One would think that the world would go 100% computer/online/cloud whatever for record keeping and what-not right?
My view? No (no I don't need Tarder Sauce - a.k.a. Grumpy Cat to show you that ;) ). There are many industries and professions that can attest to that.
1). Accounting - yes you still need itemized receipts - plus your taxes...
2). Education - even computer science classes use paper and pencil for exams.
3). Even traffic cops give you a paper ticket - no they can't email it :ded:
who else? you name it.
Thoughts?
-Contracts, at least those with units of government still require a handwritten signature by all parties involved
-Final plan sets, at least in Wisconsin, the PE must stamp the title sheet and sign on or near said stamp
All three of the things mentioned could in theory be done electronically. Some stores already give you the option of having your receipt emailed to you. Taking an exam on a computer is 1980s technology. Traffic violations are already often stored digitally on the back end, it would be possible to design a front end system for that as well.
The reason for continuing to require paper in a lot of these cases is because allowing it to be done digitally makes it a lot easier to forge the document, and for some important things that ease of forgery may be unacceptable.
With regards to giving out your email address you also then have the problem that you enable the store to send you spam as well as your receipt.
Nonetheless, while there are certainly things which won't go paperless in the near future, never say never. Issues with securing, validating, and transmitting this information are challenges, but not things that make it impossible.
Syllabuses at school :-D
But basically, anything that would require a signature. Contracts, forms, syllabuses, you name it.
Voting should require a paper trail. Thanks, Repub-a-dub-dubs!
Quote from: adventurernumber1 on September 29, 2014, 12:59:04 AM
Syllabuses at school :-D
But basically, anything that would require a signature. Contracts, forms, syllabuses, you name it.
Ha! I only received digital copies of mine this semester. The professors pulled them up on the computer (our rooms have wall sized flat screen monitors) and went through them that way.
iPhone
It's kind of funny how much paper is used at my workplace, which is a casino:
When you cash out of a machine, it prints a ticket out with a barcode. This barcode is just a lookup number to a database with all of the tickets in it. When you redeem the ticket somewhere it marks it as redeemed so it can't be paid out twice. This makes sense to be done on paper because, while EFT to and from the player card system is possible, not everyone is willing to get a card. The ticket acts as an analogue to cash.
Where it gets screwy is jackpots. A slot attendant creates a record of the jackpot in the accounting system–so far so good, all electronic. Then the attendant fills out a form, on paper, by hand, with the patron's name, social security number, etc. This is taken to an attendant station that generates a paper copy of the accounting system record, in carbon-copy triplicate, which is physically signed by three or four employees (depending on how large the payout is). An IRS form W-2G and W-9 are created, signed by the patron, scanned, and destroyed. The cashier retains a copy of the triplicate form, which is the only record that a particular cashier paid a particular jackpot.
At end of shift the cashier gets a total of all tickets redeemed by them from a paper-printout report, then manually totals all of the jackpot triplicate forms with an adding machine. They also calculate all chips redeemed and keno tickets paid and sold, and all of these are filled in on a form which closely resembles a D&D character sheet in terms of layout and complexity and clearly originated on Microsoft Excel, but is filled out by hand, on paper. The whole shebang is then added up and subtracted from the opening drawer impressment to get a result that should equal the balance of the cashier's bank–all done on an adding machine and the totals duly recorded on the form, which is then signed twice.
There's little reason the system couldn't associate the jackpot payouts with the cashier login, add up all the ticket and jackpot payouts, grab the keno balance from the keno system, and fill out the end-of-shift form and electronically submit it to accounting. All that would have to be done manually is chips. But the system isn't designed to do that, and the exist system works well enough, so why fuss with making the computers do all the work that the humans are doing?
When I worked at a commercial laundry they used paperwork to let them know how much product we handled each two hours. If we reached, lets say, the quota that they had for us within the two hour period, we were at 100 percent production. If we went over the percentage got higher and if we dropped below it the percentage, of course, went below one hundred.
That was their way for the big boys on top in corporate to make sure that no one was gold bricking.
At my present job, paperwork is a must as we handle charge cards along with cash. We still need the paper for the owner to sign on when using debit or credit because its a restaurant.
There's probably nothing that can't be done electronically.
Some of it may be limited as to various state laws regarding actual vs. electronic signatures.
Some may depend on the various ages of people involved...overall, if the majority of people with officer positions are younger, they will have an easier time converting their companies' paperwork to electronic formats.
