Sunday, July 31, 2011

captcha idiocy...

...
OK . . .I give up.

We are all familiar with the 'captcha' technology (by that brand name and others) required for posting comments at many sites. They serve a purpose I suppose ...but sometimes they are infuriating indeed.

What, for example, does this one 'say'..?? I have no idea. (Click on the image to see the larger image.)




.
The second word I can take a guess at . . .but wtf for the first one..?!?

.

. . .and yes, I know you can click for a new one. But just another layer of idiocy, IMHO.


Never a dull minute online.


...tom...

4 comments:

...tom... said...

.
13868

D.B. Echo said...

Actually, as this is a "reCAPTCHA", there's a virtuous aspect to it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA

As I understand it (without actually reading that entry,) each reCAPTCHA is made up of two parts: a "known" word that is the real part of the test, and a word that has been kicked out during a character recognition system scan of a document being electronically scanned. There is no "wrong" answer for this word, but the hope is that by "crowdsourcing" the translation of the word that the machine can't read, a consensus will be formed by humans getting the same word as to what it actually is. In some cases, it is impossible to give the right answer; I saw one yesterday that was Greek lowercase "mu nu." What the heck was I supposed to do with that? I've seen some with schwas, and some with scientific notation, and otherwise beyond the scope of my keyboard without going to the character map shortcut that I keep on my desktop for just such events.

WVW: boothep. To break your ankle while leaping from a theater box while shouting "Sic semper tyrannis!"

...tom... said...

...
hey there D.B....

I just went with 'captcha' ...as their website is URL-ed. Why they thought the 're' was necessary I have no idea..!!

(And you can use the link tags to make an URL a clickable link. But perhaps you are one of those 'weirdos' who prefer 'naked' URLs. ...:minism:...)


So if I get the 'known' word right . . .that is all that matters..?? In my case the word at the right is probably 'offore' and the 'known' word..??


I was aware of the 'good purpose' behind the captcha challenges. Pretty cool use of the web in general.

And I am still deciphering your last paragraph.


Thanks for the comment D.B...!!


...tom...
.

D.B. Echo said...

WVW = Word Verification Word. The goal is to come up with a definition for each one.

So a WVW like "boothep" brings to mind "John Wilkes Booth" and "misstep," since he famously broke his ankle while leaping out of the theater box where the Lincolns were watching "Our American Cousin."

The current WVW is "shros," which means "prostitutes who cater exclusively to Shriners."