Cat-Scan

October 26, 2020 1:17 PM

Cat Scan is one of the strangest Far Sides I've seen in some time. I have no idea how this dog got that cat wedged into his fax, or why.
posted by metabaroque (34 comments total)

posted by metabaroque

Eponysterical!
posted by jquinby at 1:20 PM on October 26, 2020 [7 favorites]

What's a fax?
posted by swift at 1:21 PM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

What's a fax?

20 dollars, same as in town.

At Kinko's in town.
posted by allegedly at 1:26 PM on October 26, 2020 [32 favorites]

Just wait until you see the bill for the Lab tests.
posted by Snowflake at 1:31 PM on October 26, 2020 [6 favorites]

fair
posted by Going To Maine at 1:33 PM on October 26, 2020

I'm impressed Gary Larson came back into the industry just so he could publish this before fax machines go extinct.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:34 PM on October 26, 2020 [4 favorites]

What's a fax?

It's a thing hospitals still use ALL THE TIME because they don't think email is secure. Don't get me started.
posted by bondcliff at 1:34 PM on October 26, 2020 [30 favorites]

how does she know it's from the dog

does mr dansworth have a fax machine at home or did the dog go to kinko's

is there a real mr dansworth he's name-checking here like a friend or something
posted by Caxton1476 at 1:38 PM on October 26, 2020

not relevant but brilliant: gargoyle socks
posted by Caxton1476 at 1:39 PM on October 26, 2020 [4 favorites]

not brillant but relevant: The Cat Scan.
posted by mookoz at 1:50 PM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

Clearly the dog included a cover page, because he's a good boy.
posted by biogeo at 1:57 PM on October 26, 2020 [24 favorites]

This is a vintage Far Side, to be clear.
posted by joeyh at 2:13 PM on October 26, 2020 [9 favorites]

Published in 1990, according to the copyright notice on the right-hand side of the image.
posted by mbrubeck at 2:15 PM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

Caxton1476: "how does she know it's from the dog"

On the catfaxternet, everybody knows it's the dog.
posted by chavenet at 2:24 PM on October 26, 2020 [4 favorites]

I'm a bad Far Side Fan, I keep forgetting to go look at his "new stuff" section. To be fair, it would be so much easier if there was an RSS feed of that section (and to be even more fair, Google Reader wouldn't have been shut down years ago ... but I digress) and on edit ... it would great if the New Stuff was actually archived, and not removed week-to-week.

Anyway, go look at the new stuff!
posted by jazon at 2:33 PM on October 26, 2020 [4 favorites]

My brother in-law works a sales job with some customers who still use fax machines. He has to still keep, maintain and use a functioning fax machine in his home office because of some of these people.
posted by SoberHighland at 2:56 PM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

Just the fax, ma’am.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:58 PM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]

Yes, you'd think your medical records are transferred between facilities via XML or some nifty technology, but no. It's a pile of fax pages, sometimes printed and scanned back in. Or if there are too many pages for fax, it's a big pile of dead trees that are mailed over and scanned in.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:18 PM on October 26, 2020

Yes, you'd think your medical records are transferred between facilities via XML

It's not XML, but there is HL7.
posted by linux at 3:58 PM on October 26, 2020

From the new stuff - Trump tear exhibit. Can anyone make out the text or is it supposed to be illegible?
posted by piyushnz at 4:04 PM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

Would wager good money that there are internet fax's that must transit an X.25 gateway and get reconstructed packet by slow packet onto another issolated tcp/ip network to get to a VM with a virtual PBX to connect to an ancient landline with a fax machine plugged in.
posted by sammyo at 4:05 PM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

Is MeFi history repeating itself?
posted by Fenriss at 5:54 PM on October 26, 2020

This is heartwarming for a MeFi oldster!
posted by Fenriss at 5:55 PM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]

Fax is still a legally binding and secure format, at least compared to email, because (at least when going over plain old telephone lines) it point to point, not routed between servers, and has send and receive source/destination and timestamps on the medium. Also, it's dead simple to set up and use (again, assuming plain old telephone lines), especially in areas where Internet is iffy but telephone lines still exist and with people who don't have IT help. It's still a standard method of communication in medicine (getting your prescription from the doctor to your pharmacy).

Fax will exist as long as dogs are able to force cats into the feeder.
posted by lhauser at 6:10 PM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

Email is, in fact, fundamentally insecure.

We've done a lot since the early days to secure it. It can be secure. Maybe even it's probably secure in most cases now, I don't know. But what we don't really have is a way to guarantee security for particular messages, and it's also difficult to know if any particular email ever went over an insecure link. So institutions with powerful legal requirements (banks, medical providers) wisely steer clear of it.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 7:37 PM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

All this talk of faxes and fax machines and still nobody has answered the question of how the cat got into the fax machine.

The fax machine at work burped and rumbled the other day and proceeded to produce a fax. I was startled. For over a year, I had assumed the machine was out of commission and gathering dust. The fax was of the normal variety, however. No cats.
posted by Crystal Fox at 8:24 PM on October 26, 2020

It's a cartoon kitty. Dog just fed a whisker into the autofeed.
posted by sammyo at 8:32 PM on October 26, 2020

/Is MeFi history repeating itself?
posted by Fenriss at 1:54 on October 27

....the second time as Far Side.
posted by stanf at 12:19 AM on October 27, 2020 [3 favorites]

Just the fax, ma’am.

-Bruce Willis, Die Hard 2.
posted by nubs at 5:54 AM on October 27, 2020

Fax will exist as long as dogs are able to force cats into the feeder.

Everyone knows dogs don't force cats to do anything. Obviously, the dog waited until the cat stuck his nosey little nose into the feed, then he hit the send button.
posted by mule98J at 6:44 AM on October 27, 2020

Fax is inherently insecure too. It relies on the presumption that there's no man-in-the-middle attack. Granted there is unlikely to be a non-government entity doing this but just because there's a legal framework in place that presumes faxes are secure does not mean they are actually secure.
posted by geoff. at 4:03 PM on October 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

Email is, in fact, fundamentally insecure.

That may be the case, but not the reason why some institutions continue to embrace older technologies. Instead lack of knowledge and unwillingness to experiment with new ideas and processes hamper adaption.

A death knell for older businesses, and limbo for government institutions. Then a sudden, badly managed, inept and often unsafe, lurch forward when change becomes inevitable.

My experience post lockdown in education in South Africa.

Expect lots more badly lit and unfocussed photos of cat faxes shared on your institution's whatsapp group.
posted by BrStekker at 8:41 PM on October 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

Trump tear text: believed to have been shed sometime in the second half of the 20th century, this tear is presumed (? Probably?) to be one of two known to have existed...

And then I can't make out the last third. It's not legible on my phone, no matter how much I squint
posted by Jacen at 8:53 AM on October 28, 2020

Everyone knows dogs don't force cats to do anything. Obviously, the dog waited until the cat stuck his nosey little nose into the feed, then he hit the send button.

I mean, there's definitely things the dog will do to facilitate the entire operation.
posted by FatherDagon at 1:58 PM on October 28, 2020