Digital Domain What if People Don't Take the Bait to Go Paperless?
By RANDALL STROSS The New York Times September 20, 2009
IN August, T-Mobile got serious about paperless billing. It started charging a $1.50 monthly fee on all accounts that continued to receive a paper bill.
Large companies would love to use paperless billing rather than the mail: it reduces their costs and at the same time allows chest thumping about being green. But offering their customers positive sweeteners hasn't been very effective. T-Mobile tried another tack: a stick instead of a carrot. What woe it brought upon itself, however, when it told customers it was time to switch or pay up.
Canada Post has been offering something similar for a number of years now.
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And you can store the bills for up to seven years which is the length of time the Cdn tax authorities want you to keep documents. So, if you are being audited, then you could likely give the tax folks your account and password so they could check the bills themselves. Let them print out the bills themselves.
I'd be interested in this but *only* if the billing company reduces my bill accordingly. It'd have to be at least $1 per month preferably $2. If they want to increase my bill to continue to ship snail mail, well, then I'd be upset.
[ snip... regarding e-bills and web site retrieval ]
"Risks Digest", a periodic compilation of, well, Risks in computing and related endeavors, has had many a reference to the problems people have in getting this information.
Typical issue: you move your phone service to a different provider and the first one closes your account. Can you still get that info? Guess what the answer usually is...
Same, by the way, with banks.
The experiences in the US under the Old "One Bell System, It Works" are educational in this manner. It used to be, yes, children, that "information" ("directory assistance") was free, and you call dozens or even hundreds of times/month.
Then New York Telephone cut it down to (iirc) _six_ free calls/month, then a charge of $0.10 each, but gave everyone a credit of $0.30 so you could actually make nine calls. (numbers from memory but the sequence should be right).
After a couple of years they got rid of the credit, so you were down to six "free" calls. Then they reduced the number of them to three.
And nowadays, it's zero.
Oh, and at various steps along the way the charge went from $0.10 to, umm, whatever it is now. ($0.75? to be honest I'm not sure; I haven't used DA in a decade).
And for doubly good measure they left DA from pay phones, at least for local assistance, "free". Well, until about five years ago.
Excellent points. I'd would've been downloading all those files as PDFs onto my own system anyhow. I read comp.risks whenever it comes out.
That said this particular service is run by an organization external to the phone company and the banks. So I wouldn't think closing your account would make any difference to the accessibility of the data.
AT&T doesn't yet charge, but it offers and encourages paperless billing. However, about a year ago, I had to switch back -- because AT&T's "paperless bills" are PDF files, and they began using a version of Adobe newer than my computer can read. And I don't see why I should upgrade.
Anyone who sends out files in proprietary formats to the public -- including owners of web sites -- should be using old versions, since it's their job, and not each viewer's, to anticipate such problems.
EVERYTHING Adobe produces is subject to massive security exploits, notably the PDF reader and ShockWave Player and browser plugins as I wrote here earlier this year (and cited relevant pages) especially the IFRAME exploits (which are the nastiest thing I've seen in nearly 50 years using computers). The IFRAME exploits even affect UNIX and Linux systems, though not as seriously as Windows systems, unless one is running a browser as root on UNIX or Linux.
IFRAME exploits require ZERO intervention on the part of the user; one only has to visit an infected web page (and there are millions out there) for the exploit to silently [activate] and auto-download files and other nasties after it interrogates your browser for its version, your OS type, and the plugins installed in your browser.
A simple example of what an IFRAME exploit looks like on an infected web page is below; this is one I removed from a friend's web site and I've removed a few "" and inserted a few spaces so this example cannot be clicked upon:
Here's the "head" of a PDF (as would be interpreted by "file" on a UNIX or Linux system):
%PDF-1.4 {everything following seems to be binary)
A "head" of a PS file:
%!PS-Adobe-3.0 %%Creator: Thad Floryan %%DocumentNeededResources: font Helvetica %%+ font Courier %%Pages: 4 %%Orientation: Portrait [...]
Heh! Actually, today, it may very well be, but it's not like people are deliberately writing reports in HTML especially given lack of standards' compliance (multiple HTML versions) and browser incompatibilities. See, for example:
I write both HTML and PostScript "native" and convert to PDF for archival storage since PDF readers are ubiquitous. Try using, say, the lynx browser on a "featureful" web page. :-)
PDF is rarely ever the *original* format. It has the advantage that it can't by modified by Joe Consumer, and that its specification is public, so there are other implementations besides Adobe's. I use xpdf.
PDF, by the way, is actually a "container" format, similar to AVI or the .VOB files on a DVD, only specialized for text rather than multimedia. This makes it less general than PostScript, which is a full Turing-complete programming language, but also makes it feasible to parse. PDFs can contain text, links, images, fonts, and annotations, plus the metadata that describes how these all tie together.
The Adobe Reader, past a certain version, will not "upgrade" onto an older platform that some of us can't afford the (forklift) upgrade for.
