't be punished for their [internet]
| addiction."
|
| There's no reason kids should be on smart phones during the
| school day at all. The only "panic" is from parents who are
| terrified of being more than ten seconds away from contact with
| their child.
| xhevahir wrote:
| I think "moral panic" (to paraphrase Terry Eagleton on
| ideology) is like halitosis in that it's what the other person
| has and not oneself. Arguments that invoke it seem always to
| break down into finger-pointing and one-upmanship.
| standardUser wrote:
| I'm sure our elders did their best, I just wish their best hadn't
| been lies, paranoia, fearmongering and arresting children.
| afandian wrote:
| Forget the beeper. The idea of arresting a child at school for
| _anything_ (short of maybe violent assault) seems to be madness.
| cvwright wrote:
| I'm ok with arresting someone who brings a gun or fentanyl, if
| that means we get them _before_ they can kill someone.
| exe34 wrote:
| What about shooting a kid for having a water gun?
|
| Edit: fuck me, I was half joking and thought I'd check
| anyway. What a shit show. Latest case was 5 days ago. https:/
| /www.google.com/search?q=American+police+shoot+kid+wi...
| arp242 wrote:
| 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(!!!) but what
| really takes the cake is:
|
| _" Presiding Judge Dominick Motto of the Lawrence County,
| Pennsylvania, Common Pleas Court initially denied
| decertification and transfer to juvenile court because Jordan
| would not admit his involvement in the crime."_
|
| "We're going to punish you harder because you claim to be
| innocent" What kind of backward clinically insane shitcunt
| logic is that?! Especially when we're talking about a 11-year
| old?!
|
| It's no surprise that the "kids for cash" scandal could have
| continued for years, because the entire system is rotten. In
| any half-way decent system giving 3 months detention to a
| 14-year old for making a MySpace parody page of a teacher
| should have set off every possible alarm bell, and that it
| didn't is pretty damning for the entire system. Also: what kind
| of school brings this matter to a judge in the first place...?
| This along is pretty crazy.
| lazide wrote:
| Because it shows no remorse. The reason for reduced sentences
| for juvenile offenders is the idea that they 'didn't know any
| better'. That they can learn and grow and NOT be a menace to
| society soon.
|
| If they still refuse to take any ownership or show any
| contrition even after being clearly shown something was a
| major problem (hence the court case), then why reduce the
| penalty? Who would it be helping, exactly?
| arp242 wrote:
| 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 makes it that much worse.
| lazide wrote:
| 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 giving them a pass either due to
| the severe nature of the crime, or because of the lack of
| contrition of the accused.
|
| If they're actually innocent, then per the system they
| should get zero penalty eventually regardless of how they
| are prosecuted.
|
| We know that being held in an adult jail while awaiting
| trial is a pretty severe penalty in fact of course, which
| is why it eventually got thrown out that he got treated
| that way. Plenty of adults get stuck in jail for years
| while awaiting trial, then get released and theoretically
| suffered no penalty either. But we also know that is
| bullshit. No clear better alternatives (except bail) have
| shown themselves however.
|
| If the kid had been caught on tape murdering a bunch of
| other kids and still claimed he was innocent, then no one
| would be objecting that he be put in an adult jail while
| awaiting trial though. Since putting someone that violent
| in a juvenile facility is making it as dangerous as an
| adult one.
|
| Judges have wide discretion to make these calls, and this
| judge clearly screwed up.
|
| But that's the how and the why.
| arp242 wrote:
| 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.
| lazide wrote:
| 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?
| noodlesUK wrote:
| > What else do you propose is going to happen though?
|
| Not parent but I don't think that we should be holding
| anyone pending trial when what they're accused of is so
| minor, child or otherwise.
|
| Furthermore any decisions about pre-trial detention
| shouldn't hinge on remorse or contrition, they should
| hinge on the alleged offenders risk of flight and their
| potential risk to the community.
| lazide wrote:
| The judge is supposed to consider severity. Obviously it
| went too far in this case.
|
| Regarding remorse/contrition though - that is absolutely
| a factor of in potential risk to the community.
|
| Example - Someone gets arrested for DUI. Who is higher
| risk? Someone who insists they didn't do it and fuck
| anyone who thinks they did and they'll do what they want,
| or someone who says 'that was terrible, and I didn't do
| exactly what the prosecution says, but I'm not going to
| be driving anytime soon until this all gets worked out'?