Over time you will see less and less done on paper. But sometimes, it's hard to completely transfer over to an electronic age. The IRS requires Tax Preparation firms to submit the 1040s and other various tax forms via electronic format. But I have to physically sign a piece of paper stating I authorize them to do that.
My office uses way too much paper. There's ways to eliminate it, but when the bosses are still living in the dinosaur age, it's a struggle. I've been able to assist in eliminating *some* paper, but I've learned to take baby steps when doing so.
Legal Documents.
Quote from: jeffandnicole on September 29, 2014, 09:11:22 AM
There's probably nothing that can't be done electronically.
Wanna bet?
Illinois Department of Public Health requires original signatures on all plans and documents with respect to asbestos removal to ensure no one is using fake documents.
A professional engineer seal must be on paper, and must be original for most plans and documents which require them.
Paper, contrary to what some in Silicon Valley tell us, will always be with us.
Quote from: PHLBOS on September 29, 2014, 10:16:55 AM
Legal Documents.
Depends on what they are. The federal courts use electronic filing for many documents. The attorney's username and password are deemed to constitute an "electronic signature." The signature block at the end of a motion or brief will either have just "/s/" or the longer "/s/ [Name of attorney]" on the signature line, depending on which format the local rules require.
It's all a case of what local laws and rules require. Notarizations, for example, traditionally required a raised seal, but many jurisdictions have done away with that in favor of a stamp. My wife is a notary in two jurisdictions and both now make the raised seal optional but require a stamp that will be legible when scanned or photocopied (regardless of whether a raised seal is used). Of course, for federal purposes the notarization is generally no longer required because of 28 USC 1746 (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/1746). Some states have enacted similar statutes.
Regarding school exams, I took several law school exams using a laptop. Some professors gave open-book exams, so they had no issues with allowing laptops. Other professors who gave closed-book exams required the use of "virtual bluebook" software; I think it was called "Examinator." It essentially locked you out of access to anything on your PC other than that particular application while you were running it, and it even suppressed the display of your Windows wallpaper to avoid the possibility of a sneaky student making a "cheat-sheet wallpaper."
When I took the Virginia bar exam, the examiners allowed typewriters (thankfully, in a SEPARATE ROOM from the rest of us!!!!!) but did not allow computers. I have no idea what the current procedure is. The bigger thing I recall is that we had to wear traditional business attire (suit and tie for men) to "promote decorum" but were asked to wear rubber-soled shoes (sneakers were OK) so as to minimize the noise of shoe soles on the tile floors. "Promote decorum" my arse. Did they think if we dressed casually we'd be shooting spitballs during the exam? :rolleyes:
Quote from: 1995hoo on September 29, 2014, 12:15:23 PM
Quote from: PHLBOS on September 29, 2014, 10:16:55 AM
Legal Documents.
Depends on what they are. The federal courts use electronic filing for many documents. The attorney's username and password are deemed to constitute an "electronic signature." The signature block at the end of a motion or brief will either have just "/s/" or the longer "/s/ [Name of attorney]" on the signature line, depending on which format the local rules require.
While such may be the case, I can't imagine for one minute that a printed, hard-copy copy of said-documents aren't kept
on-hand just in case the electronic storage gets hacked or the server has a meltdown. Especially given the subject nature of those documents (i.e. evidence).
A lot of the resistance to moving to electronics is older people who are used to paper, organizations not wanting to spend money on upgrades, or businesses proving themselves incapable of creating secure devices because that would interfere with the ability to add bells and whistles that make them look "cool".
Let's take voting for example. There is no reason a voting machine can't be made secure... but it would require several design/development changes from what we have now. First, the firmware should be on a separate chip that cannot be written to for any reason; firmware updates would require replacing the chip. Further, both the chip the memory for storing vote counts (where each vote should be read-only upon being cast) should be in a locked compartment within the machine. Finally, the machine would not allow any form of user input beyond casting ballots. Votes would be counted by inserting a card into the machine, after which it would either display the totals, or send the results to a centralized device via a custom-built network protocol that allows the machines to send the counts while receiving no incoming network packets of any kind (not even an IP address). The counting machine would be similarly secured to only receive counts from genuine voting machines and display the totals. Additionally, the software and hardware would undergo rigorous review and security audits from a non-partisan organization before being deployed.
