This time the dollar goes to the first person who can explain to me why in the hell what I've entered into this CAPTCHA field is invalid:
To head it off, the "p" is not supposed to be capitalized, and the "T" is not supposed to be lowercased. I tried all four combinations of those to no avail.
While we're at it, let's take a moment to ponder the utility of security schemes that keep the good people out. On another site recently (can't remember which one), I ran into a CAPTCHA that was so distorted and scrambled that for the life of me I couldn't figure it out. That's a good way to ward off potential users, if that's your goal, but I don't think it is. Are there any solutions that balance usability with security? I'm somewhat a fan of math CAPTCHAs (random "what is 3 + 8" type problems), and "common sense" CAPTCHAs make a lot of sense too (these will ask something like "is fire hot or cold"). Has anyone seen anything better?
By the way, the audio CAPTCHA link doesn't work, so I guess Digg will have to do without my input tonight.
5 comments:
Wow, that's an awful captcha.
Ironically, I have to deal with one to post here too, although it's not nearly as bad as most. :D
I'm a fan of the recaptcha project - see http://recaptcha.net/ - it's a great way to get the security of captcha while contributing to society.
That's a good point. I never see it so I kind of forgot it was there. I'm actually going to try turning it off for a bit. I have comment moderation on anyway, so maybe it won't be too bad. It's worth a try.
That reCAPTCHA project looks really interesting. I especially like that it's actually doing some good. I wish Blogger would offer that as an alternative.
OK, so apparently I can't turn the CAPTCHA off or this window doesn't work. I'm sure it has something to do with the interface between Blogger and RapidWeaver (a plugin called RapidBlog), I'lls end the author an e-mail to see if it can be fixed, or if I'm just doing something wrong.
Speaking of e-mails, I just got a response from Blogger to my e-mail about the broken CAPTCHA. They told me to clear my browser's cache and try again. For those of you who are more technically savvy than I am, is that something that would make it not work?
There's a chance that clearing the browser cache could help. If the image didn't get a proper expiration set or some other goofy little glitch happened, it could cause problems.
Try it -- often, a cache clearing is kind of a panacea for web problems -- but it's no guarantee.
Some say that cleaning out cookies/history also helps, and believe it or not, I've seen it help a few times in IE, but not in any decent browser.
Gah, sorry Brian, I thought I'd approved your message days ago.
For the record, I've since commented on Digg without a problem, so hopefully it was just a one time thing. Oh well, learning about the reCAPTCHA program was worth the frustration.
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