|
| Because plenty of people in the first category end up
| driving drunk _while pending trial_ and kill more people.
| exe34 wrote:
| 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 up and asked me why did I admit something I
| hadn't done?
| bbarnett wrote:
| Unclear what a 'grass' is. Are you referring to falling
| down?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| "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.
| ajb wrote:
| Grass is British slang for informing on someone
| lazide wrote:
| Fair or not, this is the idea behind 'no contest' pleas
| in court.
|
| No admittance of fault, but not going to fight the
| prosecution either because it isn't worth it.
|
| It isn't necessarily fair or sane - it's predictable
| though. Which is something.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > in US culture and society that makes it so hostile towards
|
| As far as schools go, zero tolerance policies have been put
| in place. The concept of zero tolerance is something that
| just makes no sense to me. Not every thing that happens in a
| school needs police involvement, but because the rules/laws
| that have been put in place removes common sense and power
| from principals so that everything is now a police matter.
|
| Legislatures have done similar things to judges with
| mandatory minimums and other draconian small minded knee jerk
| reaction to look like they are being effective.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > removes common sense
|
| This happened about 5 miles from where I grew up:
| https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/7-year-old-
| suspende...
|
| In the 80s, kids would have bows or hunting rifles in the
| car or truck in the school parking lot. Now eating your
| pastry the wrong way gets you sent home.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Zero tolerance policies are a direct response to
| discrimination claims.
|
| If you allow people to have discretion, then it will be
| used(and abused).
|
| Also some of the stories I hear about school in the 70's
| and 80's make me think that the current claim that "schools
| were always authoritarian and used to subjugate children to
| turn them into compliant workers" is probably BS.
|
| Probably current administration needs to justify it's
| existence and high pay by making rules.
| hughesjj wrote:
| > Zero tolerance policies are a direct response to
| discrimination claims.
|
| Source? Because if that's true, that's the wrong
| implementation of a great policy (anti-discrimination).
|
| That's basically saying "well instead of having a policy
| of reasonable punishment for a given situation, we'd
| rather be as extreme in our punishment as possible so
| that we can still hurt kids we hate"
| Clubber wrote:
| >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.
|
| The justice system has gone mad. Politicians probably
| encourage it behind closed doors as well. Fear is the road to
| authoritarianism.
| elzbardico wrote:
| It is a long discussion, but the TL;DR version is Puritanism.
| asveikau wrote:
| > 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 wrong.
|
| Additionally, in a lot of threads about crime I also sense a
| lot of jealousy. The sentiment resembles "I work hard to pay
| my bills like a chump and this guy has such a sweet and easy
| life not playing by the rules." They might feel their working
| life has them too stressed and they want to hurt "criminals"
| as some kind of revenge fantasy.
| arp242 wrote:
| 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 you mention
| are unique to the US; people from all types of backgrounds
| seem to have problems with black/white thinking. This sort
| of thing seems innate to the human condition.
|
| So the question remains, what is so special about the US? I
| don't really have a good answer to this. "Puritanism", as
| another commenter offered, seems too simplistic, and the US
| isn't the only country with a history of that sort of
| thing, either. Same with "war on drugs", another popular
| answer. Drugs are illegal (and sometimes heavily
| persecuted) in many countries. Maybe it's a bit worse in
| the US, but it's not unique to the US.
|
| Maybe there just isn't a good/clear reason, and it's just
| "how the chips fell". The Aztecs went to war for no other
| reason than to capture people so they could rip out their
| hearts for sacrifice. There have been cultures where
| cannibalism of slaves, even child slaves, was socially
| acceptable for no other reason than "it tastes good". Why
| were these cultures like this? Who can tell... Probably a
| complex interaction between various factors.
| asveikau wrote:
| Well, I don't think the tough on crime rhetoric is
| totally unique to the US either. I hear them coming from
| other countries too. Eg. when I was paying attention to
| Javier Milei's presidential bid in Argentina, it's
| largely the same talking points about crime, could have
| been lifted word for word from American internet
| comments.
|
| From what I understand I think northern europe in
| particular has more of an attitude geared toward prison
| being about reform of criminals, and less towards
| vindictive punishment.
|
| PS: Kind of tangential, but since you did bring it up: I
| believe a lot of the stories about natives being cruel
| warriors and cannibals were invented or exaggerated by
| Spaniards.