Quote from: vdeane on September 29, 2014, 02:41:33 PM
Let's take voting for example. There is no reason a voting machine can't be made secure... but it would require several design/development changes from what we have now. First, the firmware should be on a separate chip that cannot be written to for any reason; firmware updates would require replacing the chip. Further, both the chip the memory for storing vote counts (where each vote should be read-only upon being cast) should be in a locked compartment within the machine. Finally, the machine would not allow any form of user input beyond casting ballots. Votes would be counted by inserting a card into the machine, after which it would either display the totals, or send the results to a centralized device via a custom-built network protocol that allows the machines to send the counts while receiving no incoming network packets of any kind (not even an IP address). The counting machine would be similarly secured to only receive counts from genuine voting machines and display the totals. Additionally, the software and hardware would undergo rigorous review and security audits from a non-partisan organization before being deployed.
There's still a single point of failure. With paper ballots, you can always go in after the fact and do a recount from the start. Destroying paper is likely enough to leave some sort of physical trace to make the assclowns think twice. With a computer, it may be difficult to cock up the vote, but it's still possible and would be much more likely to leave no trace.
Quote from: Brandon on September 29, 2014, 12:04:13 PM
Quote from: jeffandnicole on September 29, 2014, 09:11:22 AM
There's probably nothing that can't be done electronically.
Wanna bet?
Illinois Department of Public Health requires original signatures on all plans and documents with respect to asbestos removal to ensure no one is using fake documents.
A professional engineer seal must be on paper, and must be original for most plans and documents which require them.
Paper, contrary to what some in Silicon Valley tell us, will always be with us.
Like I said, this is all required because it's probably the law. Laws can be changed. Some states have already moved in this direction regarding officials seals and such.
Quote from: NE2 on September 29, 2014, 06:00:26 PM
There's still a single point of failure. With paper ballots, you can always go in after the fact and do a recount from the start. Destroying paper is likely enough to leave some sort of physical trace to make the assclowns think twice. With a computer, it may be difficult to cock up the vote, but it's still possible and would be much more likely to leave no trace.
A fire could destroy the ballots. Numerous recounts can and do come up with different totals each time. Get a few people together, and ballots can suddenly go missing or not get counted. There's several ways paper ballots can be compromised.
Quote from: jeffandnicole on September 29, 2014, 06:51:03 PM
A fire could destroy the ballots. Numerous recounts can and do come up with different totals each time. Get a few people together, and ballots can suddenly go missing or not get counted. There's several ways paper ballots can be compromised.
In all those cases, you know something's wrong, and can hold a redo election if necessary. Electronic records can be changed without any traces (even if it's not as simple as just editing a file).
Quote from: jeffandnicole on September 29, 2014, 06:51:03 PM
Some states have already moved in this direction regarding officials seals and such.
You could even call it a baby club of electronic seals.
Quote from: Duke87 on September 29, 2014, 12:52:41 AM
Traffic violations are already often stored digitally on the back end, it would be possible to design a front end system for that as well.
I believe the NJ State Police are now printing tickets directly in their cars (a receipt of sorts), rather than the old hand completed tickets. Not paperless, but getting closer.
Quote from: jeffandnicole on September 29, 2014, 06:51:03 PM
Quote from: NE2 on September 29, 2014, 06:00:26 PM
There's still a single point of failure. With paper ballots, you can always go in after the fact and do a recount from the start. Destroying paper is likely enough to leave some sort of physical trace to make the assclowns think twice. With a computer, it may be difficult to cock up the vote, but it's still possible and would be much more likely to leave no trace.
A fire could destroy the ballots. Numerous recounts can and do come up with different totals each time. Get a few people together, and ballots can suddenly go missing or not get counted. There's several ways paper ballots can be compromised.
Of course, even paper ballots get tampered with in Cook County, Illinois.
Brandon misses the point. Tampering with paper ballots can be detected, even if the originals cannot be restored.
Quote from: NE2 on September 29, 2014, 09:35:59 PM
Brandon misses the point. Tampering with paper ballots can be detected, even if the originals cannot be restored.
Well, they went to paper ballots after the voting machines had their wheels tampered with. Even then, in the last Cook County board election, boxes of ballots from NW Cook were found to be open upon reaching the Loop after they were sealed at their precincts.
SPUI, you're dealing with professionals here, not the amateurs you have in Florida.
