Reading Your Postal Mail Online

An anonymous reader writes "Remote Control Mail gives us one more reason not to leave our computers. Their service lets you access your postal mail on the Web. They offer scanning of mail contents, shredding, recycling and shipping. There's a good writeup on Techcrunch, complete with a CAD animation showing some robotics technology (Flash Movie) that RCM is developing to automate mail handling. The service costs $25 to get started and $20 a month for individuals." Now if we could only reply the same way.

Comments

wait till NetFlix hears about this!

[yagu]

This is very cool! But I'm not sure what NetFlix and Blockbuster (among others) are going to think about this! Finally, an easy way to get DVD's onto my computer!

Re:wait till NetFlix hears about this!

[jimstapleton]

think of all the people who get their checks mailed to them instead of direct deposit...

Wow, that check looked nice... Sure wish I could deposit it electronically.

They probably have something to allow you to get a desired item forwarded to you and not shredded, it's probably mentioned in TFA if I weren't to lazy to read it.

Re:wait till NetFlix hears about this!

[gt_mattex]

On a more serious note...

Tampering with mail is a federal offense...assuming the mail's location is sanctioned by the government. I'm assuming you'd have to sign something that would allow them to receive and therefor access your mail.

My point is, if this isn't a government sanctioned facility, is mail tampering still a federal crime and if not would the risk/reward of ID theft be worth the lower penalty of base theft.

Re:wait till NetFlix hears about this!

[damirl]

"They probably have something to allow you to get a desired item forwarded to you and not shredded, it's probably mentioned in TFA if I weren't to lazy to read it." Indeed they do, I thought the same thing but apparently they allow you to choose before the mail is even opened, if you want to: open then scan, shred, forward, or store. I do wonder if their system can shred cds though ;-)

Re:wait till NetFlix hears about this!

[Bastard of Subhumani]

if this isn't a government sanctioned facility, is mail tampering still a federal crime

Tampering is. Handling, i.e. processing someone's mail on their behalf and with their permission isn't. I remember way back when there were these people employed in normal offices called secretaries who used to do that for managers. And - get this - they were mostly chicks!

would the risk/reward of ID theft be worth the lower penalty of base theft.

Base theft? They are all belong to us anyway!

Seriously, I think your foil hat's a bit too tight.

Re:wait till NetFlix hears about this!

[gt_mattex]

Since I was referring to ID theft I'd wage that'd be tampering.

As to my foil hat, I'd have to say the idea of someone taking advantage of this system for their own material gain is truly ludicrous. People don't do that anymore.

Re:wait till NetFlix hears about this!

[Dunbal]

secretaries who used to do that for managers. And - get this - they were mostly chicks!

      Chicks are good at opening other people's mail anyway. Just ask your mother or your wife - "oh sorry I opened it I thought it was for me...". Never heard THAT one before...

Re:wait till NetFlix hears about this!

[go007go]

I travel a lot. This is kinda interesting. If there's a video record of everything that happens when I request a scan, I'm ok with that. They only scan the envelope first, no?

Re:wait till NetFlix hears about this!

[Wovel]

This is very cool! But I'm not sure what NetFlix and Blockbuster (among others) are going to think about this! Finally, an easy way to get DVD's onto my computer!

The site recommends not having your Netflix dvds sent to them :)

Re:wait till NetFlix hears about this!

[redcane]

Mate, you are forwarding them your mail. You either trust them or you don't. They aren't going to record a video of oyur letters from the moment they arrive to the moment they are shredded (nor is it possible), and you aren't going to watch it if they did.

Re:wait till NetFlix hears about this!

[Anonymous Coward]

"They were mostly chicks."

Only mostly? Which parts weren't? Oh my GOD that explains so much.

Doubleplusgood!

[pair-a-noyd]

And we all know that our mail contents will be kept 100% private.

Snail mail is the ONLY private form of communications we have left.

Re:Doubleplusgood!

[Broken scope]

You think they don't open letters sometimes?

Re:Doubleplusgood!

[krell]

"Snail mail is the ONLY private form of communications we have left."

And as long as they keep destroying or losing my letters, or as long as they remain in Hefty trashbags stacked around Newman's living room, they will remain private.

Re:Doubleplusgood!

[Legatic]

but will they use genuine Ministry of Information memory holes? I won't accept imitations!

Re:Doubleplusgood!

[NiteShaed]

Snail mail is the ONLY private form of communications we have left.

Until of course someone steals your mail, reads through it all, and steals your identity. But hey, at least it keeps the crystal meth users busy. If someone wants to steal your mail, they'll find a way.

Also, Doubleplusgood? How do you equate the police of the Ministry of Love reading messages specifically looking for "crimes" against Big Brother, with automated document scanning by a private company that you hire? There are plenty of times when 1984 references are on target, but this doesn't seem to be one of them.....

Re:Doubleplusgood!

[kfg]

Snail mail is the ONLY private form of communications we have left.

Unless you are deemed "suspicious." It's a Brave New World.

KFG

Re:Doubleplusgood!

[Josh Lindenmuth]

Snail mail would be private if it got to the desired recipient 100% of the time. About 1/2 of my mail ends up in a neighbor's mailbox (and vice versa). I can't tell you how many times I've had an important bill (such as property tax) delivered by a neighbor who accidentally received it. Every time we call the post office, they ask us to file a report (which we do), but nothing changes. Luckily we live in a pretty trustworthy neighborhood, or I'd be in trouble.

Re:Doubleplusgood!

[zecg]

Snail mail is the ONLY private form of communications we have left.

Many people replied to say how stupid that is, so I'll skip that part. If you want private communication, exchange private keys with your correspondents and encrypt your electronic mail. That's the only private form of communications you have and it's not "left", it's a fairly recent one.

Re:Doubleplusgood!

[zecg]

If you want private communication, exchange private keys

Or, you could do it with public and avoid looking like a moron.

Re:Doubleplusgood!

[Mister Whirly]

Newman!
(makes fist and clenches teeth)

Re:Doubleplusgood!

[rodgster]

I had to re-read the title a number of times. I was sure it should have read, "NSA reading your postal mail, your rights online".

Re:Doubleplusgood!

[vertinox]

Snail mail would be private if it got to the desired recipient 100% of the time. About 1/2 of my mail ends up in a neighbor's mailbox (and vice versa).

I've actually had to call the Postal police (or whatever you call them) because either the postman was not delivering the mail or throwing it away. Of course I live in a major city, but my room mate found that a credit card she ordered had been tried in an ATM about 50 miles away so obviously something happened to the mail being delivered.

I'm not sure what became of it... Although, at my new residence, my mail isn't delivered with 100% accuracy.

Re:Doubleplusgood!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's all pretty crazy... some talking head, as you would say, on TV this morning was talking about some recent event and I heard them say something about a "No-Knock" search warrant. I was kinda like, umm, huh, how long have those been around? I guess they could argue busting down the door is a form of knocking, but if I'm going to be searched I'd like to be able to, you know, look at the warrant, and if they're "No-Knock" warrants I'd imagine asking to see it would get you a knock or two. Of course the talking head said it is only used for drug-related crimes so evidence isn't destroyed. That makes me feel so much better!

Re:Doubleplusgood!

[failedlogic]

IMHO, I think this is but one reason credit cards (even though they usually have to be called in to activate) should be delived to your bank through their internal mail system (assuming your bank is your CCD issuer). Mine is and doesn't do this.

