Slashdot Mirror
Where Have All the Pagers Gone?
oddRaisin writes "After recently sleeping through a page for work, I decided to change my paging device from my BlackBerry (which is quiet and has a pathetic vibrate mode) to an actual pager. After looking at the websites of Cingular, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint, I'm left scratching my head and wondering where all the pagers went. I can't find them or any mention of them. Pagers of yore offered some great features that reflected the serious nature of being paged. They were loud. They had good vibrate modes. They continued to alert after a page until you acknowledged them. I didn't have to differentiate between a text from a friend and a page from work. Now that pagers seem to have become passé, what are other people doing to fill this niche? Are some phones better pagers than others? Are there still paging service providers out there?"
Look out - they're right behind you!
Why, the same place all the slide rules went, of course.
--Q
He wants his manifesto back.
Read Pynchon.
Myself and some co-workers spent quite a while recently researching this; except for a few people in our group, we agreed that the best substitute for a pager was to have a large-breasted secretary in a nurse-like outfit mind our phones and repeatedly slap our face with their titties if we got a page - sort of like motorboating, but with them doing all the work.
Because this is slashdot, he should build a robot which can receive and parse incoming messages and wake him up if the message is important. The robot should be designed to make coffee and pancakes as well, why not? Building a robot shouldn't take long, and it'll be a lot cooler to have your own robot than some silly pager. Build a robot to do it!
They once, perhaps, were the rage.
But now it's time to turn the page.
-capt poetry
I have an old defunct pager that still lights up when pressed. I keep it on my belt when I want people to think how important I am. Sometimes I'll bump the button so it lights up and I can then say: "They really need me, sorry but I have to go."
in case I catch the stupid
Too late.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Where the fuck do we get these questions from? "What is my name?" "Where am I?" "How do I open a jar of pickles?" "How do I use a penis?" Fuck's sake.
I mentioned your problem to my wife.
She graciously has offered to send you her pager. Just post your address in response to this post. We will even, as a public service, pay for shipping.
I can attest to the fact the unit is plenty loud. As a bonus, you will get plenty of pages for problems that an engineer should never be called for and should have been handled by customer support.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
loved my pager watch
I could look down, even from a podium, and read a message while continuing whatever
service was supposedly complimentary for a year but never seemed to shut off
but then my dog bit into it
OK a new size TV
Wait... do you PAY to RECEIVE text messages? Soon you'll tell us you charge for incoming calls as well. Oh... you live in the US. I'm truly sorry.
Great, now I have this song going through my head: "Where have all the pagers gone? Long time passing. Where have all the pagers gone? Long time ago..."
I'm sometimes tempted to text back "Double dumbass on you" or something else inflammatory -- then sit back and watch the 6 o'clock news. But that would be evil.
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
I think that pagers have been obsolete for more than 10 years now.
No, they aren't. Technology is cyclical.
I pay 0.00euro to send SMS. I even pay 0.00euro to receive SMS. Hell, I even pay 0.00euro to call somebody.
Then again, those prices were in euro and not dollars for a reason.
If only you could pay someone for answering your phone - a professional service, perhaps.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
http://www.americanmessaging.net/paging/index.asp
I believe verizon sold/spun off their paging service to American Messaging. We use still use pagers for notifications.
On the plus side, not only are they reliable, but my pager gives me some serious street cred, Every thinks I'm a drug dealer, or still living in 8th grade.
I've known employees who have dropped them in the toilet and they still functioned afterwards
Oh well. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
Because this is slashdot, he should build a robot which can receive and parse incoming messages and wake him up if the message is important. The robot should be designed to make coffee and pancakes as well, why not? Building a robot shouldn't take long, and it'll be a lot cooler to have your own robot than some silly pager.
Build a robot to do it!
In reading this post very quicly,my brain accidentally parsed ... and hump him if the message is important.
Now *that* would be a really impressive Slashdot robot, much less one you could not ignore in the middle of the night.
Damn,that reminds me of my trip to the doctor's office the other day. I'm sitting there waiting for my checkup,when a little old ladies phone goes off. I guess the old girl was a little hard of hearing and the son got tired of dealing with it,because he had it set to play this message: "MOM PICK UP THE PHONE! YOUR PHONE IS RINGING,PICK UP THE DAMNED PHONE ALREADY!" Needless to say we all about died laughing at the thing. And you could tell exactly where in the building she was because every 30 minutes or so we'd here "PICK UP THE DAMNED PHONE ALREADY!" blaring down the halls. Damned funny.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
When I was doing a stint in field service a few years back I had 2 Moto pagers. After 3 weeks of being paged incessantly, driving all over NY and NJ on no sleep, and living out of the service van. I got utterly fed up, pulled off the next exit on the NJ Turnpike, found a bar, ordered a very tall vodka & vodka, and dropped all three pagers into the full glass. After 15 minutes of soaking in 80-proof and lemon wedges, they damned things still beeped at me from inside the glass. I'll never forget the sinking feeling of that failed Rebellion, watching my Pager Cocktail vibrate across the bartop.
There is no escaping from field service, from New Jersey, or from Motorola pagers.
I'm fed up with my unreliable email. Anyone know where I can get a new telegraph key? They used to be available everywhere.
Who knew commercial electronics was a garnish? :-)