Anyone with a personal PKI cert (IdenTrust, DoD CAC, etc.) can easily sign documents electronically using Acrobat. We do it all the time at work. There's no reason something like that couldn't be used for the type of engineering drawings that legally require a signature/seal.
Quote from: 1995hoo on September 29, 2014, 12:15:23 PM
Quote from: PHLBOS on September 29, 2014, 10:16:55 AM
Legal Documents.
It's all a case of what local laws and rules require. Notarizations, for example, traditionally required a raised seal, but many jurisdictions have done away with that in favor of a stamp. My wife is a notary in two jurisdictions and both now make the raised seal optional but require a stamp that will be legible when scanned or photocopied (regardless of whether a raised seal is used). Of course, for federal purposes the notarization is generally no longer required because of 28 USC 1746 (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/1746). Some states have enacted similar statutes.
As the executor of a couple of estates, my letters testamentary required an
affixed seal, not just a raised one. I realize there are necessarily lots of obstacles to messing with estates, because we've all heard stories of deviousness in their execution, but this felt at least a little like an excuse for the county to charge me a few bucks every time I needed original identification.
Paper ballots can be tampered with as well.
Let's say there's 6 different offices up for grabs in an election. Voter takes his ballot, votes on 2 of them, and ignores the rest (happens all the time: rarely do the total votes add up to the same for all potential offices). Someone can later take that ballot and "vote" for someone for those other offices. Ballot looks legit, and the actual voter has no proof he did or did not vote for all 6 offices.
Quote from: jeffandnicole on September 29, 2014, 11:02:53 PM
Paper ballots can be tampered with as well.
Let's say there's 6 different offices up for grabs in an election. Voter takes his ballot, votes on 2 of them, and ignores the rest (happens all the time: rarely do the total votes add up to the same for all potential offices). Someone can later take that ballot and "vote" for someone for those other offices. Ballot looks legit, and the actual voter has no proof he did or did not vote for all 6 offices.
Yes, undetectable tampering can happen with paper ballots, but even in that case, if there's a strong suspicion that one of the workers went and cocked up the ballots, it may even be possible to detect due to pens not being perfectly equal, filling-in patterns, or something. At the very least, a landslide for a downballot candidate that is only found on a recount (since they'd have to be filled in after the polling-place scanning) would be cause to declare the results invalid and redo the voting with more controls in place.
Now picture the same thing happening with electronic voting. How many checks are not available because of the lack of paper trail?
Quote from: NE2 on September 30, 2014, 02:44:16 AM
Quote from: jeffandnicole on September 29, 2014, 11:02:53 PM
Paper ballots can be tampered with as well.
Let's say there's 6 different offices up for grabs in an election. Voter takes his ballot, votes on 2 of them, and ignores the rest (happens all the time: rarely do the total votes add up to the same for all potential offices). Someone can later take that ballot and "vote" for someone for those other offices. Ballot looks legit, and the actual voter has no proof he did or did not vote for all 6 offices.
Yes, undetectable tampering can happen with paper ballots, but even in that case, if there's a strong suspicion that one of the workers went and cocked up the ballots, it may even be possible to detect due to pens not being perfectly equal, filling-in patterns, or something. At the very least, a landslide for a downballot candidate that is only found on a recount (since they'd have to be filled in after the polling-place scanning) would be cause to declare the results invalid and redo the voting with more controls in place.
Now picture the same thing happening with electronic voting. How many checks are not available because of the lack of paper trail?
Didn't Diebold suggest a few years ago that they could manipulate their voting machines to create the outcome they wanted?
You can't use the Ipad for everything, you still need the paper for one thing. ;)
Quote from: Stephane Dumas on September 30, 2014, 12:37:28 PM
You can't use the Ipad for everything, you still need the paper for one thing. ;)
That's what the three shells are for. :bigass:
Probably not in the near future. Certain legally binding documents and stuff that needs archiving will want to stay on paper rather than go digital, since paper can stand the test of time much better than digital media.
Also, when voting having a paper trail is important. Despite talks of e-democracy and electronic voting we still do paper ballots here in Sweden, and all counting of votes, etc is done manually and open to the public. Personally I'm not a fan of electronic voting since it would be impossible to verify all hardware or software used, thus not guaranteeing my vote has been properly cast, as opposed to seeing my name being crossed off a list and my vote put in the ballot box which is visibly sealed.