Re:Doubleplusgood!

[Firehed]

That explains the spam for CH32P S0M4.

Re:Doubleplusgood!

[kfg]

the talking head said it is only used for drug-related crimes so evidence isn't destroyed.

Zoom in as the door to the National Archives Building is being kicked in:

The Supremes: Fourth Amenedment? What Forth Amendment?

(Sound of toilet flusing in the background)

Fade Out

KFG

Re:Doubleplusgood!

[redcane]

AS I understand it, when electronic cards were first issued, they were always retrieved from the branch in person. (The bank systems I used to work with still had data fields that indicated which branch to deliver to etc, but rarely used now). I guess someone decided it was inconvenient, so they started posting them out.

Re:Doubleplusgood!

[wesborgmandvm]

When I was growing up our mail carrier lived two doors down. She once delivered us her mail!

Does anybody have tinfoil hat instructions

[HolyCrapSCOsux]

Normally I'm not a super-huge privacy advocate, but something about this makes me a bit uncomfortable.

Re:Does anybody have tinfoil hat instructions

[jimstapleton]

I'm not worried. Now if we were forced to subscribe to it, I'd be joining you in making the tin-foil hats...

Re:Does anybody have tinfoil hat instructions

[Duggeek]

Maybe that "something" is the apparent potential for abuse?

...or is it that it requires complete trust in a mechanical system?

We must consider that, being a mechanical system, it will have failures.
Ergo... we must put complete trust in the system's technicians.

Would that trust be appreciated by the technician that "goofs", performs a C.Y.A. and makes your critical check/legal-document/other-correspondence disappear completely?

Count me out.

Re:Does anybody have tinfoil hat instructions

[kevin_conaway]

Normally I'm not a super-huge privacy advocate, but something about this makes me a bit uncomfortable.

Yeah, the instructions are simple: Don't sign up.

Are you really hurting that much for Karma that you have to pander to the tinfoil hat crowd?

Re:Does anybody have tinfoil hat instructions

[HairyCanary]

Errr... all of your postal mail is already routinely handled not only mechanically, but by real live people.

Re:Does anybody have tinfoil hat instructions

[garcia]

Normally I'm not a super-huge privacy advocate, but something about this makes me a bit uncomfortable.

It's not like the USPS is putting this out there and mandating that we all use it. Instead, stupid people are paying someone else to do it for them. I'm not sure why you are concerning yourself with stupid people who are willing to pay for something pointless.

Re:Does anybody have tinfoil hat instructions

[Bastard of Subhumani]

your postal mail is already routinely handled not only mechanically, by real live people.

Real and live? I know they can't be robots - you couldn't fake the BO that postal workers have. You just couldn't. But what about zombies?

Re:Does anybody have tinfoil hat instructions

[Duggeek]

Sorry, but that's irrelevant. Those employees are bound directly by Federal Law to deliver the mail to you, un-opened.

We trust the folks at USPS, and the UPS store (et al) to handle mail, not open and scan it. To me, that's a HUGE difference when you're talking privacy and secure correspondence.

If there's a better example for your comparison, it would be payment-processing facilities. (a.k.a. lockboxes)

Their operations are strictly controlled, managed and audited, yet heavily automated with mail-opening and scanning devcies. Employees and contractors are often bonded for the sheer volume of currency they are apt to handle. OTOH, there's so much labor-intensive work that it's hard for such operations to turn a profit. Many organizations, especially cable-service providers and land-line telephone services, consider it a necessary evil, even though the entire department often shows quarterly losses.

Despite all that, it only affects how your intended payment reaches the proper account; the model being proposed in TFA is a method to disseminate all of your incoming, private mail. Currently, we don't really have a model to compare; unless you're a butler.

If a lockbox struggles to show a profit, just how would this business model work anyway?

Re:Does anybody have tinfoil hat instructions

[raju1kabir]

I'm not sure why you are concerning yourself with stupid people who are willing to pay for something pointless.

Not at all pointless for people who have temporarily or permanently left the USA. Mail delivery to many countries is unreliable and slow. Being able to see important things right away would be tremendously useful.

I have to rely on trusted people to receive my mail, use their judgment to sort the useful stuff from the spam, and deal with everything intelligently. I would much rather take the burden off their shoulders and do it myself.

At the moment I have some trust questions about the Remote Control Mail thing, but once (if) the niche starts to see some competition and there is greater assurance of confidentiality (through insurance or whatever) I will be thrilled to sign up.

Excellent

[sitturat]

Hopefully this idea will prompt the companies that still send out bills by post to reconsider this pointless waste of money/paper/time. Then this service will eventually become redundant, but will have served its purpose.

Re:Excellent

[planetmn]

With few exceptions (Taxes are the only thing that comes to mind), I can get all of my statements paper free. This includes Credit Card, Cable, Phone, Gas, Electricity. In fact, they would prefer (and push) the electronic methods of receiving your bill. Some people (me included) just prefer paper bills. An easy to store and reference method of your account history.

-dave

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

I receive bank, credit card, utility, car insurance, and internet statements online. Progressive Insurance sends paper copies, but payments can be made online. Being able to do things electronically instead of through the mail is very convenient. It saves paper, postage, and time.

Re:Excellent

[Lumpy]

The only thing that will solve that is someone going and physically beating the crap out of the executives and Finance departments at these companies. Here in Michigan several of the utilities CHARGE EXTRA for you to pay electronically. Yes, the payment method that is cheaper for them costs you more! There are 3 companies I still send a check in the mail for them to have someone physically handle,open and input the payment instead of having it 100% electronic and therefore cost less.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

I find PDF statements are a lot more convenient. I have PDF bank statements dating back to 2000 I can access from my hard drive or CD-R backups (encrypted) at anytime. Adding to the convenience, I use Quicken to see how much I've spent per month on utilities/gas/whatever since 1995 without sifting through piles of paper.

Paper is cumbersome, require storage space, and most of the time you don't ever look at them except possibly during tax season. When do you ever look at your electricity bill from 2003? Most people throw away their paper statements anyways.

To each their own.

Re:Excellent

[Mister Whirly]

Which is all fine and dandy until your hard drive dies. On tax day. And yeah, you can scream "backup" all you want, but I can tell you now it is easier to walk over to my filing cabinet than it is to rebuild a system, put an OS on it, and restore the backup. Besides, all my paper bills take up far less space than my computer, monitor, scanner, and printer. Unfortunately computers are cumbersome, require storage space, and most of the time you don't ever look at them except possibly while surfing porn.

Re:Excellent

[kkwst2]

You paper bills take up less space? OK, so you're 22? Or perhaps you're using hardware built in the 1980's? Regarding backup, I actually use FolderShare to distribute my important files (encrypted transfer) to several computers including my laptop. All my Money files, Taxcut returns, important scanned receipts, etc. are shared between a few computers. All these files, including my digital pictures, are around 12 gig. So for the cost of around 50 gig, I have quadruple redundancy of important files. I also manually back up to an external drive occasionally. But one computer crashing won't really affect me in the short-term, as I always have three backups. Later, I just do a clean install and then restore important files. As for the porn comment, I guess you are 22! ;)

Re:Excellent

[Mister Whirly]

Yes, it isn't that hard to believe that several hundred individual sheets of paper take up less space than a full tower, 22" CRT, scanner and laserjet printer... And for the record I am much older than 22, although age is a complete non sequitur in this argument. I save my paper bills for 3 years, and I have 2 file drawers full. Much less space than my system takes. And if you think only 22 year olds look at porn, you had better do some research.

