Well, sure. I suppose you added to my point about The Market. A FAX receipt is still not any kind of proof that anything legible came out the other end. A FAX machine will gladly send back an ACK after printing a completely blank sheet of paper. It will also gladly record a completely false phone number in it's internal log, because the phone number it stores is whatever the sender programmed into their FAX machine's settings- which is pretty likely to be +011-999-999-9999.
There's absolutely no good reason to trust a FAX machine's ability to confirm receipt any better than a mail server's. The FAX machine receipt confirmation is like menthol in your aftershave. I'm 100% positive that FAX technology was approved over internet technology for the same reason: The ease of use made the user feel like it was "working" and therefore safe and stuff. If an internet protocol for sending paper documents directly was developed (FAX-over-IP) and built into a bunch of popular-branded all-in-one printer fax devices, normal FAX machines would have completely died 20 years sooner.
They could have literally encapsulated FAX machine data in IP packets, for an extremely low development cost. A feature that could be easily hacked onto their existing firmwares.
But, there was no market pressure to kill FAX machines. The people using FAX machines trusted them, and were mostly ignorant about why they shouldn't. They also simultaneously didn't trust computers very much and weren't interested in learning more. Manufacturers weren't about to take the lead- Who would want to do that when they can sell computers, modems, scanners, laser printers, AND keep selling FAX machines?
They got really firmly ingrained in the legal and business framework for utterly stupid reasons. It seems to be about once a year I still have to send a FAX to someone for some reason, and I groan about it every time.
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Date: 2020-09-14 11:34 pm (UTC)There's absolutely no good reason to trust a FAX machine's ability to confirm receipt any better than a mail server's. The FAX machine receipt confirmation is like menthol in your aftershave. I'm 100% positive that FAX technology was approved over internet technology for the same reason: The ease of use made the user feel like it was "working" and therefore safe and stuff. If an internet protocol for sending paper documents directly was developed (FAX-over-IP) and built into a bunch of popular-branded all-in-one printer fax devices, normal FAX machines would have completely died 20 years sooner.
They could have literally encapsulated FAX machine data in IP packets, for an extremely low development cost. A feature that could be easily hacked onto their existing firmwares.
But, there was no market pressure to kill FAX machines. The people using FAX machines trusted them, and were mostly ignorant about why they shouldn't. They also simultaneously didn't trust computers very much and weren't interested in learning more. Manufacturers weren't about to take the lead- Who would want to do that when they can sell computers, modems, scanners, laser printers, AND keep selling FAX machines?
They got really firmly ingrained in the legal and business framework for utterly stupid reasons. It seems to be about once a year I still have to send a FAX to someone for some reason, and I groan about it every time.