Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 10

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Many schools in the US also still seem to prefer fax to email as well.

My biggest customer sells athletic equipment and their biggest customer segment is high schools. Schools and school districts can order online using a purchase order instead of paying with a credit/debit card, but they have to confirm the PO by fax or email. A surprising number choose fax instead of email. My customer still gets multiple faxes per day from schools and school districts confirming orders.
 
I can't think of any situation where a scanner and an email (secured as needed) is not a better solution than faxing, except in dealing with someone else who is stuck in the last century.

In healthcare, some form of EMR is even better but that's just wishing for ponies I guess.
 
gnome said:
I can't think of any situation where a scanner and an email (secured as needed) is not a better solution than faxing, except in dealing with someone else who is stuck in the last century.

In healthcare, some form of EMR is even better but that's just wishing for ponies I guess.
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We scan faxes into our EMR. As images. Probably everybody in this thread can see what's wrong with that, which is an insight those in charge of hospital systems cannot grasp, no matter how many times it's explained, with drawings.

A teacher of mine once remarked that you can always distinguish technical people from nontechnical people because at a certain point in certain conversations the technical people will run their hand over their head while sighing. Some of you did that when reading the above, didn't you?
 
TragicMonkey said:
We scan faxes into our EMR. As images. Probably everybody in this thread can see what's wrong with that, which is an insight those in charge of hospital systems cannot grasp, no matter how many times it's explained, with drawings.

A teacher of mine once remarked that you can always distinguish technical people from nontechnical people because at a certain point in certain conversations the technical people will run their hand over their head while sighing. Some of you did that when reading the above, didn't you?
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No.

That happened LONG ago. My usual "at work face" looks like this.

[IMGw=400]https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/65899666.jpg[/IMGw]
 
arthwollipot said:
We still technically provide a fax over IP function on our network. I am 90% certain that 0% of people use it.
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I work for a company that makes multi-function laser printers. One of the early pandemic-related component shortages we faced affected fax cards, so we redesigned some models to use an internet-based fax service. But, I was shocked at how many customers were insistent on having the fax included.
 
ZirconBlue said:
I work for a company that makes multi-function laser printers. One of the early pandemic-related component shortages we faced affected fax cards, so we redesigned some models to use an internet-based fax service. But, I was shocked at how many customers were insistent on having the fax included.
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Which is odd, because there are so many people to whom facts don’t matter! ;)

ETA: you should tell them “everyone is entitled to their own printer, but not to their own fax.”


Sent from my volcanic island lair using carrier pigeon.
 
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I think it was a medical service that insisted I send a form by fax, rather than email, even though I argued about it. I had to go to a printing shop to have that done. Real secure.
 
alfaniner said:
I think it was a medical service that insisted I send a form by fax, rather than email, even though I argued about it. I had to go to a printing shop to have that done. Real secure.
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If you have to do this again, there are some computer to fax services and you can generally sneak one or two in for free as a "test". I looked into this a couple of years ago just because I was curious.
 
alfaniner said:
I think it was a medical service that insisted I send a form by fax, rather than email, even though I argued about it. I had to go to a printing shop to have that done. Real secure.
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The whole "Faxes are more secure!" thing that the medical industry is so absolutely certain of boggles my goddamn mind.

I can tell you if an email was delivered. I can tell you when. I can tell you (sorta within a degree) when it was read. If its internal I can tell you when it was deleted, who it was forward to (in some cases.) I can encrypt it. I can recall it (again to a degree.)

A fax? I can tell you when it got sent, most of the time. After that all I can say is that it probably but not certainly printing out on a machine somewhere. I can tell you literally nothing else about it. It could have set on that output tray of the far end fax for weeks, it could have sat there in an unsecured location, it could have been copied, it could have been shredded, the cleaning guy could have read it, I have zero way of knowing.

And it's weird because if I told someone "When you get this e-mail print it out and just leave it laying around somewhere, I don't care where." they would immediately recognize how insane and unsecure that was but THAT'S LITERALLY AND EXACTLY WHAT A ******* FAX IS.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
The whole "Faxes are more secure!" thing that the medical industry is so absolutely certain of boggles my goddamn mind.

I can tell you if an email was delivered. I can tell you when. I can tell you (sorta within a degree) when it was read. If its internal I can tell you when it was deleted, who it was forward to (in some cases.) I can encrypt it. I can recall it (again to a degree.)

A fax? I can tell you when it got sent, most of the time. After that all I can say is that it probably but not certainly printing out on a machine somewhere. I can tell you literally nothing else about it. It could have set on that output tray of the far end fax for weeks, it could have sat there in an unsecured location, it could have been copied, it could have been shredded, the cleaning guy could have read it, I have zero way of knowing.

And it's weird because if I told someone "When you get this e-mail print it out and just leave it laying around somewhere, I don't care where." they would immediately recognize how insane and unsecure that was but THAT'S LITERALLY AND EXACTLY WHAT A ******* FAX IS.
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It was explained to me years ago that the faxes are secure because the fax machine is "in a restricted area" by which they mean a countertop which is passed hourly by dozens of nurses, doctors, patients, patients' visitors, techs, office staff, assistants, vendors, janitors, volunteers, helper monkeys, dwarves, elves, hobbits, He-Man and all the Masters of the Universe both in and out of their sold-separately vehicles. "Well, Nancy keeps an eye on it," they said. Nancy has one eye on her Sudoku and the other on Kevin's butt (which, to be fair, looks really good in scrubs). "If anybody wanders back here they're looking for drugs, not medical records" is the more honest if HIPAA-cringing reason.
 
Me: "Okay brain listen up because this is the last time I'm reminding you of this. When you remote onto a machine and make the session full screen, and you have to bring up task manager or something other command that uses CTRL-ALT-DEL you have to use the CTRL-ALT-DEL command in the remote access software, not the CTRL-ALT-DEL keystroke combo on your local workstation, because that will only be recognized by the local workstation."

My Brain: *Literally 10 seconds later* "Hahh CTRL-ALT-DEL go BBRRRRRRRR"
 
Wudang said:
Can't you just do CTRL-ALT-END? Works in mstsc.

But yeah my fingers have CTRL-ALT-DEL hardcoded in a buffer somewhere in my hand.
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Not in Screenconnect. If you do it just "CTRL-ALT-DEL's" your local workstation and CTRL-ALT-END doesn't seem to do anything. There's a function in the software to send the CTRL-ALT-DEL to the PC you are remoted into.

It wouldn't be as much of an issue but for some reason if I really get into a task I have to maximize the screen and that makes my brain forget I'm not on my local workstation.
 
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I have kind of the opposite of this problem. I spend a bunch of time using RDP to connect to several different servers, and so I've gotten used to doing CTRL-ALT-END. It isn't uncommon for me to do CTRL-ALT-END on my local machine and spend a few seconds wondering why nothing happens before I remember I'm on a local session instead of remote.
 
JimOfAllTrades said:
I have kind of the opposite of this problem. I spend a bunch of time using RDP to connect to several different servers, and so I've gotten used to doing CTRL-ALT-END. It isn't uncommon for me to do CTRL-ALT-END on my local machine and spend a few seconds wondering why nothing happens before I remember I'm on a local session instead of remote.
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I'm like that too.
 
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