Re:Excellent

[Monchanger]

Which is all fine and dandy until your hard drive dies.

Like parent, I like to store the paper.
Like grandparent, I download statements from my banks, credit cards, etc.

Unlike parent, I'm painfully aware that there is an equal likeliness to my hard drive dying of my files catching fire, eating liquid death (flooding insurance is only so helpful), getting lost during a move, and so on.

I much prefer paper statements since I actually read them, making little marks when necessary ($43.22 at "CHARLIE PATRIOT"- WTF was that?). I'm not going to rely on them lasting, and don't want to keep them forever. I would like to keep the information, so a file will be sufficient in the long run. I wish my bank did that for me, but OTOH, they don't care to, and can they really be trusted to?

Re:Excellent

[Mister Whirly]

I wouldn't go so far as to say equal likeness - I've had a half dozen hard drives die on me over the years and never had my bill statements catch fire. I store regular statements, those that I can afford to lose, in the file cabinet. Anything I can't afford to lose gets sotred either in the bank safety deposit box, or my fireproof safe, which is stored above the floor in case of accidental flooding, or the fire department flooding my house in case of fire.

Re:Excellent

[JazzLad]

If one already owns the hardware (I assume most of us do), does it really take up a lot of space to store everything electronically? I am about to move (out of state), when I do I intend to get a safe deposit box (~$15/yr) that I will store either DVDRs or a portable HDD that I plan to swap out every month.

In case of fire, flood, etc I will only be out up to a month worth of data ... since I will only back up data, I can read it pretty much anywhere on pretty much any hardware.

(No, I will not be living in a hurricane/earthquake prone area)

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

So you've invested around $4000-5000 in a system that replicates a $20 file cabinet. Congratulations you are a geek. Also I am aware that your multiple computer system probably does more than store your bills, records, and pictures, but that is outside the scope of this discussion.

Re:Excellent

[jacksonj04]

It's not the space that's important to me, it's the fact that I can very quickly search through over 20,000 pieces of 'paper' (How I have the much at the tender young age of 19 I will never know).

Sort chronologically, sort alphabetically, sort by tag, keyword search, text search... it's all good stuff. Unless of course you have a filing cabinet which can search documents for you, in which case I'd be interested in buying one.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

House fire--poof, your paper bills are gone. Try rebuilding charred paper. Meanwhile, I keep electronic backups on- and off-site without worry. As for the space comparison, my computer is part of my home and daily life, unless you are thinking I have a computer only to store electronic bills. A better comparison of space is to compare a CD-R to a file cabinet. If you feel comfortable with paper, that's fine with me. As I said, to each his own.

(Anyone who does their taxes on April 15th is foolish.)

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

One word: Unions

At qwest, they started to try to credit customers for receiving electronic bills and not getting paper ones. That would save qwest a lot of money, right? Wrong. The unions wanted their share of saved money. Some workers would lose their jobs, forever replaced by a computer. That's why you see no credit on your electronic qwest statements.

Another thing that costs $ for electronically paying is the visa/mc/amexp surcharge. I still don't understand a lot of it though. I'd much rather pay $1/transaction for every cc processed than have 1% of the checks bounce, especially when you're selling a relatively cheap service to a lot of people (i.e. phone/cable/internet/etc).

Re:Excellent

[HomelessInLaJolla]

> I can get all of my statements paper free

It's things like this that make me really really wish for that one super unexpected disasterous event which leaves all of society without non self-sustaining technological access for at least six months. Every day an increasing majority of the population just has absolutely no concept of what it would be like to live without technological amenities.

What is "non self-sustaining"? I can't really define it explicitly. Examples, though: the wheel is a self-sustaining technology. The basic electrical grid should be solid enough to be self-sustaining. The global internet and the modern day stock market are not self-sustaining.

Why six months? As much as I would prefer a shorter time frame (24 hours?) there are several reasons why we need a six month technological blackout. First, most humans just won't get it through their enormously thick skulls--the event would happen, they'd blink, and then they'd go back to their lemminglike existence without so much as a single introspective thought. While this would cause the least amount of disruption it's primarily the lemminglike existence of the majority of the voting public which is allowing the misery for the rest of us. Second, we need at least six months for natural selection to take its course. Those of us who are capable of living on the low tech side of life would need time to distance ourselves from the inept lemmings and allow them to eliminate themselves (and each other) from the gene pool. Inevitably there would be losses within the competent population when the lemmings go haywire--these losses are, sadly, an acceptable condition of the technological blackout. Third, six months would be enough time for those of us with actual functioning brains (ie. not innately reliant on a technological support system and safety net) to congregate, communicate, and reestablish a society with the conveniences of technology but without the plague of mindless (or mentally deficient) lemmings who consistently weight the voting mechanisms in favor of scamming politicians and businessmen who have the best lip service but don't deliver squat (because they're keeping it mostly for themselves).

By mindless or mentally deficient lemmings I'm not talking about anything as simple as intelligence. I value the janitor and the ditch digger as much as I value the scientist and the doctor. I mean real lemmings--humans who act only because they're reacting without any real critical thought. The kind of people who read "Patriot Act" and think affirmative simply because the word "patriot" sounds like something they'd like to associate with. The kind of people who read "copyright" and are instantly in support because they hope to get-rich-quick someday. The kind of people who can't possibly consider that government is corrupt and that advertising headlines mean nothing in actual implementation. It's difficult to describe to a mutually exclusive degree.

But, go ahead and make me King of the World, and I'll show you exactly what I mean. :-)

Re:Excellent

[kkwst2]

From my point of view, you actually made my point, which is that you must not have more than a couple years of financial data if the paper stack is that small. I guess you're not planning on getting audited. If you take the best-case paper trail(someone who saves only 3 years of data) to someone with a computer from 1999 (my point when I exaggerated about the 80's comp.), then of course you can make it bigger. You said computers are cumbersome, to which I would say that your computer might be, but not all are.

As contrast, I could put everything needed in a laptop bag. So just because it CAN be bigger, doesn't mean it has to be.

Finally, in the last comment I was just being silly. The ;) was supposed to suggest that. Guess it didn't work. 22 year olds are probably too busy making porn to watch it.

Re:Excellent

[Mister Whirly]

My fireproof safe protects paper from burning. How well do you think a CD or DVD would stand up in the same safe?? Warped as hell and unreadable...

Re:Excellent

[Mister Whirly]

All I keep in the file cabinet are mundane utility bills that could be easily duplicated. All my W2 are stored electronically at the University I work for - I can go back as far as I want and print them out. My important papers are stored offsite, or in the fireproof safe. I never said my computer was "cumbersome", or meant to imply that using it for bill storage/searching would be harder than using a file cabinet - simply that it takes up more space than paper.

I suspected you were being facetious with the 22 comment, but had to clarify anyways.

Shredding Is Now Easier

[hondo77]

I bought a new shredder a few months back (thanks for the bargain, eBay). It's powerful enough to shred the whole envelope and its contents without opening, even with those fake credit cards inside. Junk mail management is now so much easier.

