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Abolish the Fax


'stache

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32 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Of course, if you've left out the part that he sounds like he first prints out many (all?) of the things he reads on the internet.

In speaking with my company's website content team, they were designing the page buttons to allow people to easily share the page URL via social media. They've made the decision to also include a button for printing the content page. This is a team of young people that have probably never printed an internet article but they have the analytics that plenty of people do print the articles. So we have a print button because that is what our audience wants.  smh.

 

There was a long time, director level person at different business unit at my place of employment, that as of just like 3-4 years ago I think, still had his secretary print out all of his emails and have them sitting on his desk for him to read when he had time.

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46 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Of course, if you've left out the part that he sounds like he first prints out many (all?) of the things he reads on the internet.

In speaking with my company's website content team, they were designing the page buttons to allow people to easily share the page URL via social media. They've made the decision to also include a button for printing the content page. This is a team of young people that have probably never printed an internet article but they have the analytics that plenty of people do print the articles. So we have a print button because that is what our audience wants.  smh.

 

This is correct.  He goes through more ink cartridges than a law firm with 30 employees.  The reason he said faxing it would be easier is he didn’t want to have to scan his printed copy to get it back in digital form. 
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23 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

Business Cards? Now there's a nice holdover from the Ancient Days.

Your firm shouldn't worry about business cards until they settle which sort of dress swords you all should wear.

That's a new one. I go to a lot of legal conferences (pre-covid at least) where I meet a lot of new people and we exchange cards. I have my assistant put the information in to outlook but at the time of meeting exchanging cards is the most convenient. A few times with younger attorneys we'll exchange email addresses and v-cards on the spot from our phones but I prefer to take the card back and have it inputted into a v-card.

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2 minutes ago, 'stache said:

That's a new one. I go to a lot of legal conferences (pre-covid at least) where I meet a lot of new people and we exchange cards. I have my assistant put the information in to outlook but at the time of meeting exchanging cards is the most convenient. A few times with younger attorneys we'll exchange email addresses and v-cards on the spot from our phones but I prefer to take the card back and have it inputted into a v-card.

Cards are the fax that you are used to. I have other things that are the fax I am used to.

Back in 2018 I started doing in-person art shows. It is traditional for artists to print up hundreds of business cards for people to throw away. I take scrap card stock, bidness card size, and draw a quick cartoon (like, 5 seconds) plus my name on it. If they google my name, they see the half-dozen sites where I sell widgets. If I'm out of cards, I have them photograph my table sign, which is the same thing.

Dunno if on-the-spot cartoons would work for attuinneys, but it might be a niche to explore other than the standard biker offshoot.

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15 minutes ago, conVINCEd said:

This is correct.  He goes through more ink cartridges than a law firm with 30 employees.  The reason he said faxing it would be easier is he didn’t want to have to scan his printed copy to get it back in digital form. 
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Which makes perfect sense. He's probably closed the webpage so sending you the URL would require manually transcribing the URL from the top of the printed page to an email or text. Which can be practically impossible.

If I could suggest a solution: have him mail the printed web articles to you. Only 55 cents and you will have it in 2-3 days. Perhaps he could save up his weekly to-be shared articles and send them together with highlights and notes.

But seriously is the complete URL on the printed page? I wonder if there is a mobile app that could transcribe the URL via a camera, which then could be sent to you?

 

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1 hour ago, conVINCEd said:

While the fax is an outdated piece of equipment, can we all at least be thankful for the innovation that allowed us to use regular 8.5”X11” paper instead of the roll of thermal paper that you had to tear off, resulting in a jagged edge?

I worked for a small instrument company in the early 90s and the owner, who wasn't a US citizen, would make 4-6 week around the world sales trips 2 or 3 times a year.  At the end of every day, his admin would have all the sales persons write up a page or two of the contacts/sales made each day, engineering mgr would make a report and manufacturing would make a report and would fax it to whatever hotel he was staying at.  He would read the report and and markup/ask questions in the margins and have the whole thing resent back and ready for the admin when she came into the office.  So imagine 15-20+ pages of scrolled thermal fax every morning.  

I would say thing got better when email came around but when that happened we got an email address. As in one, for the whole company.  

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14 hours ago, TexasEd said:

In an old job I used to have to manage the secure/encrypted faxes.  I went through several iterations of them from all in one devices to separate encryption and fax machine.  The early ones you had to run down and pull the current key tape through a reader and later ones just had an encryption key that you locked up when not in use.

The process had you answer the call in the clear, go to encrypted voice, then flip to data.

Oh the good old days.

Back when you and I worked at the old Duval facility, the State Department still had us send in triplicate forms for classified export license applications.  I needed an actual typewriter to do it - took me 2 days to find one!

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45 minutes ago, davidg said:

I worked for a small instrument company in the early 90s and the owner, who wasn't a US citizen, would make 4-6 week around the world sales trips 2 or 3 times a year.  At the end of every day, his admin would have all the sales persons write up a page or two of the contacts/sales made each day, engineering mgr would make a report and manufacturing would make a report and would fax it to whatever hotel he was staying at.  He would read the report and and markup/ask questions in the margins and have the whole thing resent back and ready for the admin when she came into the office.  So imagine 15-20+ pages of scrolled thermal fax every morning.  

