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.'"

Re:It's for signatures

[xs650]

That's nothing, some people think a fax machine sends the paper through the phone line when we all know it only sends the ink through the phone line.

Re:It's a scanner people can use

[smellotron]

I look forward to his future articles on the evils of pencils, the alphabet, and whiskey.

Dear Sir,

I noticed that the bottle in your cabinet was over a decade old (!), so I took the liberty of discarding it in the refuse and replacing it with a fresh bottle. I didn't want you to get food poisoning. I trust you will appreciate this attentiveness.

Rgrds,
smellotron