Re:Shredding Is Now Easier

[Deagol]

I usually send any junk mail with a postage-paid envelope back to the sender. Just fold, spindle, and mutilate everything to fit it in the envelope, then drop it back in the mail box. Let someone else deal w/ the trash. If you're lucky, you may jam up one of those big mail handling machines at the credit card processing shop. Everything else gets tossed into the wood stove. As much as I like shredding, fire (being old tech) is much less prone to malfunction, and I don't send yet more crap off to the landfill.

Re:Shredding Is Now Easier

[King_TJ]

Sure, you can do that ... but don't kid yourself about the "environmental advantages" of it. That "crap" getting sent off to the landfill is biodegradable paper! It's not going to be a problem. On the other hand, your action of mailing the junk mail back to the sender means an increase in the amount of mail to be transported. Sure, your individual letters won't have much impact -- but if everyone started taking your suggestion, the post office would waste a *lot* of fuel delivering unnecessary mail around.

Re:Shredding Is Now Easier

[Vellmont]

but if everyone started taking your suggestion, the post office would waste a *lot* of fuel delivering unnecessary mail around

Actually what's more likely is that the people sending out junk mail would likely be a lot more selective in who they send out junk mail too.

As far as the environmental thing is concerned, if that's your only concern in life you should probbably just shoot yourself in the middle of a forrest full of hungry bears. You'll quickly be re-cycled and won't contribute to any further useage of energy, paper, emissions of CO2, etc. Just be sure to use bullets without lead, wouldn't want to pollute the forrest.

Re:Shredding Is Now Easier

[Mr. Slippery]

That "crap" getting sent off to the landfill is biodegradable paper!

Paper in landfills does not degrade significantly; newspapers have been dug up after 50 years, still legible.

Please recycle your paper and cardboard. Thanks.

if everyone started taking your suggestion, the post office would waste a *lot* of fuel delivering unnecessary mail around.

The point is that if everyone started doing it, junk mailers would be paying for a lot of return postage, and would perhaps finally have an incentive to send out less junk.

Re:Shredding Is Now Easier

[King_TJ]

Except, are you sure the post office is really sending all those junk mailers back to the sender?

I remember reading a story on /., a year or two ago, where some people who worked for the post office explained that when items arrive "bulk rate mail" and you scribble "return to sender" and throw them back in a mailbox, they only get so far in the system before the post office just trashes them. They aren't willing to return them to a sender who only paid the discount bulk mail rate in the first place....

I realize that's different for mail that includes postage-paid return mailers, but don't you think they'd simply quit including those in your junk mail, if everyone started misusing them?

There's some sort of loop involved...

[krell]

There's some sort of pointless loop involved if all I use this service for is to read my paper-mailed ISP and "Remote Control Mail" bills online. A veritable Mobius-strip of "what the hell FOR???!?!?".

Re:There's some sort of loop involved...

[Anonymous Coward]

You make me wonder what scanned image they would send you if you typed all your mail onto Möbius strips and mailed them.

How do you mean "reply" ?

[Uninvited Guest]

Now if we could only reply the same way.How? By "shredding, recycling and shipping?" I already answer most of my mail that way.

Dollar bills

[plankrwf]

Hi there, I just sent you some dollar bills through snailmail... What? You shredded them?

Re:Dollar bills

[devilspgd]

Your ideas intrigue me and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter. Do you have a daily option?

Re:Dollar bills

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, of course. Just sent me a five dollar bill by snailmail...

Oh wait...

Roel

Congrats: You slashdotted fellowes.com

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Subject says it all.

love letters

[Anonymous Coward]

do they ship the perfume, too?

Checks?

[nuggz]

So this means I don't get checks, or origional documents.

Don't find that very appealing.

Re:Checks?

[nine-times]

It's not like they remove your ability to have mail sent to your house or anything. The service is that they give you a new address to which you can have things shipped. So if you have checks or original documents, you can give them your home/business address, but if you have other mail you just want to be able to read/archive/shred, you give this other address, and then you can access your mail from anywhere.

Re:Checks?

[CagedBear]

Mail forwarding is one of the features of the service. After reviewing the check online, you can have it sent to your house, your office, your hotel, the Dali Lama, whatever you want.

Reply online too!

[tedhiltonhead]

> Now if we could only reply the same way.

You can, with USPS's (US Postal Service) NetPost service

Re:Reply online too!

[krell]

"You can, with USPS's (US Postal Service) NetPost service [usps.com]"

Is that the "USPS Simulator" where they have an ingenious algorithm to ensure that 30% of the emails never make it, and that the typical delivery time to the destination inbox averages 5.5 days? And, of course, no delivery ever occurs on Sundays or during any one of 78 other designated Federal and/or other postal holidays during the year?

Re:Reply online too!

[patio11]

I've been using that to send in credit disputes from overseas. At $2.33 a letter (technically a lot less but their minimum for one "mailing" is $2, plus postage) its a wee bit steep. Then again I don't have to buy a printer or go out to the post office, and my time has value...

But....

[KeepQuiet]

Who is opening and scanning the mail? Automated machines? How do I know they don't read my mail? How do we know that they don't lose any mail? Also wouldn't there be an additional delay before I get my mail (wait to be scanned and then wait to be delivered to you physically)?

Re:But....

[CagedBear]

It's all in the article. They scan the front of the mail without opening it. Then you decide if you want them to open it or just forward it on.

Obviously this will create unnecessary delay for the average homebody. They are targeting people who are on the road a lot and usually have to wait until they get home or rely on a neighbor to check their mail.

Re:But....

[Anonymous Coward]

Just appending my $0.02 as answers to your rhetorical questions...

How do I know they don't read my mail?

You don't, so assume they do. The mail is stored as PDF documents, so BOFHs, hackers, and improper handling of storage devices (e.g. selling drives with recoverable data) all come to mind.

How do we know that they don't lose any mail?

You can't, so assume they will. If you want your mail to be forwarded to you after they get it, there's actually an extra chance of it getting mishandled.

Add checks, bank statements, medical bills, and credit card offers to the mix and people would have to be crazy to subscribe to this "service".

Re:But....

[devilspgd]

Who is opening and scanning the mail? Automated machines?Meat based machines. How do I know they don't read my mail? Your life isn't that interesting. How do we know that they don't lose any mail?How do you know USPS didn't lose any mail? Also wouldn't there be an additional delay before I get my mail (wait to be scanned and then wait to be delivered to you physically)?If you wanted all your mail delivered physically, then don't use this service. The idea is that you'll get mail electronically and the majority of items won't need to be sent physically at any point.

Re:But....

[KeepQuiet]

> Your life isn't that interesting. Of course not... but my credit card numbers on the statements are... > How do you know USPS didn't lose any mail? You missed the point. If that mail is delivered to these guys, then it is not lost. There is now a second stage. They may lose mail. Also there is another step of USPS, once you want some of your mail delivered to you. > If you wanted all your mail delivered physically, then don't use this service. Again you missed the point. I don't want all the mail. If I want to have anything physical then I have wait it to be delivered. It doesn't matter one or one thousand.

Re:But....

[Mitreya]

Who is opening and scanning the mail? Automated machines? How do I know they don't read my mail? How do we know that they don't lose any mail? Also wouldn't there be an additional delay before I get my mail (wait to be scanned and then wait to be delivered to you physically)?