Quote from: NE2 on September 29, 2014, 06:00:26 PM
Quote from: vdeane on September 29, 2014, 02:41:33 PM
Let's take voting for example. There is no reason a voting machine can't be made secure... but it would require several design/development changes from what we have now. First, the firmware should be on a separate chip that cannot be written to for any reason; firmware updates would require replacing the chip. Further, both the chip the memory for storing vote counts (where each vote should be read-only upon being cast) should be in a locked compartment within the machine. Finally, the machine would not allow any form of user input beyond casting ballots. Votes would be counted by inserting a card into the machine, after which it would either display the totals, or send the results to a centralized device via a custom-built network protocol that allows the machines to send the counts while receiving no incoming network packets of any kind (not even an IP address). The counting machine would be similarly secured to only receive counts from genuine voting machines and display the totals. Additionally, the software and hardware would undergo rigorous review and security audits from a non-partisan organization before being deployed.
There's still a single point of failure. With paper ballots, you can always go in after the fact and do a recount from the start. Destroying paper is likely enough to leave some sort of physical trace to make the assclowns think twice. With a computer, it may be difficult to cock up the vote, but it's still possible and would be much more likely to leave no trace.
I supposed you'd want to ensure that the chip/drive the data is one has a special connector so that it couldn't be plugged in to a general computer. If the votes can be hardware-locked as read-only once written, even better.
I'm sure there's refinements to be made to my idea. It's not like I spent more than 15 minutes on it.
Quote from: US71 on September 30, 2014, 09:27:57 AM
Quote from: NE2 on September 30, 2014, 02:44:16 AM
Quote from: jeffandnicole on September 29, 2014, 11:02:53 PM
Paper ballots can be tampered with as well.
Let's say there's 6 different offices up for grabs in an election. Voter takes his ballot, votes on 2 of them, and ignores the rest (happens all the time: rarely do the total votes add up to the same for all potential offices). Someone can later take that ballot and "vote" for someone for those other offices. Ballot looks legit, and the actual voter has no proof he did or did not vote for all 6 offices.
Yes, undetectable tampering can happen with paper ballots, but even in that case, if there's a strong suspicion that one of the workers went and cocked up the ballots, it may even be possible to detect due to pens not being perfectly equal, filling-in patterns, or something. At the very least, a landslide for a downballot candidate that is only found on a recount (since they'd have to be filled in after the polling-place scanning) would be cause to declare the results invalid and redo the voting with more controls in place.
Now picture the same thing happening with electronic voting. How many checks are not available because of the lack of paper trail?
Didn't Diebold suggest a few years ago that they could manipulate their voting machines to create the outcome they wanted?
I have no confidence that Diebold can design something truly secure. Most companies probably can't. The paradigms followed today are the inverse of what is needed. In order to have security, you need to follow the UNIX paradigm - the device/software does only one thing, but it does it very well. These days, we like to throw in everything and the kitchen sink, and then wonder why there a million ways for hackers to get in.
Quote from: Brandon on September 30, 2014, 12:40:19 PM
Quote from: Stephane Dumas on September 30, 2014, 12:37:28 PM
You can't use the Ipad for everything, you still need the paper for one thing. ;)
That's what the three shells are for. :bigass:
Dumas doesn't know how to use the three seashells!
I can't wait to say 'good riddance' to pointless paper copies of stuff. What a waste of energy.
There should be no need for me to scribble my name on a piece of paper after I pay for something 'electronically'.
Quote from: triplemultiplex on October 01, 2014, 03:00:35 AM
I can't wait to say 'good riddance' to pointless paper copies of stuff. What a waste of energy.
There should be no need for me to scribble my name on a piece of paper after I pay for something 'electronically'.
+1000 I hate it was I have a paper copy that I don't need, especially if it's something that has personal information that needs to be shredded (I don't have a shredder, so I'd need to keep in on my desks for a couple months until my next family gathering, take it to the other side of the state, and put it in Mom's to-shred pile).
Quote from: vdeane on October 01, 2014, 01:40:54 PM
Quote from: triplemultiplex on October 01, 2014, 03:00:35 AM
I can't wait to say 'good riddance' to pointless paper copies of stuff. What a waste of energy.
There should be no need for me to scribble my name on a piece of paper after I pay for something 'electronically'.
+1000 I hate it was I have a paper copy that I don't need, especially if it's something that has personal information that needs to be shredded (I don't have a shredder, so I'd need to keep in on my desks for a couple months until my next family gathering, take it to the other side of the state, and put it in Mom's to-shred pile).