| pc86 wrote:
| Arresting kids for bringing something that's legal for them to
| have is one side of a spectrum of silliness, thinking that
| arresting a kid for violently assaulting someone is a "maybe"
| is pretty far on the other end of the same spectrum. There are
| plenty of things it's completely reasonable to arrest a child
| for.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I was almost arrested twice; once for having phreaker box plans
| in my bookbag (in 1998, when they no longer worked), another
| time for "computer hacking" (fixing the school computer's proxy
| settings).
|
| And they wonder why we grew up to hate authority figures.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Treating public school as public space with public rules
| creates a huge class divide with the private schools. Short of
| actively shooting up the place, I can't think of a single rule
| you could break at the private university I went to that could
| result in law enforcement getting involved. I knew of at least
| one kid who got caught with most of a kilogram of cocaine, who
| got off with little more than a slap on the wrist.
|
| In contrast, a kid at my brother's public uni got arrested for
| petty vandalism. It's an extremely stark class divide.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| It doesn't need to be this way. Essentially all UK
| universities are "public" and none operate this way. There
| aren't special police forces that roam their campuses (Oxford
| had this for a time, but I think it was the only one).
| Violation of university rules is no more serious from a legal
| perspective than violating any other private rules.
|
| I think campus police are an insane idea. There should
| obviously be a good relationship between any university and
| the police in their area, but the idea that they should
| _report_ to the university leadership is nonsensical.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Nobody was arrested for pagers at my school, but both pagers and
| cell-phones were minimum 3-day suspension on first offense and
| expulsion for repeated offense -- larger minimum punishments than
| bringing a knife.
| sllabres wrote:
| Reminded me a bit about the use of satellite internet for
| anonymity
|
| https://securelist.com/satellite-turla-apt-command-and-contr...
| 83457 wrote:
| My late father owned a small commercial radio business for a few
| decades. It provided sales, install, repair, and repeater service
| to primarily public safety groups and companies with a fleet of
| vehicles. A more consumer oriented side to his business was
| pagers through Metrocall.
|
| A major drug dealer in our region was a kid in my high school. He
| leased a pager from my dad's company. During the investigation,
| authorities had my dad create a cloned pager. They could then
| record all pages sent to the drug dealer, about 6k in as many
| months, to track his activities and build their case.
| astura wrote:
| For the youngins here, I can confirm this, getting caught with a
| beeper in my school was just as serious as getting caught with
| weapons or drugs. They were the ultimate contraband.
| koolba wrote:
| I bet there's at least one person reading this thread who has
| heard of the company "PagerDuty" but does not know that it's
| referring to a beeper.
| hn8305823 wrote:
| This happened when I was in HS in the 1980's I think it was
| around 86-87 that they outright banned beepers/pagers, no
| exceptions.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| 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.
| agrippanux wrote:
| I went to high school in the early 90's. Every kid I knew with a
| pager (about 5) used it primarily to buy or sell pot.
| matwood wrote:
| Yeah, initially they were associated with drug dealer types.
| Eventually in my group everyone had one so our parents could
| get in touch with us. The beep had a certain cadence when it
| started and even now when I hear it I get fun flashbacks to
| being a teen.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| ahh my first tech job gave me one of these.
|
| You kids complain about always on. This was the late 90's the
| beeper was so they didn't have to pay for my cell phone. I was
| making stupid money so...
|
| I grew to hate that fucking thing.
|
| One got dropped down 4 stories in a wire chase.
|
| Another I threw in front of a steam roller on its way to flatten
| some asphalt. The driver gave me a thumbs up and I pitched it.
|
| I nailed one to a the bar of a dive I hung out in.
|
| I think I "flushed" two... The first one was a mistake (I think
| the first to die) I brought it back in a plastic baggie. I was
| told to throw it out.
|
| One out the car window at 80 (I was young and stupid and it was
| BFE texas... there wasnt a car for miles)
|
| Another in a lake...
|
| At some point they asked me to stop, I did, but it was fun while
| I could get away with it.
| tudorw wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUZCV95SCXE
| m0llusk wrote:
| I'm a beeper sometimes.
| motohagiography wrote:
| When I was a teenager in the 90s, playing in bands before I got
| into tech, I knew a slightly older girl who worked as a model.
| She had a beeper for go-sees that always made plans difficult. In
| hindsight I may have been very naive, but sometimes I'm still
| grateful she allowed me my innocence.
| munchler wrote:
| A "go-see" is when the model visits a photographer to discuss a
| potential shoot?
| devilbunny wrote:
| Or an agency for a potential hire - basically an audition, do
| you look the way we want the model for this shoot to look?
|
| Implication being that she was actually a call girl or drug
| dealer.
| munchler wrote:
| 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 leash. They both immediately
| agreed that since they now carried cell phones, their wives
| called them too often for annoying requests, like stopping to get
| milk on the way home. I was a bit shocked, because I was talking
| about _them_ , not my wife, but I didn't say anything more. (I
| got a cell phone shortly after anyway.)
| ubermonkey wrote:
| 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.
