Just type the letters you see in the box
CAPTCHAs. You've probably seen them. They're those little boxes that show you a picture with some letters and numbers. You're supposed to type those characters in a box to prove that you're a human leaving a comment on a blog post or news website, and not a spambot.CAPTCHA stands for "Completely Automatied Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart." And since most websites don't have spam filters analogous to the ones that keep your email box (relatively) clean, they seem like a good idea.
Until you see some really poorly produced CAPTCHAs. You know, the kind that are completely impossible to read. Like the one to the right. Or like the 20 or so found on the Headware Blog. Granted, some of these CAPTCHAs aren't so much difficult to read as incredibly inappropriate. But they do show why sometimes automation is not the answer.
[via GHacks]
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
kingkool68 said 2:58PM on 7-30-2007
I got a really weird one from Wikipedia when I tried to register -> http://www.russellheimlich.com/blog/did-wikipedia-just-insult-me/
Also, Security Now episode #101 has some great info about CAPTCHAs including some intelligent methods CAPTCHA breakers are employing to get around the human tests.
http://media.grc.com/sn/SN-101.mp3
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robot rock said 3:34PM on 7-30-2007
I don't remember what site it was, but I recently had to perform basic arithmetic to sign up for some site...
I wish OpenID would take off already!
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Gil Creque said 4:05PM on 7-30-2007
Livejournal's implementation is the worse by far.
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James said 5:21PM on 7-31-2007
Some of these are actually pretty good. Obviously, the ones that are some variation of profanity/crudity are not "good", and ditto with those that are obscured into illegibility. But the photo one ("pick the 3 which are not man made") was designed I believe in a programming contest to come up with new ideas for CAPTCHA systems, and is in fact one of the best tests available. The math problem is a bit much, but some simpler arithmetic ("(4^2 + 2)/3=" or "2X - 3, x=5" or similar) has been used before to great effect, IMHO. I think somebody should make an open-source project to make modular CAPTCHAs so we can get some creative ones into more common use, like those described above.
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