I would say thing got better when email came around but when that happened we got an email address. As in one, for the whole company.  

Must have been fun having a boss that looked over your shoulders constantly even from the other side of the world.

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20 hours ago, 'stache said:

I'm a litigator too. Our firm is in a standoff over our new business cards. Half of us want to remove our fax numbers, half seem to think there is some rule requiring fax numbers on business cards, but no one has been able to show me that rule yet. I know that federal rules allow service by email if all counsel agree, and we do that often, except we agree that service is only valid if the recipient responds and acknowledges receipt. 

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13 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

We get multiple faxes a day (they come over email) from some of the biggest hospitals in Texas.  It's crazy but they won't change to email.

The last time I worked for a very large company we had an email to fax thing so no one had to actually use a fax machine.  You would send the email to 5124952222@fax.xxxxxxxxxx.com and Mr. Gattis would receive the fax on their machine.

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3 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Which makes perfect sense. He's probably closed the webpage so sending you the URL would require manually transcribing the URL from the top of the printed page to an email or text. Which can be practically impossible.

If I could suggest a solution: have him mail the printed web articles to you. Only 55 cents and you will have it in 2-3 days. Perhaps he could save up his weekly to-be shared articles and send them together with highlights and notes.

But seriously is the complete URL on the printed page? I wonder if there is a mobile app that could transcribe the URL via a camera, which then could be sent to you?

 

Why not have him just convert the URL to a QR code?

😛

 

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On 1/26/2021 at 4:30 PM, TwiceHorn said:

One of the most annoying things was when service of pleadings and motions was either by fax or certified mail.  Fax is less of a pain in the ass than CMRRR for the sender and cut down the response time a by three days, IIRC.  That was an unholy mess.

California still uses fax filings. 

Also, I hate the third-party services that defense firms in Texas use for third-party subpoenas. They always fax. I have no idea why. I hate it. Send me a fucking email. 

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On 1/26/2021 at 4:41 PM, Jerry Callo said:

I'd rather get a fax than crappy jpegs of a ten page document.  People that don't have access to scanners are worse than people that want to send a fax.  I got a fax last week as a matter of fact.  

You know those people are dumb as fuck, too.  Dropbox and Google Drive among others have pretty good scanning features.

I am constantly enlightening people about useful things they can do with their idiot machines.

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Still have to use faxing where I work, but I succeeded in eliminating a dozen physical fax machines with 1 fax server, and everyone "faxes" by sending an email.

Sweatergawd, it took about a week of handholding because we had employees who were scared to death of losing the ability to walk over to a fax machine and shoving in 30 pages they had just printed out just to fax because we went paperless everywhere else years ago.

 

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On 1/26/2021 at 1:23 PM, elfenix said:

That makes me ragey. I had seizures several years ago, and had to get my doctor to sign some forms for the DMV. Not only did I have to FAX it to my doc, they turned around and FAXED it to the DMV.

I got a send confirmation, and I could barely make out the stuff I sent, I imagine the DMV couldn't see shit either, but because they're they DMV, they just said fuck in and hit approve.

 

What makes me 1000x more ragey is the fact that I have Kaiser as my insurance / medical provider. They have everything in house. I can email my doc and attach photos, but I can't email a fucking PDF. Makes no sense man, makes no sense.

 

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Tangential to this thread. FUCK YOU Wells Fargo.

Several years ago, I tried to move my old 401k (that I didn't roll over to my current plan) out of Wells Fargo into something else. They had an 8 page form to fill out. I sent it at least 5 times, and every time they would say "Sorry, we only got up to page 6, can you resend it?"

It's almost like WF was waiting for other people to pay back their loans before they could release my money.

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I have fucked over five figure sales with 100% of the inventory paid for to avoid fax issues. If a MFer still faxes, believe me, there will be other issues that fuck up the deal as well. Just have the pick up guy bring a Cashiers check, and I will handwrite an invoice. If you still fax, you are too much trouble to deal with, and a stupid fucker.

CHIEF

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3 hours ago, RDCanecutter said:

I am trying to remember any time when the fax was loved. Like, even when they were a new thing, seems like faxes irritated people.

When you were at a business that was not your employer, and you used the photocopier to make a copy of your bare ass, and then faxed it to the last few numbers you could find on the faxes that were sitting in the in basket?

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On 1/27/2021 at 5:22 PM, TwiceHorn said:

You know those people are dumb as fuck, too.  Dropbox and Google Drive among others have pretty good scanning features.

I am constantly enlightening people about useful things they can do with their idiot machines.

iPhones and iPads have a scanning feature in the Notes and Files apps. Basically they just combine the pictures into one jpeg or pdf, and allow basic markup.  Add that with some fax apps, many are free for the first few pages/month, and you’re set for infrequent faxing.

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