Slashdot Mirror
Why the Fax Machine Refuses To Die
snydeq writes "Deep End's Paul Venezia waxes befuddled on the ongoing existence of the fax machine. 'Consider what a fax machine actually is: a little device with a sheet feeder, a terrible scanning element, and an ancient modem. Most faxes run at 14,400bps. That's just over 1KB per second — and people are still using faxes to send 52 poorly scanned pages of some contract to one another. Over analog phone lines. Sometimes while paying long-distance charges! The mind boggles,' Venezia writes. 'If something as appallingly stupid as the fax machine can live on, it makes you wonder how we make progress at all. Old habits die hard. It just goes to show you: Bad technology generally isn't the problem; it's the people who persist in using that technology rather than embracing far superior alternatives.'"
Sheet-fed scanners are ridiculously expensive, plus you have to save the file, attach it to an email, then, hopefully, the file isn't too large for the sender or recipient's mailserver. With the fax machine, one just drops the stack in, verify the fax successfully transmitted, task complete.
Also, many people feel that snooping of phone lines is much less likely to occur than snooping of email, when is sent in the clear.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
People seem to think that because a fax machine scans physical documents that it represents an authentic signature on a document. Solid reasoning? Not a chance, but when has that stopped anyone from reaching stupid conclusions?
The thing about a fax is, that anyone can use it properly in its default configuration.
Scanning for most people is fraught with troubles, from too large files they cannot email, to losing files saved who knows where, to simple connection problems between scanner and computer. Meanwhile the fax still just works, unless you are lucky enough to work at a place that has rigged up a well-run scanning infrastructure for you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Fax machine. Plug it in. It just works. Something computers still just dream of.
I actually work for a certain fortune 500 company that produces laser printers, and while we are phasing a lot of our fax focus out, there just isn't the faith in email that there is in fax. With a fax, you have a physical copy ending up in an office that you know someone has received. There's no spam filter to worry about and you know that that fax is going to get to the right person a lot more than than email if you don't have that person's direct email. For something you have a physical copy of, fax is just a lot simpler. Until there are more printers out there that have email addresses built into them, we're going to be a ways off from replacing fax.
Pharmacist here. They are still in heavy use between us and the md offices, for a few reasons. E-Rx ins't always 2-way, so a refill request often has to be faxed. Many times we need to contact the MD office and they can't take a call. A fax gives them all the info, in a simple readable format to take care of later. Sometimes a hospital needs a patient profile for the last 6 months and it would take 30mins to explain it all over the phone, so it gets faxed.
Emailing HIPPA documents in not an option and I wouldn't use it even it was.
That's a great article on why the fax machine refuses to die. Oh wait, there's no explanation. It's just some guy complaining. When I read an article which is just some douchbag complaining, ten times out of ten it was linked by slashdot. Maybe "Why won't the fax machine die!" can be the opposite of "Get off my lawn!"
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All fax machines are required to implement delivery confirmation and time stamps, and log a certain number of incoming and outgoing faxes. There is a rigid standard behind the faxing specs, and fax records can be (and have been) used in a court of law. It's hard to find another *cheap* and *widely adopted* digital sending standard that has the same legal robustness, with a proven track record. That alone is why fax technology will be slow to die.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
A FAX has a legal advantage. A third party, the phone company, can verify the sender, receiver and date/time. There is also a bunch of case law regarding when a FAX can be or must be accepted as a valid legal document.
You don't appreciate technology until you understand the function it serves and problem solved. Fax orginated as battlefield deployment solution to get maps and text into the right hands.
Today, nothing has changed. It is the weapon of choice to enlist support, disseminate and communicate on the battlefields. Only the location has changed. And the win-win with FAX is its ability to run unattended, bombproof reliability and that receipt verification is the gold standard guarantee of undeniable success in the chain of communication.
Speed has nothing to do with the fact that its importance is Fax's ability to deliver guaranteed. The physical paper output assuredly enforces every fax must be ' handled' at the receiving end irregardless how much timeshift it pushes itself onto the receiver.
That is one critical factor no amount of email, voicemail nor text message can compete against.
OTOH maybe we should be looking at avoiding having even more dead tree clogging up storage units because someone's welded to 20 year old technology. ... because they're used to it.
One department here uses a fax machine as a scanner. They fax a server that then converts the fax to an email and sends it to them. Despite the fact that we now have network scanning capabilities that are far higher resolution and don't involve the charge of a phone call they insist on using this system because they're used to it. Another department transfers documents by printing them, then faxing them to another department that then scans them back in. To keep them them both on the same network server. I've explained till I'm blue in the face that they can just set up a shared area to transfer documents but they keep this system
Never underestimate human inertia. If something works, people will keep using it despite how awkward it might be. Bitching and whining all the time about its problems of course. But you try to change something and suddenly you may as well have driven over their puppy for all the reaction you get...
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'