Humans, I imagine. I think you are missing the point of this service -- it is not necessarily designed to make your mail more secure (although that depends on security of your home address - personally I'd rather take my chances with strangers I indirectly employ than with those who wonder through our house stairwell). Nor is this service designed to make your mail more fast. I think the service here is the portability and perhaps centralized electronic backup.

Sorta like a POBox which you can electronically and remotely access from anywhere.

Extra services

[edwardpickman]

For an extra $3 a month we can tell your creditors to bite you.

For another $5 we can break up with your scary ex for you.

And for an extra $10 a month we can forward your up coming invitation to visit Iraq from your Uncle Sam to an address in Canada.

Re:Extra services

[devilspgd]

For an extra $3 a month we can tell your creditors to bite you.Seems high, I'd rather do that personally. For another $5 we can break up with your scary ex for you.Sweet! And for an extra $10 a month we can forward your up coming invitation to visit Iraq from your Uncle Sam to an address in Canada.Can you relabel it and forward it to the whitehouse instead?

I'm in favor

[Hennell]

I think this is a brilliant idea. I'll be perfectly safe from all those angry letter bombs I'm sent...

Do they have a form of penalty system if your mail blows-up the shredder?

check out paytrust...

[pw700z]

http://www.paytrust.com/ - They receive your bills, open them, post them online, and allow you to pay them. It's awesome... i've moved 4 times since i started using the service, and only had to notify the gas/electric company!

Re:check out paytrust...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to second paytrust! I've been using them for 7 years and I LOVE LOVE LOVE their service!

Non-letter contents

[identity0]

But if someone mails me anthrax, will they convert it to a Outlook macro for me?

If my gf sends me panties, will someone sniff it for me?

When the brother of the ex-president of Nigeria sends me his check, will they PayPal it to me?

See, unless it does all the things I use my snail mail for, it's useless to me.

Re:Non-letter contents

[TeknoHog]

But if someone mails me anthrax, will they convert it to

.ogg

If my gf

.jpeg

Re:Congrats: You slashdotted fellowes.com

[hondo77]

D'oh! Must've been temporary because it came up fine when I tried it just now.

Re:reading about yOUR reputation online

[Anonymous Coward]

so...do you have some kind of news letter that you could send to me at regular intervals?

And why did I want this ?

[richg74]

Let's see. When I get postal mail now, I:

1. Get it from the mail box
2. Open it
3. Read it

With this service, I would:

1. Get it from the server
2. Open it
3. Read it
4. Pay $20 per month

BRILLIANT ! Where do I sign?

More seriously, I can see that this might appeal to people who travel a lot, but for everyone else ?

Re:And why did I want this ?

[rosciol]

More seriously, I can see that this might appeal to people who travel a lot, but for everyone else ?

You're probably right, but since I am one of those individuals with a 100% travel job, the first time I heard of this service I said "finally!". While I usually make it home on weekends, I can often be gone for two or three weeks at a time. In the best of situations I can get my snail mail once a week, but often it's much worse than that. With this service, I can get all of my snail mail when it arrives like a normal person.

The only thing keeping me from signing up is that, because of my situation, I very intentionally avoid having anything important snail mailed to me. Hence, I'm not sure that $20/month to see my junk mail faster is worthwhile. I think I've phased snail mail out of my life too much to justify the cost, but the service is exactly something I'd want.

From a more digital age perspective though, I also just thought the idea of having digital copies of all of my mail and trashing the originals was really cool (i.e. without my personal effort involved). Anything that's not sentimental I have no desire to have an original of anymore; filing cabinets are for people born before I was. This takes out the effort but still allows me to maintain my perfect paperless office.

Re:And why did I want this ?

[DreadPiratePizz]

More seriously, I can see that this might appeal to people who travel a lot, but for everyone else ?

I think it would be useful to somebody who has a P.O. Box, and doesn't want to go down to the post office to pick up their mail. That way, it could be even more private, since they won't have to be seen opening their box.

Re:And why did I want this ?

[purplelocust]

Not having your mail get screwed up if you travel for an extended trip would be great. In the US, the USPS will only hold your mail for a month and if they decide to send it back at the end of the month, you will have a great deal of trouble sorting things out upon return. I thought it used to be longer, but perhaps I just had a nicer post office where I used to live. You can forward USPS mail someplace for a longer period, but if you are out of the country that isn't an option. I arrange almost everything important on-line, so having my neighbors pick up mail and dump it into a large receptable (on my last six-month trip, I had them put it into a new 50-gallon garbage can) has worked well for me, but there were a few things in there when I got home to sort through it that would have been nice to know about earlier.

Re:And why did I want this ?

[richg74]

I actually did travel for work something like 80% at one time, and I do see the appeal in that sort of situation. Your comment about automatic electronic filing is intriguing. I'd just want to be careful not to do away with paper where it may actually be needed, for legal or other reasons.

Re:And why did I want this ?

[LaffinBoy]

I was looking for a service exactly like this before I took on an expatriation to Canada for a year. Despite minimising the number of bills and mail being sent to my home address before I went, there are still things I need to be aware of with commitments I have back home. Unfortunately a redirection of snail mail overseas is incredibly expensive (~A$500/year from memory) whereas local redirections are cheap. Luckily for me I have reliable family members who can filter, scan and send me important stuff I need to see in a somewhat timely manner.

So, this would conceivably appeal to expatriates, those constantly traveling for business, even tech-savvy retirees traveling the country in their caravans, just to name a few. But yeah, it's of marginal use to everyone else.

Re:And why did I want this ?

[richg74]

That's an aspect I hadn't thought of. It's a fair point, but that's another niche market.

Other variations have been around a while.

[ScentCone]

An interesting example is Anybill.com, which runs a service handling accounts payable for you. Basically, you have your company's invoices sent to their postal address, and they open them and do some data entry and document scanning. You get e-mail whenever stuff lands there, and surf to their web app to review and authorize payment of the bills (some of which get paid electronically, some by having checks sent out on your behalf, as appropriate).

This sort of service-economy stuff is popping up in lots of little corners. If you're an office-less operation (say, a consulting group that work from the road or from your home[s]), it's pretty appealing. But yes, you've got to really trust all the players. But it does (gaa!) help you to "concentrate on your core competancies," assuming that dealing with the physical paperwork of billpaying isn't one of them.

Swiss Equivalent

[fuzzybunny]

...is called Postbutler, and costs a damn sight more (CHF 162.- per month, CHF 486.- for up to 12 months, divide by 1.25 per dollar) but they email it to you.

I think I trust the Swiss post office a lot more than a private US company in terms of privacy, but to be honest, being able to check your mail on a website is way more practical than getting a bunch of PDFs -- I'm thinking about using this while I'm spending 3 months travelling around South America next year and don't relish the thought about grabbing massive loads of marketing mail attachments over Bolivian dial-up.

I guess I'll just use GMail or something.

Re:Swiss Equivalent

[pjt33]

I realise that Bolivia is a bit poorer than Ecuador, but given the reasonable speeds I found in Ecuadorian internet cafes last year I doubt that Bolivian ones use dial-up.

