don't you want the poor student go to school?

[Shalom]

his fax machine will not accept computer-sent faxes..

So he says, anyway.

I fail to see how this is possible. There's no way the receiving machine can tell what's sending to it, whether it's an actual facsimile machine, a computer with a fax-modem, or one of those all-in-one machines, which can both act as a stand-alone fax machine AND as a print-to-fax gateway for a computer. As long as the signal meets the specification, it should go through. Even if the machine at the other end can't handle anything faster than, say, 1200 baud, the sending machine should still be able to handshake at the reduced speed without user intervention.

Also might I remind the audience of www.tpc.int.

[Andara Bledin]

So he says, anyway.

I fail to see how this is possible.

It really shouldn't be, but not only is it possible, it's something businesses that fax regularly run into fairly often.

For whatever reason, some older machines or particularly cheap ones won't handshake with newer ones. Or the newer ones won't recognize the older ones. Not sure where the problem lies, but I run into it often enough.

I've also run into issues, mostly with the computer based fax system we have, where an older machines receives the fax just fine, but the closing handshake fails so even though the fax went through, our side spits out a failure notice. >_< If you ever get the same fax three times in a row, about a minute apart or so, don't blame the sender for being a nitwit - it's likely that the systems didn't agree that it went through, so their side did it's programmed number of tries (3 seems to be the most common default) then spits out a failure, despite it having been successful on every attempt.

^-.-^

[morgana]

me: I have to ask, why did you call us, why not get him to go to Fedex or Office Max?
FU: he is a poor student, don't you want him to get an education? Other libraries allow me to fax to them. This just for one student, you can afford that.

I hate hate hate hate HATE people who use guilt trips like that.

I'm afraid that someday I'm going to respond to something like that with, "If you're so concerned about the student that you're willing to guilt-trip a perfect stranger over it, then surely you're concerned enough to pay for the fax yourself! Oh, and a cab to get him to Office Max or Kinkos! And his books! And . . ."

And I'd get hung up on. And/or fired . . .

[depechemodefan]

I just hate that people try to make the library into some social service center. There are people who want to use the phone, and I tell them "no" no matter what. Before when we had courtesy phones, either people will make drug deals, or try to get a job, or if no one is waiting they will stay on the phone for a long time.

Or people don't get why they can't watch porn on our computers. Or why they can't eat their fried chicken while on the computer.

Then there are people who get bent out of shape because we don't have free parking for the disabled (ie, themselves).

That woman was the icing on the cake. If the student coudln't make the deadline for this semester, there is always next semester. And why is it someone's fault becomes our concern?

[Moon]

The answer to both questions (no porn and no fried chicken) is the same... nobody wants to use a gooey keyboard after they're done with it!

I'm surprised Sheldon didn't find this first...

[Rosakala]

Until the internet can become completely secure, I don't think faxes will die off completely. The IRS will not under any circumstances email anybody their information. We will fax it to you, but you must be right there to receive it.

And I've worked with someone who had one of those documents scanned into her computer that could fax it to us via her email. While it came through it was completely unreadable. She was none too thrilled when I told her "sorry can't help you." Also oftentimes when e try to fax to ones of those computer ones it doesn't take. Granted that's likely because our fax machines are pretty old.