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While I agree in the business world. The medical world still relies heavily on faxes - the reason being accessibility, simplicity and above all else - staunch reliability. For all the problems with faxes in general, there's still a degree of certainty that sending a fax will more often than not, just work. Also these exist:  (Just search ebay for usb fax)
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Aug 4, 2016 10:09
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Obsolete and decaying storage formats are the crisis issue for contemporary archivists, combined with the ease of deleting information. It takes hard work to search several filing cabinets' worth of paper to find all trace of the documents you want to destroy. It's trivial to throw away a PowerPoint after its use is over. It's not just archivists who are worried about this. It's a pain in the rear end for historians too. I was trying to do some research at a museum archive and one of the collections was microfilm only. One of the reels was missing the beginning and then it got jammed onto the spindle so they had to call the maintenance company to unfuck the thing which apparently took a couple weeks.
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Aug 4, 2016 10:21
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Microform is probably one of the better long-term archival methods (at least for text) we have though. It doesn't deteriorate if stored properly, it's probably the highest density analog storage medium, and all you need to read it is a light source and a magnifier so we can read it even after the apocalypse when all computers are gone.
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Aug 4, 2016 10:34
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Squish posted:While I agree in the business world. The medical world still relies heavily on faxes - the reason being accessibility, simplicity and above all else - staunch reliability. For all the problems with faxes in general, there's still a degree of certainty that sending a fax will more often than not, just work. Possibly in the more technological backwards parts of the world like amerikah. Here in glorious Scandinavia everything is digital.
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Aug 4, 2016 10:51
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Boiled Water posted:Possibly in the more technological backwards parts of the world like amerikah. Here in glorious Scandinavia everything is digital. Yeah but having had to use both public and private healthcare providers quite a bit in the past few years, nothing works.
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Aug 4, 2016 12:49
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Jerry Cotton posted:Yeah but having had to use both public and private healthcare providers quite a bit in the past few years, nothing works. Having worked in the healthcare system in the US for the last 13+ years, I can tell you that the digital age is still a distant dream. For the most part, medical records have to be printed and mailed (or, yes, faxed). I can access most of the records I need digitally, but the insurance companies aren't interested in making it easy to receive them that way.
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Aug 4, 2016 18:52
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Mister Kingdom posted:Having worked in the healthcare system in the US for the last 13+ years, I can tell you that the digital age is still a distant dream. Oh we have digital transfer of medical records. Only thing is, one place has a fixed-length field of, let's say, 9999 characters, and the municipal fuckshit system has the same field that's limited to 3 or so characters. You see it all works out because of capitalism!
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Aug 4, 2016 21:02
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Collateral Damage posted:Microform is probably one of the better long-term archival methods (at least for text) we have though. It doesn't deteriorate if stored properly, it's probably the highest density analog storage medium, and all you need to read it is a light source and a magnifier so we can read it even after the apocalypse when all computers are gone. The problem is that a lot of the photography for the archival move to microfiche wasn't done as carefully as it should have been, and that the paper originals (esp. newspapers) were destroyed when the photography was done. The archiving actually wound up degrading the quality of the information.  Speaking of QR codes, my local quilting store was selling QR codes that you could attach to your 'heirloom' quilt so that future generations could see more information about you, the quilt, and so on. Bets that that QR code's target will still exist in 50 years?
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Aug 4, 2016 21:14
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Arsenic Lupin posted:The problem is that a lot of the photography for the archival move to microfiche wasn't done as carefully as it should have been, and that the paper originals (esp. newspapers) were destroyed when the photography was done. The archiving actually wound up degrading the quality of the information. It doesn't exist now 
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Aug 4, 2016 21:17
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Mister Kingdom posted:Having worked in the healthcare system in the US for the last 13+ years, I can tell you that the digital age is still a distant dream. Well yeah if you gently caress up the paperwork they can reject the claim!
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Aug 4, 2016 21:18
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Tunicate posted:Well yeah if you gently caress up the paperwork they can reject the claim! You don't know the 1/1000th of it.
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Aug 4, 2016 21:37
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Speaking of QR codes, my local quilting store was selling QR codes that you could attach to your 'heirloom' quilt so that future generations could see more information about you, the quilt, and so on. Bets that that QR code's target will still exist in 50 years? Well, you could embed the information in the code itself, as long as it wasn't too detailed. 