Yes! I wish places would stop giving me receipts for things as a default, especially for non-returnable products! I end up with tons of pointless receipts and I just want them to all go away (did anyone really think I would be returning that 20 oz coke?) Most places have my email anyway for their point reward programs - why not just automatically send me a receipt to that email address?
I find signing paper no worse than signing a touch-pad with a stylus. I am comfortable declining a receipt if I don't want it.
Shredders are super cheap, btw, if tossing a piece of paper with 1/4 of your credit card number on it gets under your skin.
What would restaurants do without paper slips? Require an investment in some kind of device for each server to carry? Seems excessive for small businesses, just to appease the rare customer that's going to get upset over the burden of 18in² of paper.
Finally, what do you do about cash transactions? Cash is not going away anytime soon, and it too often requires a record.
Pertinent to this thread: the NYSDOT annual Local Highway Inventory requires that the regions each mail packets to each county/municipality, which they then return to NYSDOT with a signed certification or any needed changes. Each packet contains a cover letter, the directions, the "new or extended roads" template, the annual certification of local highway mileage sheet that needs to be signed, and the draft inventory for the county/municipality (which can range from one page for a rural village to more than 30 pages for even a small/medium sized city). Region 1 is mailing out 164 of these this week.
Quote from: Laura on October 01, 2014, 02:00:53 PM
Quote from: vdeane on October 01, 2014, 01:40:54 PM
Quote from: triplemultiplex on October 01, 2014, 03:00:35 AM
I can't wait to say 'good riddance' to pointless paper copies of stuff. What a waste of energy.
There should be no need for me to scribble my name on a piece of paper after I pay for something 'electronically'.
+1000 I hate it was I have a paper copy that I don't need, especially if it's something that has personal information that needs to be shredded (I don't have a shredder, so I'd need to keep in on my desks for a couple months until my next family gathering, take it to the other side of the state, and put it in Mom's to-shred pile).
Yes! I wish places would stop giving me receipts for things as a default, especially for non-returnable products! I end up with tons of pointless receipts and I just want them to all go away (did anyone really think I would be returning that 20 oz coke?) Most places have my email anyway for their point reward programs - why not just automatically send me a receipt to that email address?
I usually just throw out receipts. But one time I paid something by check, and instead of filing it in the cash register, they scanned it to process electronically and handed it back to me What's the point of paying by check if they're just going to hand it back to me to leave on my desk until the next time I'm near a shredder? I was trying to get rid of checks, but now I just use my credit card there.
What's comical is that, in order to deposit or withdraw money from the bank, I have to fill out a slip, which the teller than types into the computer. I don't know what they do with the slip; probably put it in a bin to be shredded.
Clarkson still does the housing lottery by forcing everyone to come down to the hockey arena, get called up by number (which has its own paper binder, since they call students in groups of 50 and then organize them into a line), and have the residence life staff record where they'll be living next year in their paper inventory, even though the computer can (and does) do everything; they literally have an entire electronic record whose only purpose is to let students see where they're be living on the intranet while they use the redundant paper record for everything.
Quote from: Pete from Boston on October 01, 2014, 02:04:25 PM
I find signing paper no worse than signing a touch-pad with a stylus. I am comfortable declining a receipt if I don't want it.
Shredders are super cheap, btw, if tossing a piece of paper with 1/4 of your credit card number on it gets under your skin.
What would restaurants do without paper slips? Require an investment in some kind of device for each server to carry? Seems excessive for small businesses, just to appease the rare customer that's going to get upset over the burden of 18in² of paper.
Finally, what do you do about cash transactions? Cash is not going away anytime soon, and it too often requires a record.
In places with chip-and-pin credit cards, the restaurant has you enter a tip percent into the payment machine (which is brought to the table when the people are ready to pay) when you swipe your card, so the paper isn't needed there. Businesses do retain receipts even when the customer declines to take one.
I don't care about putting regular receipts in the recycle bin, but once in a blue moon I get something that I have no need to retain but needs to be shredded (like when Experian refused to send me an electronic copy of my credit report simply because they didn't have my current address and mailed on instead, even though I could then retrieve an electronic copy from their website once the paper one arrived - they could have just given me the report number (or whatever it's called) that was needed over the phone; or bank transaction receipts, which showed my full account number prior to First Niagara buying out the HSBC branches in NY).
