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Fax: Technology That Refuses to Die Under Attack
securitas writes "The BBC Magazine's Paul Rubens reports on the ever-growing popularity of the fax machine, despite the widespread availability of e-mail and digital document/photo scanners. Why is fax still so popular? Partly because it is a mature technology that has legal weight and because of the emergence of Internet and Web e-mail-to-fax and fax-to-e-mail gateways, not to mention the relative lack of spam faxes. But that is changing. The New York Times Technology's Lisa Napoli reports that Infoseek founder Steve Kirsch is waging a battle against purveyors of illegal junk faxes (IHT) like Fax.com, which Kirsch has sued for $2.2 trillion, detailed at junkfax.org. Also joining the fight are lawyer and Telephone Consumer Protection Act co-author Gerard Waldron - he won $2.25 million from Fax.com. Finally consumer advocate Robert Braver's junkfaxes.org has 36 lawsuits pending against the junk fax industry. More evidence that spammers are among the lowest forms of life on Earth."
...when is the last time you received a FAX offer to enlarge your penis?
There is certainly a lot of FAX spam, but it's still quite useful today. Not everyone has a scanner handy, and it's often easier to sketch something up or jot a note on paper than it is to scan/crop/edit/add stuff electronically. If you happen to be discussing something static that you have a picture or a PDF of, fine, that's easy to email - but dynamic data has really yet to become widespread and easy to use. I know that there are some new PDF features for markup and such, but they're still not nearly as quick and easy to use as a pen.
it's because fax machiens are soo easy to use. They don't have operating systems, or keyboards or mice. For the most part they are idiot proof, cheap, and portable.
But most importantly, hey do one thing and do it well.
Many companies reply on Fax to get signatures, or approval for a project and etc.
Faxed documents are used as practical legal documents in Canada, AFAIK. Companies rely on Fax to get their work done, which should keep Fax around for a long long time.
One question though, isn't it about time to move up from 14,400 baud Fax transmission?!
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Scanning in a document, attaching it to email, and then sending it requires more time, expertise, as well as less reliability. The time issue is the most important.
I use a fax program but only becuase I hardly ever need to send faxes and I don't want to allocate space for a fax machine. The complexity of me sending a fax from my computer, even if it is a document I create on the computer, is significantly more complex than using a fax machine. I also have used email-to-fax services, but these were only benificial for out-of-area faxes, in which I saved toll charges.
I see it similiar to Advantix camera. The advantix is probably of lower quality than even a simple 35 mm point and shoot. However, for most people is very much simpler, and therefore the quality issue is compensated for.
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When is the last time you just typed up an email address on the computer, slapped your document on the scanner, pushed a button, and everything worked flawlessly without any intervention.
Fax machines are incredibly easy to use and just seem to work, end of story. They have a user interface that just about everyone is already familiar with (the telephone) where as computers and scanners are just plain over complicated in really stupid ways. There's issues with drivers, non-standard UIs for scanning, and I have yet to see "one button" features work on any scanner on any platform.
It's a shame not more devices work as easily as fax machines and telephones.
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Wardialing. It's illegal to do it, but just like spam and spam laws (and telemarketers using autodialing machines with recorded messages), it doesn't deter them in the slightest. Even worse, once they figure out your number has a fax machine attached to it, they then sell that number to all sorts of junk faxers. Soon you'll be getting all the toner, OTC stock tip, mortgage refinance, and free vacations in Florida junk faxes...
Probably the same argument for IP telephony vs telephones may be applied. When IP or Internet voice calls become standard and analogue lines become antiquainted we'll see the emergence of some applicance (document scanner with an Ethernet interface).
The thing about analogue lines is their authenticity. It is very difficult to hijack someone's phone number and pretend you are that person. We all know how easy it is to spoof an IP.
Faxes are considered legal documents in many cases, and they are used to transmit official documents, signitures and alike. This is based solely on the fact that they are transmitted over analogue lines an thus offer significant proof of authenticity.
Then again, IP telephony would see the end of a lot of telemarketing because you could never trust anyone to be who they say they are and the chances of someone intercepting the call and garnering your private data would be far, far, FAR higher.
-- "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." Jean Jacques Rousseau