And more and more "HTML" sites are demanding a viewer newer than MS IE6, with the same non-support for upgrade.
***** Moderator's Note *****
When I find sites that can't/won't use Firefox, I complain to the owners of the company. You may be surprised at how well this works: Microsoft-only sites are usually the result of poor programmer education, not IT policy.
Win7 down to Win2K-SP4 will run the latest Adobe Reader 9.
WinNT-SP6 and Win2K-SP2/SP3 are limited to Reader version 7.0.9.
Basically, Adobe Reader works on any OS that's still supported by the OS vendor; my sole Win2K-SP4 system still receives the periodic security updates from Microsoft and is supported.
To see what Readers are available from Adobe, visit this page:
IE (any version) is not a good browser. Even the latest version for Vista (8.0.6001.*) or Win7 (8.0.7100.*) will only get a score of about
25 (out of 100) using most browser validation suites. See:
Good browsers for Windows systems include:
Firefox: Opera: Safari: Seamonkey: Amaya:
Windows platforms running an OS older than Win2K are over 10 years old and will continue to be less capable as time progresses. Even WinXP is not coming back, though it, like my Win2K system, will probably receive security and OS updates until it's 10 years old (~2013).
Modern systems, new and refurbed, can be purchased for between US$200 and US$300 as I did last year and earlier this year. The least expensive system I bought was a Compaq with AMD X2 64 as open box for US$207 at Office Depot and the most expensive was an HP Pentium 64 Dual-Core refurbed from Fry's Electronics for US$299. These all have
2GB to 4GB RAM, large disks, and many features.
You can see those systems here (topmost 5 from left to right):
I did upgrade the CPUs in all of them because I needed hardware virtualization support (I'm a hardware and software developer), but they ran Vista very well in their stock configuration and they dual/triple boot into Vista + {Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, Win7}.
Struggling with 10+ year-old systems doesn't make economic sense since fans and disks are approaching end-of-life -- they will fail and repairs will likely cost more than buying a new modern system.
Well, Bill, perhaps you should put your complaining talent to good use with T-Mobile, whose my.t-mobile.com seems to frustrate so many browsers (even the ones it is reportedly "designed for" :-) ).
There are also situations that make it impossible for some people. In my case, both at home and work, perfectly good but old computers on which Windows XP and Vista (and therefore the newest versions of Acrobat) refuse to install.
Granted. I can't wait until a version of Ghostscript/Ghostview as robust as Adobe's product is available.
***** Moderator's Note *****
Now, you see, if the files were in HTML format, nobody would have a problem reading them. ;-)
But seriously, Adobe's strategy has been successfull to this point: creating a "portable" document format has kept their brand name and products in front of the public, and the company has continued to create or acquire the software needed to make it the preeminent graphics tool-provider in the WinTel sector. I doubt they like everyone else being able to create PDF files, but you can't win 'em all: Adobe leveraged it's exclusive position in the PDF-creation market while it lasted, and now is moving on to a more gengeralized position as toolmaker.
Ghostview and Ghostscript are good programs, but not widely known outside the open-source world, so they're out on the end on the graph. Adobe, OTOH, has carved out a niche that will keep it in business no matter which OS eventually predominates: after all, Adobe's "Reader" software works fine on Linux.
will install on W2K, at least. It's far faster and less bloated than AR, and not subject to the same exploits (which is not to say it isn't subject to any exploits, but I'm not aware of any). And it's free too.
Another reason not stated is that it gives companies an easy way to spam your email with their ads.
I tried to sign up for a paperless account. When I got to the "terms and conditions" it noted the company had the right to send me email ads. I rejected it then and there.
While I did not become a paperless company, my mere attempt at signup was enough to add me to their email spam flood--I got email ads from them immediately! When I called and finally got through to a human at customer service they said there was nothing they can do because "the computer is handled separately". I had to insist they do something about it. The emails ended a few days later.
I must be a bad Luddite, because the idea of deleting unwanted advertisements from my email in-basket every morning annoys the heck out of me. If I don't check for a few days, the in-basket is flooded with junk with risk of filling up and rejecting legitimate emails to me. Again, I must be a Luddite because the idea of someone's else work hurting me again annoys me to no end.
I "love" [sarc] how companies act as if these emails are from sort of "separate' entity when you call to complain to them or tell them you don't want them.
This subject has repercussions that go _way_ beyond spam. Before I give my email address to _any_ company, I always check to be sure I'm not agreeing to receive "official" notices from them, because some firms like to send notices of changes to their privacy policy, terms and conditions, security policy, etc., via email. As if _that_ wasn't bad enough, they'll often forget to mention that the policies which apply to "their customers" _stop_ applying the instant they decide you're _not_ their customer anymore, and then they'll sell your email address to the highest bidders.
I am, fortunately, blessed with my own server (billhorne dot com), so that I have an inexhaustible supply of "throwaway" addresses. I can create, delete, or keep them as I choose, and it's useful to give out addresses like snipped-for-privacy@billhronre.com, so that I can track who megacorp lends or sells the address to.
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