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Aug 4, 2016 23:50
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spog posted:Well, you could embed the information in the code itself, as long as it wasn't too detailed. 
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Aug 4, 2016 23:59
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Business cards with embedded NFC chips could be even more convenient.
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Aug 5, 2016 00:00
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Mister Kingdom posted:Having worked in the healthcare system in the US for the last 13+ years, I can tell you that the digital age is still a distant dream. It is improving though. Now whenever I go to specialists in the same hospital network all of my records are available across different practices. So when I went a pulmonologist recently they were able to pull a scanned x-ray of my lungs from an emergency room visit 5 years previously. It does work best when there's vertical integration though (i.e. practices all belonging to the same hospital or where insurance/hospital are owned by the same company).
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Aug 5, 2016 01:14
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:It's not just archivists who are worried about this. It's a pain in the rear end for historians too. I was trying to do some research at a museum archive and one of the collections was microfilm only. One of the reels was missing the beginning and then it got jammed onto the spindle so they had to call the maintenance company to unfuck the thing which apparently took a couple weeks. Just today I met with a historical society whose entire internal collection was microfilmed five years ago, then their reader promptly broke. There isn't anyone in the region who can fix it. I'm probably going to just convince them to let me do it for free (or a case of beer).
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Aug 5, 2016 01:16
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Imagined posted:Business cards with embedded NFC chips could be even more convenient. If I have to give someone a business card, of all things, with an NFC chip in it, you can bet your bottom dollar it's going to contain goatse and nothing but.
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Aug 5, 2016 12:22
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joshtothemaxx posted:Just today I met with a historical society whose entire internal collection was microfilmed five years ago, then their reader promptly broke. There isn't anyone in the region who can fix it. I'm probably going to just convince them to let me do it for free (or a case of beer). Why would you use microfilm in 2011? That's taking the 'historical' part a bit too seriously
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Aug 5, 2016 13:06
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Imagined posted:Business cards with embedded NFC chips could be even more convenient. Sure, until you get extremely ballsy dudes networking at talks and handing out false business cards that contain ransomware.
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Aug 5, 2016 13:13
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Collateral Damage posted:Microform is probably one of the better long-term archival methods (at least for text) we have though. It doesn't deteriorate if stored properly, it's probably the highest density analog storage medium, and all you need to read it is a light source and a magnifier so we can read it even after the apocalypse when all computers are gone. All things being equal I'd agree. The problem here wasn't the microfilm itself but the technology needed to actually use the stuff.
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Aug 5, 2016 18:16
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Another funny Techmoan entry, this time about format-to-format adapters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppo3IgHWDzA
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Aug 5, 2016 22:50
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Mister Kingdom posted:Another funny Techmoan entry, this time about format-to-format adapters. I was a little disappointed he didn't daisy chain the MP3 adapter in the 8-Track adapter.
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Aug 6, 2016 00:16
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Goober Peas posted:I was a little disappointed he didn't daisy chain the MP3 adapter in the 8-Track adapter. He did?
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Aug 6, 2016 00:40
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spog posted:Why would you use microfilm in 2011? They had paper records going back over a century and just got a preservation grant. It was easier for them to just have it all microfilmed.
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Aug 6, 2016 00:54
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Jerry Cotton posted:He did? He did. Absolutely. I always wanted to make a wacky "Pro audio" color box that interfaced 2 tape heads. I think Rupert Neve made something like that.
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Aug 6, 2016 01:35
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The Ape of Naples posted:He did. Absolutely. Yeah it was a rhetorical question 
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Aug 6, 2016 01:43
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spog posted:Why would you use microfilm in 2011? It's archival and anyone can make a reader using a microscope and projector. I can hit the film with a hammer and still read it. Try reading from a HDD that you've smashed with a hammer and bent a platter. It's slow and awkward, but it doesn't fail. I still miss card catalogs at the library. They don't break and you can walk the stacks with your fingers. PALS was pretty good, but the new fancy systems are too much like shopping on Amazon. Too many suggestions and interstitial content. At least, that's what the library I take my kids to is like.