Not worth at all

[HAL9000_mirror]

Most of us receive all the important/critical mails by either e-mail or fax. And if we *ever* need a hard copy of important/critical mails, we receive them via fed-ex kinds. And who cares about other junk mails. I don't see how this business model is going to ever succeed --leave alone the privacy issues and silly pricing ($20-$25 per month? What were they smoking?!).

no chance in hell

[Asrynachs]

I can just see it now, I open up my email to find the latest listings of my recent mail.. And there's a picture of my GST rebate cheque... And it's been shredded for my convenience. Thankyou remote mail you've certainly made my life easier.

Mail-In Rebates Industry

[mpapet]

I wonder if they use this already in the Mail-In Rebates Processing industry?

If not, it's a huge opportunity for them.

Re:Mail-In Rebates Industry

[LunaticTippy]

I worked for a while entering medical forms from home. They were all scanned, even X-rays. The company also did subscription cards and rebates, but those were offshored. Their rates were very low, just a few cents a piece.

Spam?

[Anonymous Coward]

So will it scan paper junk mail and move it to my junk mail folder?

Re:This is most certainly news!

[MollyB]

Funny. After reading your post, I searched Digg and found an entry made 4 seconds earlier!

Is Digg duping or are you mistaken?
http://blog.o7c.net/2006/11/28/postal-mail-to-your -e-mail-box-id-never-leave-the-house/

thought it sounded good, but

[syrinx]

from TFA: "Customers provide a Remote Control Mail address to anyone sending them mail and the company will forward selected mail wherever you request."

Ok, suddenly much less interesting. I never gave my address to any of the people who send me crap in the mail, they just got it when I bought my house (public record!) or something. I was hoping this might be a way to deal with junk mail easier. (Of course, even if it was, I don't think I'd pay $20/month for it, but it'd be a good idea at least.) But this sounds like I'd still get all the junk mail at my house.

See also: http://www.seinology.com/scripts/script-161.shtml

NEWMAN: All right, it's true! Of course nobody needs mail. What do you think, you're so clever for figuring that out? But you don't know the half of what goes on here. So just walk away, Kramer. I beg of you.

Easy solution

[fuzzybunny]

Just have all your legitimate mail sent to Remote Control Mail, and don't publish your physical MX to any of the junk mai....uh...

Okay, just have all your legitimate mail sent to RCM and buy a big red "DECEASED, RETURN TO SENDER" rubber stamp for all the rest.

Or keep a hungry ferret in your mail box, that works for me.

Missing the Point

[prichardson]

One of the great things about snail mail for me is the physicality. For personal letters nothing beats having something that your correspondent spent time with.

Of course for things like junk mail I'd much prefer it not be sent at all, but I'm happy to take the junk if it means being able to hold an occasional letter from an old friend or family member. To read it scanned on a screen would seem so wrong.

Oh my goodness, the fine print

[jyoull]

um, it might LOOK like $20 a month, but keep reading. The price schedule has ten dense footnotes!

http://www.remotecontrolmail.com/pricing.php

Gotta learn all about mail induction, flats, storage days, document prep fees charged by the minute but billed by the second, the assumption that eveyr piece of mail weighs a minimum of one ounce for shredding-weight-per-day calculations.

omfg

Thanks but I'll wait til I can figure out if this will cost $20 or $200 per month since I have no control over my inbound mail.

Is it just me...

[thewiz]

or does anyone else think that this would make stealing your identity a snap?
Just think of all the things you get in the mail that have sensitive information:
Correspondance with the IRS
Your debit/credit cards
PIN numbers come by mail
Health records
X-rays
Test results (both school and health related)
Bills with your account numbers and buying habits

I'm not subscribing to this...

Unopened mail may not necessarily be secure today.

[Peter Trepan]

If I were Big Brother, I'd send each piece of mail past an extremely bright lamp, such as a projector lamp, and photograph it from the other side. Reading it would basically be text recognition, but with the added twist that the text to be parsed is overlaid in thirds, with the mailing address superimposed on top. Reading every letter might be beyond the power of even the best text recognition software running on the fastest computers, but the images could be saved until text recognition *is* powerful enough to do that.

Conclusion: Although the system in TFA does none of this, it still wouldn't hurt to assume that snail mail is *not* secure.

It's the privacy problem

[gr8_phk]

... something about this makes me a bit uncomfortable.

If your mail is anything like mine, you get lots of credit card offers - or even in rare cases, actual credit cards - that you did not ask for. I trust my wife to sift through all this crap and properly dispose of it, but would I trust employees at some company like this to do the same? Nope. Sure, someone can raid your mailbox, but that's different than consistently passing all the stuff through the hands of a low paid employee at a 3rd party company.

Re:It's the privacy problem

[redcane]

3rd party to the sender/recipient, or 3rd party to the postal service and yourelf? if it's the former, then I'm sure it already goes through some minimum wage hands between the sender and yourself. If it's the latter, why trust postal workers more than a company that is staking it's reputation/existance on being good at this?

Excellent-The price of convienence.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hopefully this idea will prompt the companies that still send out bills by post to reconsider this pointless waste of money/paper/time."

I wouldn't say it's pointless. The non-geek crowd needs it. There's the issue of "your word vs theirs" when it comes to disputes. Plus the internet isn't %100 reliable yet.* Otherwise I agree with you.

*Oh,and did I mention the danger of man in the middle attacks. When was the last time the post office got hit by one of those?

no big deal

[oohshiny]

Lots of companies scan their incoming mail in their mail rooms; this company is simply providing an outsourcing option for that kind of service.

People are willing to pay for this?

[ironicsky]

I don't know about that... Up here in Canada(For those of you who don't know its that place north of you) our postal system has been doing that for years. We call it http://www.epost.ca They will put all of our bills and registered mail online for us so they dont come to our house. They'll even do pay check stubs online. The only thing they won't do is personal mail.

Re:People are willing to pay for this?

[Anonymous Coward]

How come y'all don't try to swim across our border like the guys SOUTH of us?

Re:People are willing to pay for this?

[ironicsky]

aww thats because we value our freedom of speech and don't like to be told what to do :-) Your neighbours to the south have it worse and the USA Looks better, I mean if they could swim to Canada I bet we'd be their first choice.

NetPost

[Mr. Slippery]

Now if we could only reply the same way.

USPS's NetPost service lets you send letters, cards, and postcards from your browser.

I have friends who live in Asia

[go007go]

And they need US addresses sometimes. To do business with vendors. But there's lot of us who work remotely or virtually. It's kinda the last bit of communication that's still location dependent.

Re:I have friends who live in Asia

[ironicsky]

That sounds plausable, but why not just use mail forwarding? I don't know if USPS allows forwarding overseas but Canada Post will foward your mail just about anywhere for the cost of the stamp fee and a small "administration fee"

Re:I have friends who live in Asia

[Anonymous Coward]

but why not just use mail forwarding

The mail system in some Asian countries is very unreliable and theft-prone. Apparently some mail workers learned that foreigners often receive valuable stuff in the mail from their naive countrymen. So they open your mail just in case you got some too. Of course, they'll throw it away rather than finish delivery once they've opened it and found just some "useless" documents.

I do what the grandparent says, but use a trusted relative to collect my mail, only opening important things to scan. This trusted party can handle my bank statements and tax documents without worrying me. The junk is collected until my next periodic trip through, where I personally filter for important bits and then shred the rest. In practice, you learn to do most important things electronically. The physical mail is mostly just a backup now for me.

