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Borzak

Borzak

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BrutulTM_sl said:
Fuck fax machines. Whenever anyone asks me to fax them something I'm like "Well, this isn't 1992 so no, I won't fax you anything. I won't be sending you anything by telegram or pony express either." Having an IT guy insist on getting something faxed to them is terrifying.
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The reason the offices in engineering/construction want it faxes is you have an instant confirmation via the fax machine that they received at their office. Emails you never know when they get around to actually reading it.

Most engineering/heavy construction offices have a fax in the document control department they monitor and instantly deliver it to whoever it is addressed to for that reason.
 
Jysin

Jysin

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ZyyzYzzy_sl said:
Security offices here always required forms with signatures (essentially every form you need to send them) be faxed.
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This is the fucking baffling thing. What exactly is the difference in a Fax (digitally scanned signature) and a Scan & email (digitally scanned signature).

It's simply incompetent retards that are stuck in a decades old mindset.
 
Intrinsic

Intrinsic

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In my 10 years of working with State and Local Gov't 90% of our Purchase Orders are received via fax. Probably just in the last year or two have they actually moved over to scanning and submitting them to us as PDF. Before that if they even tried it came to us as a .tiff, and that all came from them. We would beg for it in email and they'd flat out refuse and need a fax number. Most of the sales guys had the eFax stuff set up for that reason.
 
Borzak

Borzak

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Noodlemod_sl said:
Outlook has this thing "Request Read Receipt"

We live in the future
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If they never click "OK" you still haven't covered your ass. Sorry I kind of like it to be covered 100% when you send a fax that instructs someone in the shop or field to make a quick change on something that could affect a large amount of time/money on a project and it needs to be deal with right now.

I like the idea of knowing instantly it's in THEIR hands now, not wondering if he read the email or not and just never hit OK.

CYA. All these capital projects go in with arbitration in the back of your mind every day. We no longer send drawings, sketches, RFI's, scheduling etc..to any customer or contractor via email. It all goes thru their site which I have to get credentials for and it instantly gives me a confirmation that it's not my concern any longer.

I'm not sure of the legal part, but I've heard it mentioned several times before they want anything signed going thru the fax as well because it holds up well in arbitration versus an email.
 
Joeboo

Joeboo

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A very large percentage of people that still use a fax service, do it electronically. Every fax I receive comes to me in an email as an attachment. We fax stuff daily, but haven't had a physical fax machine in our office for over over 5 years. It's basically emailing, with entering a phone number instead of an email address. I mean, who pays for an extra physical phone line for a fax machine anymore? Completely unnecessary.

And the argument that "you know they get it" doesn't really apply. Just because transmission was received by the other machine doesn't mean that it printed correctly, or that it didn't just fall on the floor, or someone else didn't pick it up in a stack of their own papers or whatever. A fax machine transmission confirmation is no more of a sure thing than an email that isn't bounced back as undeliverable. Neither is anywhere close to a sure thing, or secure.
 
Borzak

Borzak

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Fair enough, just pointing out how it works in our small little industry. On capital projects you want to CYA and prepare for arbitration. Faxes go over well in arbitration for whatever reason.

Most offices that do what do also keep two phones in every PM's office, VOIP phone and landline phone for power outages and internet outages.

That's the beauty of engineer as you go or engineer a week behind actually fabricating it in some cases, or even erected. I like it, keeps me on my toes and it's very fast paced.
 
BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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Borzak_sl said:
Fair enough, just pointing out how it works in our small little industry. On capital projects you want to CYA and prepare for arbitration. Faxes go over well in arbitration for whatever reason.
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That seems strange to me. At least if you send an email there should be a server log somewhere recording it. There's no evidence at all that you sent a fax is there?
 
Joeboo

Joeboo

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BrutulTM_sl said:
That seems strange to me. At least if you send an email there should be a server log somewhere recording it. There's no evidence at all that you sent a fax is there?
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All you really have is a log of what phone number your machine has connected to successfully and unsuccessfully, but absolutely no record of what info was actually sent.
 
J

Jilariz_sl

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You guys should look at Sharefile or Accellion (and I'm sure there are others) if you really need to be sending documents to people digitally, and want email downloading notifications. On our end we use Sharefile, several of our clients (lawfirms) use Accellion. They both do a great job and handle the smallest of uploads to many gigabytes if necessary.
 
Big Phoenix

Big Phoenix

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Sounds an awful lot like "this is the way weve always done it" when it comes to faxes.
 
Borzak

Borzak

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We get notifications when we upload drawings and RFI's (or answered) via their computer system. I assume they like it that way because unlike an email you have to file out their form, follow their guidelines unlike an email.

We are just finishing up an expiremental coal fired power plant at roughly $3 billion and they didn't have internet or good cell phone coverage on site for 90% of the project, but they had a landline and we could fax.

What is really odd is the project we are doing now (experimental carbon capture project at a coal fired power plant) is partially paid for the EPA and they were on the same page about having a fax between the fabricator, general contractor, and erector in field. THeir inspector said "good enough" and it holds up in arbitration. Unrelated issue but the EPA/Obama annoucned today they are tightening up rules on fracking. The entire point of this project is to mix the exhaust from the plant with a chemical and capture it and use that liquid in fracking.

The guy over their engineering department wasn't all that impressed since he is from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan where they came up with the idea to sell to the US government. But when he left he said, if you shit works and you have a track record of it working I don't care. but they have issues as well. They can't seem to send email at all for long period - like a week and lost 3 weeks and change orders on their own server and had to hire an outside consultant to find them.

The ladies who run our fax machines (we have multiple in the document control department) make between $22-$25/hour for operating a fax. I looked it up the other day when I was named VP of engineering and wanted to see what every department averaged. That's not bad for TX and standing around.
 
Palum

Palum

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Borzak_sl said:
Fair enough, just pointing out how it works in our small little industry. On capital projects you want to CYA and prepare for arbitration. Faxes go over well in arbitration for whatever reason.

Most offices that do what do also keep two phones in every PM's office, VOIP phone and landline phone for power outages and internet outages.

That's the beauty of engineer as you go or engineer a week behind actually fabricating it in some cases, or even erected. I like it, keeps me on my toes and it's very fast paced.
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So what happens when they find out that you e-faxed your docs to their e-fax and no one read them anyway?

It's like we should make an e-mail client with a QTE of a mailman delivering a piece of mail to signify the heady days of yore where one actually physically retrieved an important piece of mail from a person delivering it.
 
ToeMissile

ToeMissile

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I work for a Xerox dealer/servicer and pretty much all of our standard config office machines come with the fax/email stuff.
 
Palum

Palum

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ToeMissile_sl said:
I work for a Xerox dealer/servicer and pretty much all of our standard config office machines come with the fax/email stuff.
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Right my point was that e-fax is a facsimile of a facsimile machine, not an actual facsimile machine. We're already playing the Inception game why not just fucking use e-mail.
 
Joeboo

Joeboo

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Yeah, I still can't give up Dropbox, it's just by FAR the easiest and smoothest interface to use. I want to stop having to pay them $10 a month, especially since I now have 1TB of free Google Drive storage for signing up for Google Fiber service, but the Google Drive interface and website is just awkward compared to Dropbox. I'd be fine with it, but my wife and other non-techie family members would never figure it out. They can all use Dropbox, no problem.
 
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