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Aug 6, 2016 05:36
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Microfilm is also very difficult to tamper with after it's exposed & developed, which is why it's still required for government record keeping and businesses/entities that have to meet government record keeping standards. It isn't typically used as a primary means of storing/archiving information, but rather as a tamper-proof backup of records should questions be raised about the authenticity of digital copies.
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Aug 7, 2016 06:24
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Also the general rule is that microfilm survives for about 500 years. That's a slight bit longer than a hard drive or an HDD at this point.
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Aug 7, 2016 09:05
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mostlygray is right. I smashed my HDD with a hammer, and now it doesn't work anymore. I know correlation does not imply causation, but still.
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Aug 7, 2016 22:20
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Dick Trauma posted:I like to tell people that the fax predates telephones. Blows their mind. There's that Achewood strip where the punchline goes something like "No, I haven't got a fax machine. I also don't have an Apple II, polio or a falcon." That strip is ten years old already.
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Aug 8, 2016 00:09
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I've seen a meme along the same lines which goes "No I can't fax you because of where I live." "Where do you live?" "In the twenty-first century."
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Aug 8, 2016 01:01
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I worked at a brand new hospital built by a regional chain a couple of years ago as the local IT guy. When we opened, the ER was getting medical data from ambulances via wireless fax. If it didn't work perfectly, I would get complaints. I kept trying to explain its a terrible technology for that, what with having no error checking and being vulnerable to signal loss or line noise. Didn't matter. I spent way more time then I should have tweaking fax machine settings to try and get everything perfect.
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Aug 8, 2016 01:27
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mostlygray posted:I still miss card catalogs at the library. They don't break and you can walk the stacks with your fingers. PALS was pretty good, but the new fancy systems are too much like shopping on Amazon. Too many suggestions and interstitial content. At least, that's what the library I take my kids to is like.
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Aug 8, 2016 01:29
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Everybody misses the tactility of card catalogs, but nobody misses going out there when an author dies, pulling every single card from author, subject, and title, and typing in the death date. I still remember Grace Livingston Hill's death with horror. Then there was the joy, and everybody in the biz has done it at least once, of dropping a drawer when you've taken the rod out and watching the cards spill out into entropy. Basically, card catalogs provided sensory feedback -- including, importantly, the dark brown edge that said "a lot of people have looked this up" -- at the cost of enormous human labor. Librarians don't miss card catalogs at all, any more than census scientists miss Hollerith cards. She died in 1947. You must be the loving oldest Homestuck fan ever.
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Aug 8, 2016 01:39
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Arivia posted:She died in 1947. You must be the loving oldest Homestuck fan ever. Holy poo poo good catch!
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Aug 8, 2016 01:44
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We let people waive their practical exam for recertifying with us if they can prove they have at least 1000 hours as the designated crane operator over the past 5 years, so we have an hours verification form that can be printed off our website and sent in via email or fax, or we can send them a copy (either physical or electronic) to fill out. This past week, a guy called asking if we had gotten his form in after he mailed it a week ago. Turns out he doesn't even have internet access and for some reason couldn't or wouldn't fax it, so his only option was snail mail both ways. He begrudgingly agreed to fax it to us after we told him that his form never arrived. He did read off our address wrong when telling us where he sent it, but then denied having done so and insisted that he had it right all along. I'm wondering if he just sent it to 4911 instead of 4011 and didn't want to admit it.
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Aug 8, 2016 02:53
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Completely off topic, but I wish my company would do something like that. I hate giving up a Saturday to take the recert course every 5 years.. Plus the fact that we do absolutely ZERO wire rope cranes, all mobie boom cranes with sheetrock/material forks, yet the course deals with 95% wire ropes and slinging, which we also do zero of. Then, at the end is a 5 minute practical which consists of picking a pallet off the truck, setting it on the ground, picking it back up, and setting it back on the truck.
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Aug 8, 2016 03:17
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If someone isn't able to follow the instructions or has an error filling out something as critical as a shipping address, isn't that proof enough that the test should be required?
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Aug 8, 2016 03:48
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Sentient Data posted:If someone isn't able to follow the instructions or has an error filling out something as critical as a shipping address, isn't that proof enough that the test should be required? The practical exam is an operating exam. Basically an obstacle course with a crane hook.
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Aug 8, 2016 04:04
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