How to Shutdown this company:

[Anonymous Coward]

/me mails self a letter bomb.

checks

[theeddie55]

what do i do with this next time i get a check in the post, take my laptop down to the bank and tell them i'd like to cash the check on the screen?

Anyone use paymybills.com?

[AK Marc]

I used a service, paymybills.com, back in the day. It was a bill-pay site that was about the same as the fees banks charged for online payment services. I would direct mail to the PO box. I don't recall exactly where, but it was east, maybe a Carolina. Everything they got would be scanned and emailed to me. I would tell them what to pay to whom (and could set up all the same automatic things as everyone else does now). They'd e-pay if they could or send out a check if they had to. The extra stuff would get scanned too. I could have gotten regular mail delivered there and scanned as well. Though, about the time I thought of that (which would make it a service not unlike the one here, plus the free bill-pay) it was sold off and changed how it operated. It is now paytrust.com and the cost (they charge you $.50 just to receive a bill) is much higer, so I live with my bank's free bill-pay. But, if you want to pay $.50 per letter received, you could have been getting all your mail sent there since 2000 or so.

I want a robot to bring in my mail ...

[constantnormal]

"R2D2, peel me a grape".

Re:This is most certainly news!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, just a different article, found here

Interesting

[Rorschach1]

I'll be watching this to see how it turns out. I had the same idea about 7 or 8 years ago, and went as far as designing a prototype system and selecting scanning hardware, but I gave up when it came to the legal issues. It was looking like the ability to actually open and scan the mail would require some serious legal wrangling - as far as I can tell that's not covered by the normal commercial mail receiving agent stuff. And then the domain name I'd bought for it (back in the Network Solutions monopoly days) got snatched, and I just gave up.

Nothing new here

[hcostelha]

We have this in Portugal for about 6 month, and it is free!! Here it is called viactt.

certified email

[sckeener]

As cool as this is, I'd like to see a certified 'e'mail system that courts accepted. Maybe something from USPS.

I'd like the target person to get an email saying he has an email to retrieve, go to the usps site to retrieve the message, have the option to save the message or delete, and have the sender get an email saying the message has been read.

The key is something the courts would accept.

Awesome!

[kalirion]

I can't wait to use this service to read the 3 $20 bills my grandma will send me for Christmas!

I'd do this

[Aetas]

Atleast if they piss you off you can mail yourself a bomb. That's some service with a smile. :)

Other options

[kaoshin]

Does anyone know of a way to have all of my mail automatically sent to somewhere where they just pee on big piles of it before setting it on fire, because that is my current procedure. Thanks.

Spam Assassin

[ultrasonik]

Nice. I'm been looking for a way to filter my postal mail thru Spam Assassin.

Great...someone got VC

[MajorDick]

I proposed this in 1998 to a group of investors , they all thought me mad.
In 2001 I proposed it again to several different groups, unfortunatley for me the timing was bad and it was right after the Anthrax scare, I was seen as being opportunistic even though my meetings had been scheduled before well in advance.........DOH !...well I cant say Why didnt I think of this......I friggin DID !

Re:Great...someone got VC

[mcguyver]

I proposed this idea earlier this year as well. What it came down to was recreating the wheel. The internet technology to handle this idea is simple. Mail sorting is the problem. Mail is already sorted before it gets to you so why do it again, scan it, then send it off. Surely USPS could more easily create a solution to bring snail mail to your desktop. Should USPS decided it wanted to compete, you would be screwed. It's surprising if not downright ambitious for RemoteControlMail to recreate a sorting facility...super interesting business though because you got complex, fun problems and a market that will always exist.

Re:Great...someone got VC

[MajorDick]

I worked in a place we handled mail and response devices on a 10k a day basis. That was the fairly easy part IMHO, but when you live and breathe it its not far off. I am a developer so as you said thats the easy part, the funny thing is there are a LOT of facilities already equipped for this that could be subbed out to. Think of non-profit donors and their response devices they include a letter in. Larger orgs (Salvation Army for example) Scan the remiitance (CC info or Check) Do OCR on the RD for notes, and scan any attached notes like "Thanks you guys are great" all this linked back to the donor record in the Donor Managment system , now flip that to simple mail....not biggie. I already had written all the neccesary pieces to the system.....just a matter of DOING it all together......opportunistic my ASS....

Re:This is most certainly news!

[Anonymous Coward]

That was five days ago, but it's the same product by the same company. GOOOOO slashdot!

Mail is so Web 1.0

[wsanders]

Weird. Who gets mail anymore?

Only thing I use the USPS for anymore is Netflix, Taxes, and the sundry documents associated with being a good citizen like jury summons, election packets, etc. I write about four checks per year, and haven't gotten on in the mail in years.

Mail is so 1999. Although I could see this being useful for people who are sailing aroud the world or deployed in the military, and aren't fortunate enough to have someone to volunteer to serve as their mail drop.

Talk about inefficiency!

[wealthychef]

Employee at company A types a letter on her computer and prints it, mails it to company B. A robot scans the letter and puts it on someone's computer screen. Holy crap, how about using freaking EMAIL instead?

Re:This is most certainly news!

[silverkniveshotmail.]

This sort of news isn't time sensitive. why don't you just stop using /. if you don't find it sufficient?

Combine this with...

[defile]

...a web to paper mail gateway so that I could type and sign letters (with a previously uploaded signature file) without actually having to touch a piece of paper... oh man.

Bonus points if it embosses the signature.

Triple word score if it sends the letter certified / registered mail for you.

Wet dream alert if they offer a service where they'll act as an unbiased third party that will let you prove that you sent someone a letter stating X on date Y confirmed received on date XXXX.

Oh fucking shit if someone breaks into your account though. Suddenly you're designating power of attorney to a 14 year old in eastern europe.

Hat's off!!!

[unclenate]

I would say that almost all of the technical and privacy issues raised by posters have been thought of, addressed or somehow considered. Of course no system is perfect, but they have created several innovations in the realm of Postal technology.

It's important to remember to whom this service is really targeted:

Remote Control Mail is the ultimate solution for P.O. Box holders, frequent travelers, RVers, frequent movers, multiple home owners, expatriates, and university students.

Big market for...

[SonicSpike]

..those that travel for business. Those that like to take extended vacations. Those that are in the military and deployed to Iraq. I can think of millions of people who this service could be marketed to.

Brave new world my ass.

[CFD339]

It is neither brave nor new. It is the same old tyranny of wealthy cowards relying on fear mongering for personal and corporate gain.

Want to be really scared? Go re-read Huxley's book and realize that the world he describes would be quite welcomed by a majority in many countries today.

"Brave New World" has lost its shock factor, and "1984" isn't nearly paranoid or intrusive enough.

Re:Brave new world my ass.

[kfg]

Go re-read Huxley's book and realize that the world he describes would be quite welcomed by a majority in many countries today.

A little while ago I actually had an economics sophomore explaining the glory of "the less stitches, the more riches" to me. It made my skin crawl, but after some Zoloft I felt a lot better.

KFG

Re:Brave new world my ass.

[Anonymous Coward]

after some Zoloft I felt a lot better.

I like the time you pointed out how if you go to a shrink and tell them you use drugs, they'll say they aren't the solution to life's problems. But if you go to the same shrink and tell him you're depressed...

When I need to explain the concept of cognitive dissonance to people, I now use that as an example.