In the past couple of years I've found many more cashiers giving a receipt only if I answer "yes" when they ask if I want one.
I really wish this process applied to the FAR bigger nuisance, PLASTIC BAGS. The 2x2x4 box of Advil is always in a CVS bag that can hold thirty of them before I look up from the pin pad, and half the times I say it's not necessary, they then throw the bag away! I'd take six receipts at every transaction* if it meant doing away with this stupid giant waste.
* Which is sort of what happens at CVS already, now that I think about it.
Regarding receipts, one of our banks offers the option of having the ATM e-mail you a receipt, but the option isn't available if you want a receipt with an image of the check you just deposited. Since that's my most frequent transaction at that bank (I use the account there primarily to pay bills through online bill payment), I wind up getting paper receipts because I do want to have some evidence until the deposit has posted. I don't understand why it won't e-mail you the check image. The routing and account numbers are redacted even on the printed receipt, so it shouldn't be an issue.
Yes, I sometimes use mobile check deposit via my phone or iPad, but not always. Deposits at the ATM sometimes post faster, and if the check has garbled handwriting I'd rather just stick it in the ATM so if they want to verify it they already have it and the deposit will post sooner instead of making me go stick the check in an ATM anyway. Other thing is, I've found rebate checks often get rejected by the mobile deposit system, especially if the sender put my address on the back side. It confuses the system for some reason.
(I still wish more places would offer rebates via PayPal, like Staples does. Heck, for certain rebates I'd give bank account info to get a direct deposit. I'm waiting on a $1,025 rebate from Carrier on our new HVAC system right now. It's supposed to come on a debit card. I'd take a direct deposit instead in a heartbeat, especially because it'd eliminate the risk of it getting lost or stolen in the mail.)
I try to avoid stores where the only way to get sale prices is to sign up for spam, so no emailed receipts for me.
Having the image of the checks I deposit available on online banking would be nice, that would significantly reduce my recordkeeping time.
Trust me; Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, Canon and Epson aren't going to see their printer businesses going away by any means for a long, long time.
Is that day coming? Eventually...but not any time soon.
Quote from: riiga on September 30, 2014, 01:17:33 PM
Also, when voting having a paper trail is important. Despite talks of e-democracy and electronic voting we still do paper ballots here in Sweden, and all counting of votes, etc is done manually and open to the public. Personally I'm not a fan of electronic voting since it would be impossible to verify all hardware or software used, thus not guaranteeing my vote has been properly cast, as opposed to seeing my name being crossed off a list and my vote put in the ballot box which is visibly sealed.
An interesting philosophy. The US has made a lot of efforts to use more modern technology in voting after the fiasco that punchcard paper ballots caused in our 2000 presidential election. Manual counting of ballots has been mostly done away with since the general opinion is that manual counting enables funny business or even simply mistakes where computers are impartial and more accurate. When I vote I fill out bubbles on a scantron sheet. I then personally feed the sheet into the machine that reads it, and my vote is counted by the scanner. It's a very smooth process.
Of course it also makes a difference that US elections are generally more cumbersome than those in other countries. In a parliamentary system, elections at various levels of government happen at different points in time, and with the party-oriented system generally you're really only casting one vote at a time. Elections in the US all happen on the same day, whenever I vote I might be voting for a dozen different people for a dozen different positions all on the same ballot. Counting that manually is complicated because you can't just sort ballot sheets into piles.
Yeah, paper ballots don't necessarily eliminate fraud. Anyone remember Florida in 2000? Each side had a different position on what to count - allegedly to have "the most accurate count possible". I suppose it's just a coincidence that the Democrats wanted to count anything that wasn't blank in the democratically leaning counties whereas the Republicans wanted to void anything that wasn't perfect.
Redundancy is one thing a paper trail creates–a backup. Efficiency, it should be noted, isn't often the partner of democracy, but this has always been an understood tradeoff.
Quote from: DeaconG on October 01, 2014, 10:26:46 PM
Trust me; Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, Canon and Epson aren't going to see their printer businesses going away by any means for a long, long time.
Is that day coming? Eventually...but not any time soon.
Many copiers/printers now have the capability to create scanned PDFs.
Quote from: PHLBOS on October 02, 2014, 05:06:49 PM
Quote from: DeaconG on October 01, 2014, 10:26:46 PM
Trust me; Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, Canon and Epson aren't going to see their printer businesses going away by any means for a long, long time.
Is that day coming? Eventually...but not any time soon.
Many copiers/printers now have the capability to create scanned PDFs.
Indeed. We have a fax machine at my office which some customers still use. Anything that gets faxed to us gets scanned to pdf and then the paper copy is discarded. I've wondered why we can't just make the fax machine itself print directly to pdf. Would save time, paper, and ink.
Quote from: Duke87 on October 02, 2014, 11:01:03 PM
Quote from: PHLBOS on October 02, 2014, 05:06:49 PM
Quote from: DeaconG on October 01, 2014, 10:26:46 PM
Trust me; Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, Canon and Epson aren't going to see their printer businesses going away by any means for a long, long time.
Is that day coming? Eventually...but not any time soon.
Many copiers/printers now have the capability to create scanned PDFs.
Indeed. We have a fax machine at my office which some customers still use. Anything that gets faxed to us gets scanned to pdf and then the paper copy is discarded. I've wondered why we can't just make the fax machine itself print directly to pdf. Would save time, paper, and ink.
Our company dropped the traditional fax machine altogether. We signed up for an online fax service, where our fax number is now ported. When a fax comes in (which is rare), the online service emails it as a PDF to our admin who distributes it accordingly. For outgoing faxes (even rarer), we login to the fax site and upload it as a PDF.
Most copiers these days are just a scanner that holds an image in memory while it prints it. That's why most office copiers also have scanner and printer functions.
Faxes are useless these days. Anything I need to fax for business purposes I ask if I can just scan and email and usually it's not a problem. The only place I could see myself being forced to fax to is a government office that doesn't care if you're happy with them or not.
I work in a government office, and we would all prefer scanning. It's actually the banks that require us to fax! And I'm not talking about bank branches, but rather the back offices that deal with government and institutional accounts. They claim scanning isn't secure unless it comes from a secured email account. Yet, most of the banks get scans and faxes the same way: via a program that displays it on their computer screen.
So next time you think government offices are decades behind everyone else (and yeah, some are), take a look at the banking systems. It's downright aggravating.
The bank might have a point depending on what they need scanned. Emails are sent in plain text with no encryption; anyone with the ability to sniff the traffic can read them. That's how the NSA does it. Perhaps someone should tell the bank about password-protected zip files.
Verizon once required me to fax them my social security number to set up my internet at my new address. I was never able to figure out why they weren't able to query my credit report.
Quote from: vdeane on October 04, 2014, 03:48:34 PM
The bank might have a point depending on what they need scanned. Emails are sent in plain text with no encryption; anyone with the ability to sniff the traffic can read them. That's how the NSA does it. Perhaps someone should tell the bank about password-protected zip files.
Verizon once required me to fax them my social security number to set up my internet at my new address. I was never able to figure out why they weren't able to query my credit report.
I have had to send medical paperwork this way. Perhaps it was for these reasons.
Medical stuff is complicated by the fact that the electronic records products can't talk to each other, negating the point of using them in the first place.
Quote from: vdeane on October 04, 2014, 03:48:34 PM
The bank might have a point depending on what they need scanned. Emails are sent in plain text with no encryption; anyone with the ability to sniff the traffic can read them. That's how the NSA does it. Perhaps someone should tell the bank about password-protected zip files.
Are faxes any more secure?
I would think faxes are less secure. With a fax you have a paper print out that can be accessed by whoever happens to be walking by the fax machine when it prints off. With an email, it goes directly to one person.
Quote from: Scott5114 on October 08, 2014, 04:41:39 PM
I would think faxes are less secure. With a fax you have a paper print out that can be accessed by whoever happens to be walking by the fax machine when it prints off. With an email, it goes directly to one person.
Depends. Did you remember not to click "reply all"? :spin:
Quote from: Scott5114 on October 08, 2014, 04:41:39 PM
I would think faxes are less secure. With a fax you have a paper print out that can be accessed by whoever happens to be walking by the fax machine when it prints off. With an email, it goes directly to one person.
On the other hand, faxes operate via telephone networks rather than via internet networks. This means that to digitally sniff a fax you need a physical wiretap, you can't just hack into it. So as long as the receiving fax machine is in a physically secure location, yes, faxes are absolutely more secure than email.
But it is possible to encrypt emails, which if done properly makes them for all intents and purposes just as secure.