The Act demands that organisations it dubs Communication Service Providers (CSP) - broadly anyone that helps people keep in touch via the web, fax machine or phone - install technology that can automatically monitor what many of their customers are doing.

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The desktop printer for creating a signable copy of contracts, W-9 forms, and NDAs, and the fax machine for transmitting them.

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Which brings up the indispensable fax machine, favored by many a buy-side firm but definitely not an STP-device.

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Voice mail may give the wrong time-stamp, as might a fax machine.

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Between your voicemail inbox, the fax machine, your cell phone, and your inbox in your e-mail and the Web, it's just becoming too much.

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For many years the company dominated the copy-machine market, but its leaders failed to pay attention to disruptive technologies and new products, such as fax machines and digital copiers, which undermined the entire copy-machine market.

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The fax machine was invented in 1843, and both Xerox and Bell Labs had ongoing projects to fine-tune the concept.

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An illustration of a telephone talking to a fax machine left him none the wiser, nor the idea that "storing results of a two-way interaction to a central location" was something that his applications had copied from the American firm.

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