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| > 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...
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| 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.
| bee_rider wrote:
| That's pretty cool. Your son has a better relationship to
| technology than a lot of adults. Probably reflects some
| good parenting, nice work.
| op00to wrote:
| Sure, we have that discussion and I answer and we set clear
| boundaries.
| armada651 wrote:
| > 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.
| hughesjj wrote:
| Fuck 'em.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Several of us are not the top dog in our hierarchies and
| can suffer consequences for telling our superiors to fuck
| off
| xattt wrote:
| > 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.
| buran77 wrote:
| > and battery life was short
|
| In the mid-'90s and 2000s phone batteries lasted longer than
| they do today, assuming the regular usage of the day.
| swores wrote:
| Pretty sure they're talking a few years earlier than
| mid-90s. Think brick-like phones, not phones that fit in
| your pockets.
| buran77 wrote:
| Maybe, it's not out of the question that some would do
| that but I've never had the feeling it was common or
| desirable even then. GP referenced the '90s hence my
| guess.
|
| A late '80s Micro TAC, especially with the fat battery,
| still easily qualified for my previous description. You'd
| have to go to the early '80s brick phones to get just 1h
| of talk time from a charge but then again realistically
| very few people actually talked that much on the mobile
| in those days. The real sticking point is more that
| turning off the phone to cut standby time wouldn't have
| really saved anything for talking time within a day,
| until you had the time to recharge.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| I had the same thought process in the 90s, and it is the reason
| why I still don't have a smartphone :)
| JackMorgan wrote:
| My 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.
| asveikau wrote:
| I 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.
| karma_pharmer wrote:
| 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.
| ale42 wrote:
| Plus, VHF signals can get where no LTE or satellite can arrive,
| even if you are two floors underground. Downside is that
| anybody can read POCSAG, especially nowadays with inexpensive
| SDR receivers...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| "VHF pagers were the last way you could recieve notifications
| without having to offer up your location to surveillance"
|
| ...and instead anyone in your city can read every single text
| message with a trivial amount of hardware?
| bastardoperator wrote:
| <ph#>-420-911
| micheljansen wrote:
| In the Netherlands there was a brief period where "Maxers" [1]
| were all the rage. They were like pagers, except you could send
| text messages to them by calling to a specific service number and
| leaving spoken messages. It was outrageously expensive and GSM
| came shortly after so they rapidly faded into obscurity.
|
| [1] https://www.mobilecollectors.net/phone/5064/philips-
| prg+2140...
| babypuncher wrote:
| Well it's nice knowing that moral panics have always been pretty
| stupid. But it's not so nice knowing that we keep making this
| same easily avoidable mistake.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I think I was 15 when I got a beeper? It was translucent green
| plastic, clipped inside the baggy khaki pants of my school
| uniform. Surfing the web to find lists of beeper codes, trading
| beeper numbers with friends, sending them "secret" numeric
| messages. Learning about hacking and how to intercept or transmit
| beeper messages (and not being able to, but still finding it
| cool).
|
| _Nobody_ thought me or any of my private school friends were
| drug dealers for having beepers. They just thought the beepers
| were a distraction, and not allowed in class. I don 't remember
| them being banned but they might have been eventually.
| heelix wrote:
| 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.
| PortiaBerries wrote:
| I graduated high school in 2000. I knew 2 kids in that school
| with pagers, and the only reason I paged them was to buy weed...
| noodlesUK wrote:
| I'm sad that radio pagers are going away. They're a much more
| reliable way of getting an emergency call out than a
| multifunction mobile phone. Their battery life is much longer and
| you won't put it on do not disturb or silent mode.
|
| Being on a separate radio network also means that in a real
| emergency when mobile signal is degraded, the pagers still work.
|
| The other thing that's convenient is that you can hand them off
| physically, so people know who is responsible for them at any
| time.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-04-17 23:00 UTC)