Xref: utzoo news.groups:22673 alt.fax:793 comp.misc:9646
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!pcrat!rick
From: rick@pcrat.uucp (Rick Richardson)
Newsgroups: news.groups,alt.fax,comp.misc
Subject: Re: why is fax alt?
Keywords: FAX server, Netware 2.15
Message-ID: <1990Jul25.111119.4538@pcrat.uucp>
Date: 25 Jul 90 11:11:19 GMT
References: <17120@haddock.ima.isc.com> <1990Jul20.051009.24759@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <3423@ursa-major.SPDCC.COM> <1990Jul24.221621.2509@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
Reply-To: rick@pcrat.UUCP (Rick Richardson)
Organization: PC Research, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ
Lines: 66

In article <1990Jul24.221621.2509@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
>In article <3423@ursa-major.SPDCC.COM> eli@ursa-major.spdcc.COM (Steve Elias) writes:
>>hey now!  computerfax ain't environmentally destructive, unless you 
>>think phone calls destroy the environment.  with computerfax, nothing has
>>to be printed unless you like the way it previews on your workstation.
>>and voila -- a thermal-paper tree is saved.

>Sure, but why go to all that trouble to raise the cost of email from $0.0025
>(batched transmission) to $2.50 (long distance call)?

I'd get a new LD carrier.  AT&T's rates are no more than .25/minute
peak to USA, .15/minute off peak to USA, .65/minute off peak to Europe.
You can move at least 1 page at those rates, or 2-3 pages for twice that.
It gets there (anywhere), reliably.  But, there's no 'r'(reply) key,
which is FAX-as-EMAIL's biggest drawback.

Since I'm not likely to send two items to the same place at the same
time, the EMAIL phone call would cost the same as FAX.  It wins big
if I've got lots of pages to send, and loses big if I've got a
newspaper clipping to send.

>Fax is what you do when you're too lazy to hack the politics of making email
>work right.

Within any particular company, it is possible to get it to work right.
Including moving more than just text.  As soon as you go outside that
realm, you have no control.

IMHO & experience, the entire system we have using UUCP & the
Internet as transport, domain addresses, and all the currently
used mailers need to be tossed out.  The addresses are unparseable
by humans.  The headers get mangled in twisty little passages,
all different (so much for the 'r' key).  The transport is
flaky at best, downright unreliable at worst.  To continue to
hack on this system will insure the stagnation of EMAIL.

Its not just the politics that make EMAIL faulty.  Its the
technology, too.  EMAIL needs to step back to square one,
and suffer through childhood again, in order to emerge as
a fully functioning adult.

To be fair, G3 FAX has many warts that are being addressed
by standards hacking.  I don't put much stock in this
approach, either.  The installed base of ~12 million in
USA isn't going to change anytime soon.

I think both systems will be saddled with the past for a
long time to come (probably until death).

I think the next major advance won't happen until ISDN
connectivity starts to snowball.  You buy a hypothetical
I-MAIL box, that comes in standalone, SCSI, and Ethernet
flavors.  Does everything that FAX and EMAIL do today,
plus everything we thought they could do.  And with any
luck, the standards for the box won't be cast in concrete
until the last possible moment before the explosion. Oh
yeah, it can't cost any more than the tip the US mailperson
expects at year end (currently $1000). :-)

-Rick

-- 
Rick Richardson | Looking for FAX software for UNIX/386 ??? Ask About: |Mention
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