
Why can't the fax machine die? - callmeed
http://callmeed.posterous.com/why-cant-the-fax-machine-die
======
pak
Reason: Because there is no equivalent for TCP/IP that "just works".

The fax use case is: a businessperson needs to walk to a machine, lay a stack
of 50 sheets down, punch in an address and let the machine do the rest. Oh, so
you say some scanners/copiers can email? Let's go over the problems with
email.

\- dealing with attachments

\- attachment filetype; no enforceable standard by the recipient

\- inboxes overflowing

\- smtp servers rejecting messages over a certain unknown size

\- mailserver administration

\- chews through Internet bandwidth; no built-in throttling

\- spam

\- spam false positives, dropped messages

\- no ability to reliably confirm delivery

\- recipient has to print document, for full fax simulation

I'm actually amazed there has been no Internet standard that has emerged for
this: pushing a large document in some standard format to an Internet-
connected client computer (laptop or desktop, not dedicated server) for
immediate viewing/printing. The cynic in me says the anti -P2P movement had a
lot to do with it, since a P2P file transfer is about as close as we have to
fax functionality (albeit with some problems of its own). There are obviously
many ways to cobble together HTTP, FTP, SFTP, XMPP, etc. to imitate this use
case, but none really come close to the plug-it-in-and-hit-start ease of fax
machines.

~~~
spamizbad
In my experience, analog fax has been neither problem-free nor spam-free, even
with a solid fax machine over POTS. Feed errors, pages turned the wrong way,
machine running out of memory, feed or print jams, poor quality, power loss,
etc, have all contributed towards fax headaches.

Email works significantly better than fax: it just appears to have more
problems due to volume of electronic mail.

~~~
sigstoat
T1+asterisk+iaxmodem+hylafax solved all those problems you mentioned for us,
along with ones you didn't.

not that i like fax, but the experience you get with the average office supply
store fax machine is a poor one.

------
dualboot
The real reason Fax is still alive is because in most states/provinces a faxed
document with a signature is legal.

This means warrants, contracts, etc hold up on court where a document that is
emailed and printed off will not.

This is not a particularly good reason - but that is the bottom line.

~~~
callmeed
Are you sure about that? Maybe email+print alone will not hold up, but check
the ESign act of 2000:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Signatures_in_Global...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Signatures_in_Global_and_National_Commerce_Act)

There are definitely electronic forms of contracts that are legal without me
ever having to put an ink pen on a dead tree.

I bought car insurance from Geico _entirely_ online. Never signed anything or
faxed anything. Just typed in my initials and checked some boxes ... only
thing I had to print was the card that goes in my glove box.

~~~
dualboot
In _some_ places - but not everywhere.

Fax is still immensely important when dealing with credit applications,
leases, etc.

Also in many places documents you print with an inkjet printer are not
technically legal.

The laws regarding the technologies are mostly really dumb but that is what
you usually get when law and technology meet.

~~~
holygoat
Do you have a citation for your inkjet assertion? I'm intrigued.

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nosnih
I work for a company that does a large volume of business with small,
independent trucking companies. This requires sending load confirmation and
bill of lading documents that they must have with them in the truck.

Many of these barely have a working fax machine, much less email. We email
documents directly whenever we can, and have abstracted faxing away using a
print-to-fax server, and incoming faxes to emails. Things have changed quite a
bit in the past few years; I would estimate we have close to 50% email
adoption among independent truckers. Even still, our systems send hundreds of
faxes a day at peak time.

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patio11
I use pay-as-you-go online fax services when I'm required to file something.
You know how I get the signature on it? Export whatever the document is to
PDF, turn the signature page into a GIF using ImageMagick ("convert
file.pdf[0] sign-here.gif"), open the GIF in my image editor and copy/paste a
signature block I keep in Dropbox, and then re-export to PDF. Nobody can tell
because by the time it comes out of their fax it is going to look like garbage
anyhow, and any imperfection in the pasting process just looks like a fax
artifact. If I wanted to go for extra authenticity I'm sure ImageMagick has
some combination of parameters which will make it look like it was copied six
times on a Xerox that hasn't been serviced since the 1970s prior to being
faxed.

~~~
viraptor
As a bonus if you already use any serious VoIP provider, you might want to
check their offer. Even if it's not that popular / advertised, many of them do
offer fax2email and email2fax services. Just check whether they're using T.38
(otherwise you'll get a lot of failed transmissions).

------
bobbyi
In visual form:

<http://www.thedoghousediaries.com/?p=1251>

~~~
sirn
I love how this is still true even if you replaced "fax" with "printers".

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joshu
Printing shit out to sign it and fax it just to capture a signature is
bizarre, especially for documents that were created/revised via email.

I just feel absurd for doing this while I work at the epicenter of technology
in order to put a little cash into a startup that wants to go revolutionize
some other part of the internet or technology or whatever.

I may as well be rubbing sticks together to start a fire.

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ax0n
Part of a message I sent my mother, wherein I went off on a fax machine
tangent:

"[ ... ] can we all finally agree that fax machines are a bad idea? I print a
digital document from my computer onto a sheet of paper, perhaps scribble
something on it, then stick it into this machine that scans it back into a
digital document for transmission. It's then sent somewhere else in order to
be printed onto a sheet of paper, which is then handed to some minimum-wage
drone who has to type all the stuff back into a digital document so that the
information can be dealt with and archived on the other end. Seriously. What
the hell is up with that?"

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3dFlatLander
I've been waiting for Google to help with this since their voice program came
around. These business that charge to do fax->email conversion were great, but
from my understanding the most expensive part of this was getting the numbers
reserved. Google doesn't charge for their voice service, so it would seem they
could provide this service to everyone with a google voice number.

I don't think anything is going to kill the fax any time soon. But Google
could easily make its existence much less annoying--which may just be the
first phase of its death.

------
tjmc
Immediate solution: Scan your signature and use an email/web - fax service

Better answer: I've thought about this problem a lot. I think the concept of
the fax machine itself isn't really the issue, it's the fact that it hasn't
evolved from communicating via a 19.2K modem over POTS lines. All the
alternatives are replacement technologies that don't offer a migration path
from the established standard and make it harder to replicate a physical
document from A to B.

\- The fax via email/web alternatives are harder to use because scanning and
printing are separate and often difficult steps.

\- FOIP isn't trivially backwards compatible - you need a gateway provider and
a service agreement to send to existing machines.

I think Google's cloud print service need to extend to cloud scanning. As a
first step you could then have multifunction scanner/printer/copiers that
attempt to contact the recipient via IP first and then either fall back to
regular fax or use a proxy fax service. IP connections would offer: higher
speed, higher resolution, colour, encryption and wireless connectivity.

The key is something that's still as easy as a fax machine. Any solution that
doesn't focus on copying physical documents is solving a different problem. We
already have email for that.

------
blahedo
Some places that wouldn't accept a simple email that they print _will_ accept
the more direct analogue of a fax: I scan a signed page and email them the
scan. When they print this at their end this is 100% indistinguishable from a
fax; not to say that there aren't places that will balk just to resist all
change, but this version of change may seem a lot less foreign than
e-signatures, more of a natural evolution.

------
drewcrawford
The real WTF is... why can't mail die?

I'm not objecting to packages, etc. But why do people still send me letters?
If the IRS, employers, clients, etc., moved to fax I'd be _happy_. Fax has
been around for 30-40 years and for some reason I keep mailing letters to
people.

~~~
potatolicious
Extension of that... why can't I have a permanent address?

Why can't I have something that, when provided to USPS, FedEx, UPS, whatever,
resolves to wherever I'm currently living? Every time I move I have to change
a million different addresses with a million different people, invariably
forgetting some along the way.

My email address never changes - why can't my physical address be like it.

~~~
derefr
There is no "global mail infrastructure" to support a symbolic address—the
meaning of an address is legally defined by the city/state/country it is sent
to. You could have an address that would stay constant as you moved _around a
city_ (and they have them: P.O. Boxes), but when you moved to a different
country, you'd end up playing by someone else's rules. It's like asking every
country to standardize on what they print/stamp on their currency.

~~~
nradov
I don't care about global, within the US would be sufficient. The USPS could
do it if they cared to try.

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GFischer
I'm sorry... electronic signatures are NOT VALID for any kind of overseas
contracts (if you live in the US - here in Uruguay they are basically useless
too).

Until the law (and custom) catches up, we'll be faxing stuff. And I should
know, as I've tried to kill fax at several companies, only to be held back by
the legal department.

At my current company (an insurance company), we hold as valid requests for
policy renewal faxed in, or on a printed form, but due to the legal
requirements we cannot accept any other electronic format, sadly (which would
help greatly with automation). Legal dept. wants something that judges will
accept as valid on contract disputes.

------
dylanz
Shameless plug: <https://rightsignature.com>

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caryme
Not that this is a good solution in anyway, but when I get stuck having to
send a fax, I've found <http://faxzero.com/> pretty useful.

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unexpected
Wow, you don't even have a printer? That's impressive - a true digital office!
I think the printer will be the last thing ever "to die".

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pmccool
Another reason: it needs less equipment and less infrastructure. Emailing
images over an analogue phone line is painful, for example.

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gnaritas
Email is not an appropriate solution for many of the things faxes are used
for. Sending private information from one business to another. Faxes routinely
contain credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc.

Every business has a fax machine, many still do not have email. I work with a
lot of hotels, a large number of them do not have email, business is conducted
via fax as it is the only option.

------
iuguy
www.efax.com and a scanner. That's all you need.

~~~
GFischer
Is it considered a "fax" for legal purposes?

~~~
iuguy
Should be. Is here in the UK.

------
zaidf
Because scanner innovation has sucked.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Huh? I don't know where this comes from. 10 years ago you'd need a SCSI card
and a several hundred dollar scanner to get decent (e.g. 300dpi or above)
scans, and it'd take many minutes to scan a single page, not counting any
technical troubles. Now you can buy a USB 2.0 scanner for much cheaper and get
higher resolution, higher quality scans much, much faster.

~~~
zaidf
I think the moment we get in-built scanners into laptops, fax machine's days
will be numbered. Until then, it will remain super difficult to scan a
document at home(when scanner is at work) or struggle with drivers of the
scanner etc.