Re:Brave new world my ass.

[TobascoKid]

Isn't that more an example of doublethink than cognitive dissonance? I thought cognitive dissonance involved some process of trying to resolve the dissonance, either by finding more information or ignoring information, whereas with doublethink two incompatible views are held simultaneously and there is no attempt to resolve the dissonance (I'll leave aside that one is a literary device and the other a psychological theory).

For example, cognitive dissonance is what happens when some creationists confront evolution - they ignore any evidence that disagrees with their beliefs, whereas "drugs don't solve life's problems"/"have an anti-depressant" is a form of doublethink, as no effort is made to resolve the conflict.

Re:Brave new world my ass.

[kfg]

Isn't that more an example of doublethink than cognitive dissonance? I thought cognitive dissonance involved some process of trying to resolve the dissonance?

Yes. The true cognitive disonance comes when you try to talk to him about it. Watch his reaction. Don't ever expect to be able to have a rational discussion with him again. The mere sight of you will be a trigger.

People who truely "ignore" the evidence don't ever really experience cognitive dissonance. That's what denial exists to avoid. Cognative dissonance is that unpleasant feeling of anxiety you get by trying to internally resolve two accepted, but mutually exclusive, ideas, whereas ignoring the evidence is a delusion which brings unshakable calm; and why give up unshakable calm for anxiety? You'd have to be nuts to acknowledge reality for that sort of payback, wouldn't you? Hence evidence against creation in a way strenthens the case for creation in the mind of the creationist. "I believe it because it is absurd."

It's interesting to note that even Richard Dawkins is forthright in stating that before Darwin he cannot imagine being an atheist, because creation at least puts forward some sort of explanation for what you observe and the idea of observables without an explanation is something he cannot comprehend being able to tolerate. Even supremely rational thinkers (indeed, sometimes because they are supremely rational thinkers) may fall prey to delusion because it brings comfort.

The great thing about a universal, all powerful God is that he's a universal bandaid.

Annnnnnnyway . . . a classic example of cognitive disonance is the mother who wants to give her child candy, because that will make the child happy and her a good mother, but knows that candy is bad for the child, which would make her a bad mother. Of course denying the child candy may make the child upset . . . round and round and round we go.

Somewhere in here you are likely to find transference. The mother gets angry at the child, either to apparent excess or for "no reason."

Yes, it's quite possible that what she said was true. She yelled and smacked you because she loves you.

KFG

not too happy about this

[Treates2]

i'm impressed they could do this, but im kind of digusted by technology advancements.. soon we wont be humans we will be cyborgs picking up our groceries and taking a crap in cyberspace (c).

Re:This is most certainly news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, it isn't news if it's outdated. It's irrelevant and not pertinant.

Security/privacy of postal mail

[zobier]

Some people are talking about postal mail being private/secure. That's just BS! my wife and I recently had all our original supporting documents for our tax lodgement stolen from our mailbox (well they wouldn't've fit in the box but the postie left it lying around anyway). Yes my accountant should have sent it registered post but that's another matter.

AOL Rules!

[bratwiz]

No, what I mean is create a mail RULE for AOL... into the shredder with you!

Yuck Foo AOL and your Little Disks Too!

Re:This is most certainly news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Spelled pertinent, but agreed!

Scan and archive?

[hinosenshi]

Kind of along the same lines as what other people have been saying about the potential for others to read through our mail... How would we prevent our mail from being scanned and then subsequently archived? I mean, I know that Google keeps every single piece of mail that is sent to my Gmail box. Is this likely to start happening to my snail mail, too? It's not like I really have anything to hide, but I do prefer to think that I have some semblance of privacy (yeah, ok... wishful thinking...).

ECHELON follow up?

[MBHkewl]

Communication via radio makes it "easy" to sniff communications using scanners & for those who have the time & equipment, decypher encrypted ones.

If mail is going to be scanned using OCR software, what would prevent the gov. from taking a copy of all the mail, "for security purposes"??

This could also be similar to the scandal of the gov. spying on phones...

Been done...

[swehack]

...in Denmark for years. Also a pay service and done automatically with robots.

more spam

[mennucc1]

most the paper in my snail-mail box is advertising. I fail to see why I should pay 20$/month to convert it into more SPAM for my e-mail box.

Why Do I Need This?

[Anonymous Coward]

The NSA already does this for me, minus the "tell me about it" part... but as long as (1) I assume they read it, and (2) they do, everything's good! And the $20 a month is taken out of the income taxes I'm already paying!

Old news in Europe

[carvalhao]

In Portugal, where I live, this service is already provided by the postal office... for free!

I've been using this service

[tulrich]

I've been using it for about a month. I moved temporarily from the USA to Botswana, and it's a godsend for my situation. Mail to my permanent address gets forwarded by the USPS to RCM, and then I can view/manage it online. The web interface is not the snappiest or simplest to navigate, and I have yet to exercise the forwarding options. But it works and the scans are pretty good. Overall I would recommend it if you're leaving the USA for a while, or are roaming about.

-T

Uhm...

[kitsunewarlock]

About the privacy of mail...the main purpose for privacy is, besides the obvious reasons, the main purpose for most of the bill of rights: to make it much easier to transfer information leading to the destruction of our government if the far fetched fantasy occured and its timeless perfect democratic ways failed us. Am I right? Honestly, I don't know, am I right?

mis-delivered/directed mail

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is a recurrant problem, you are the one remiss in not reporting it to the USPS.

USPS rules, regulations and applicable laws all might be great things your carrier blows off at a whim - but the only way to advance to a more desirable (read: shorter) route for postal carriers isn't seniority, it's scoring well on your performance review; a substanciated misdirected mail complaint is, of course, a negative.

A string of misdirected mail complaints ensure you're walking the longest foot route wearing Vietnam era PPE for some time to come (and no, I'm not kidding).

I've been doing this for 6 or 7 years

[Safe Sex Goddess]

I've been using a billing service for the last six or seven years that essentially does this. They have an address where your bills are sent to. When they receive a bill, they scan everything in and then you can view your bills on-line and pay them. At the end of the year you can order a CD-ROM with images of all of your bills. This is perfect if you travel a lot.

An added benefit is that they sort through and toss all your junk mail that you would normally get addressed to you.

Check out paytrust.com.

Paytrust is AWESOME. only NINE dollars/month.

[ClioCJS]

I signed up during the Anthrax attacks. Answered no mail at all for 4 months, got removed from all junk mail lists (they caught on that I was actually alive about 3 years later).

For $9/month, I can ensure that all my bills are paid.

The level of service isn't what it used to be (2001-2004), but it's still worth the $9 compared to buying stamps, envelopes, and doing it all myself,

And the CD they sell you, with your data, is really nice to have. But just buy one every 3 years, it's cheaper that way.

Paytrust keeps me responsible!

how much per month?

[ClioCJS]

How does it compare with Paytrust? ( http://www.paytrust.com/ )

most ID theft is in-person

[ClioCJS]

Fact: Most identity theft is due to theft of mail from your mailbox and trash, NOT from the internet.

Thus: You are wrong. This actually makes it harder.

In Spain...

[sam0vi]

The spanish national postal servcices (now owned by Deutsch bank) has an online service for anyone who wants to send an actual letter without any of the middle steps. they print it, put it in an envelope and stamp it, for a nominal fee. Not too bad for Spain