Re: Fax machines
 

I have a medication which I have to take permanently. When the refills run out I call the doctor. He sends a message to my pharmacy by computer which includes authorization for 5 more refills. When the pharmacy have filled the prescription they leave a voice mail message on my phone that it's ready for pickup.

Re: Fax machines
 

Pharmacies are not only used in human medicine. We write scripts for our animal patients. Why on earth would I want to invest the time and money in replacing our practice management software (Electronic Medical Record system) with one that ties in to a pharmacy network? I'm already scripting out the medication, a sale we would normally make in-house in our own pharmacy. The fax machine works just fine for us, especially as we just "print to fax" which creates a fax and sends via our fax machine.
I'm not aware of any veterinary practice management software that interfaces directly with a pharmacy network, nor do I have any intention of making a switch to one that does. I can't imagine that being a selling point.

On the animal side of medicine, I don't see the fax machine going anywhere for a long time.

http://img.memecdn.com/fax-i-give_o_698833.jpg

Re: Fax machines
 

I had never used a fax machine until I came to Canada.

Re: Fax machines
 

Some financial institutions in the UK still only use faxes or post, especially if you are an overseas customer.

Re: Fax machines
 

Faxes are way less secure than e-mail, any moron can spoof the sending number, how many calls do you get a day that claim to be from number X and it's someone in India trying to con you? Now if I can get into your SMTP I can spoof any e-mail address I want, but even basic SMTP implementations don't allow you to do that without a username and password.

Not that I disagree with your general comments about e-mail, one of my pet peeves are people who use webmail without SSL certificates, which Exchange and Office 365 force you to have, but various open source programs don't. The problem is that TLS and SSL do put an overhead on the server but seriously nowadays with how fast computers are, who cares?

Faxes though overall are way less secure. There are various ways of spoofing sending and receiving numbers and intercepting them over-the-wire.

Re: Fax machines
 

I just went to the doctor and asked them why they did it that way and they said for new prescriptions for scheduled substances they have to do it that way for some reason. Didn't really get a good answer as to what that reason was. They can do refills and non-scheduled substances electronically.

Re: Fax machines
 

From my new play, Service Economy USA:

"Mom, dad, you know all that money you spent on sending me to Trump University to get a Bachelor's Degree in Photocopying and Toner Cartridge Management and the tens of thousands of dollars I built up in student loans?"

"Yes son?"

"Well I've just gotten a job at Mega-Corp USA. I've been appointed the Vice-President of Fax Machine Operations."

"Does it come with health insurance?"

"Yes, $5,000 deductible and a $50 co-pay on prescriptions."

"You done good son."

"Maybe one day I'll be promoted to Executive Vice-President of Fax Machine Operations, then they'll let me change the toner. Or maybe even Vice-President of Corporate Twitter Account Communications."

"You can dream son, you can dream."

Re: Fax machines
 

The "From" header on any email can be spoofed incredibly easily too. Without some form of DKIM/SPF for the sender's domain that is validated by the receiver the receiver can't be sure it actually came from them.

Whilst I agree that for the web TLS should be standard and common practice, the termination of it is still incredibly CPU heavy and bound. The overhead to each transaction is crazy on a large-scale application.

Re: Fax machines
 

True and seeing as I'm just setting up SPF validation of one of my domains I should have mentioned that. :lol:

Re: Fax machines
 

We get pretty confidential stuff regularly faxed to the office. I had to send some paperwork to an insurance company whilst at work. They didn't use email, they told me to fax it (Geico). Can't say I'm really bothered about such things though. I find the wide use of cheques and old spice products on supermarket shelves weirder than the use of fax machines.

Re: Fax machines
 

I still found it crazy that when I bought a car from a dealer in another state I handed over a cashiers check for the balance and drove it away without them doing any sort of validation on it - in the UK nobody in their right mind would let you drive a car away without cleared funds!

Re: Fax machines
 

I handed over a personal cheque and they let me drive off the forecourt LOL.

Re: Fax machines
 

I guess they could have phoned the bank and made sure it was genuine... But as to the funds, a cashiers check guarantees it. (if it is genuine!)

Re: Fax machines
 

I took all of our fax machines out and threw them in the dumpster five years ago.

We had a boat load of the damn things. it was like walking into a 1980s episode of Dallas.

Lots of wailing at the time, but not one single issue since.

Re: Fax machines
 

You do not need to know the SMTP server to spoof an email address. sigh.


Sounds like a super secure setup :unsure:. Whilst SPF is important, it is just the very, VERY basics. It verifies a DOMAIN not an email address. It is merely a record that identifies which mail servers are permitted to send email on behalf of your domain.
Seriously, and I mean seriously. If you are responsible for your companies email then please hire a consultant. This is much more complicated than you surmise.