The Glade 4.0

The Fax machine is ancient technology. Jesus christ people, get a **** scanner and email the goddamn things.

We can send your voicemails to your email... its faster, more efficient, and easier by far to deal with. Why the hell do you insist on using your bloody phone to check the goddamn things? Sometimes the blinky red light doesn't work. Wouldn't you find it a better solution to have those emails in your inbox that you can then annotate and forward to whoever needs them?

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Holy shitsnacks!

Scanners are pointless.

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And yet the 1/6 of the national economy healthcare industry is dependent on it. As are many branches of government and a huge portion of academia.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

The point is, there's no reason for them to still cling to the fax machine. There's better technology that's faster, more convenient, and doesn't require working knowledge of analog landline services to maintain.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I don't necessarily disagree; however, many of those industries still use faxes for a reason. Sometimes it's money. Sometimes it's failing to adapt to change. But as is often the case when progress is stymied: it's due to regulation.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

When I was buying my house in 2008, I did the print/sign/scan/email thing a lot for the paperwork. There were a couple of places where I had to fax, because they weren't allowed to accept emailed documents.

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My main problem with faxes is they're slow and often t.38 and g711 don't play nicely.

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Holy shitsnacks!

I had to "fax" (really an MFC with fax capabilties) some documents to their corporate office while I was working at Best buy Monday. I mean c'mon there freaking Best Buy, and they know the MFC has e-mail capacities, yet i'm stuck chugging along at 14400 bps.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I hate fax machines.

I also do not want voice mails going to e-mail. **** that ****. Keep it on the damn phone.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You're a semi luddite then.

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Holy shitsnacks!

What about a Google Voice app, on the phone, that shows a visual list of your voicemails by caller with transcripts?

Haha that app gives me some crazy transcripts of voicemails

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Oh god. This app is freaking MONEY.

I am so happy that I don't actually have to listen to most of my VMs before I realize that they're an utter waste of my time.

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Holy shitsnacks!

People use fax machines because they are convenient and reliable. Until there is an electronic standard that's comparable, they will continue to be used.

With scan and e-mail you have to:
-Find the scanned file on your computer to send
-Make sure the format and size of the scanned file are suitable for e-mail and also readable by the recipients computer. You have to convert it if it's not.
-You have to send it to the recipients e-mail address, where they receive far more than just faxes. You're important document could easily wind up in their spam filter and they'll likely never notice.

With a fax machine, you put the document in the machine, type in the number, and hit send. Done. Faxes are also more secure than e-mail in most instances.

I'm not saying it doesn't suck when those of us without fax machines have to find a way to use one every now and then, but in business where almost everyone has a fax machine already, they still use them for a reason.

How about not having "apps" and the damn thing just letting me dial into voicemail? I hate "apps". I even hate the term "apps".

I don't want a transcript. I want people to talk on the phone like they're supposed to. I don't like people using electronics to "not deal with" people or otherwise insulate themselves. I deal with enough problems because of that; I'm constantly refereeing battles among my full-time staff who think that e-mailing is an excuse to act snippy and petty.. with people that are sitting 15 feet away from them.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And I don't want to talk to anyone I'm not legally required to. As far as a transcript goes, I can read FAR faster than you can tell me whatever it is that I'm sure I don't give a **** about Especially if said VM is "Hey, its Bob, call me back. I wanted to talk to you."

No **** Bob. I have a missed call from you. Its obvious that you wanted to talk to me because YOU CALLED ME! If you're going to bother leaving me a message, Tell me what you **** wanted to talk to me about. Or, better yet, send me a text. I'm a lot more likely to respond to that.

The less time I actually have to spend on the phone, the better. Which is *really* ironic because I work Tier 2 tech support for a VoIP company.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Would you prefer to not be able to receive messages when someone calls and you aren't available to pick up? Why would you not want something that makes it easier to see and hear what someone wanted? Maybe you should rant about paper and pens too because you hate it when someone leaves you a note at your desk because they missed you instead of talking to you face to face like they're supposed to.

I generally don't want voicemail to begin with. If I wanted to talk to people, I'd pick up the damned phone.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Then they can leave a voice message.



I explained this already. I don't want it to be "easier". That makes you get bombarded with more and more stupid ****. When it's harder, people don't demand your attention for every little nitpicky thing, or ask you to refree their electronic pissing contests.. which, by the way, is time I end up donating to the Army since I don't get paid for the work I do from home on my personal computer.



Aside from the fact that paper and pens have a lot more uses than a silly app that "transcribes" voicemail, people don't use written notes to act like snotty little shits. They leave you a note that amounts to "I need to talk to you" and later you do talk face-to-face. Just because I'm not hopping on the bandwagon with the latest electronic way to closet yourself doesn't mean I hate all technology.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Unfortunately, many offices have a shared fax machine, which also doubles as a printer/copier. It's highly likely that your fax ends up in the middle of someone's 100-page printout which might then sit on their desk for weeks until they notice it's in there.

Not true, print jobs and faxes are both printed from start to completion as a single job. No way a fax, or anything else, gets stuck in the middle of a large print job.

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"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me." - Alice R. Longworth

"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun." - Ash Williams

Unless you **** with the memory.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville