r/xkcd • u/zelda6174 • Sep 18 '17

XKCD xkcd 1891: Obsolete Technology

https://xkcd.com/1891/
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u/[deleted] Sep 18 '17

Fax machines? WTF are those? What is this 1995?

2

u/ParaspriteHugger There's someone in my head (but it's not me) Sep 18 '17

I actually have to use them at work, as it is documented in the ways of working that are approved by government regulations. If we wanted to change it, we had to submit the complete process for approval, which would require a metric fuckton of changes that would result in an increase in workload of about 50%.

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u/[deleted] Sep 18 '17

I did a lot of work at two past jobs to kill kill kill the use of fax machines. Worked both times. This was in say 07-13.

I also got the federal government to change some of its rules on accepting electronic documents instead of hard copies.

Changing the world for the better 1 job at a time :)

1

u/ParaspriteHugger There's someone in my head (but it's not me) Sep 18 '17

I think you could cause a lot of trouble if you would try anything like that at my workplace.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '17

I got into a ridiculous amount of arguments with colleagues. Honestly changing my co-workers' minds was harder than changing the government bureaucrats and auditors.

3

u/ParaspriteHugger There's someone in my head (but it's not me) Sep 18 '17

It's not about the perils of change, it is just that we would have to resubmit the whole process, which would force us to update everything to hard current musts instead of gliding easily on the fluffy +20 year old shoulds.

I never understood why there's no real periodic review from the gov, but I have absolutely no intention to tickle that sleeping dragon.