Explaining the captchas
Bourbon Girl (welcome back) posted this comment just now under an old entry, and it might be a good time to explain what's going on with the captchas. I'm sure others are wondering.
Catching up after long absence, the comments to this post made me realize how much I miss this blog. JMc you really got me this time when I wasn't expecting it...
Happy New Year everyone. Can someone explain the captcha references? Or at least point me to where it began? ...
Sometime back, I'm not sure when, the Web editors added captcha (the official name is Recaptcha) as a way of foiling automatically generated spam. It's those two words or parts of words or numbers that you have to type in before your post will go through.
You don't have to be too precise when you fill them in -- anything fairly close seems to work -- but if you can't make the words out, you can get two new ones by hitting the little refresh button to the right of the box. Or if you want more interesting ones. Or just don't have anything better to do.
Pretty soon people began listing their captcha words, particularly if they contained food references or seemed apropos in some way. Then somewhere along the way Cleatus started saying ... oh, somebody else explain.
The annoying thing is that the companies just hire folks in India to sit at a computer, fill in the captcha and post their ads and Web site addresses. So every morning I kill it out five or six spam comments anyway. But the Web editors say it would be many, many more without the captcha.
Comments
Bourbon Girl! You have been missed--welcome back!
Some of us are convinced that Captcha has a weird sense of humor. There is absolutely no doubt that Cleatus has a special sense of humor, and he started the whole Captcha name business, which other people have taken off with.
Happy New Year, BG!
Posted by: Dahlink | January 3, 2010 7:39 AM
If you didn't notice the amount of spam going down when they inflicted captcha on us, EL, the web people are wrong.
They don't even have to hire people in India to fill them in. People in Bulgaria (and elsewhere) have written programs to break them, which are readily available on the net.
Don't your web people read Ars Technica? Or even the wikipedia article on captcha?
Also, no, you do not have to be completely accurate. They are also using captcha as free labour to help with scanning books. The first word, captcha knows what it is. The second word, it doesn't. If enough people agree on what the second word is, it becomes a known word.
So, yes, we're being used as free labour, too.
Wow. That's depressing. EL
Posted by: Lissa | January 3, 2010 9:03 AM
Sometimes I think the computer uses the captcha to speak to me. The last time I posted mine was "neglect treadmill" very scary :)
Posted by: Bubbles | January 5, 2010 2:11 PM
Cleatus started using the captchas to invent names for himself, and others have taken off with it as well. Even me at times, like this:
going bonanza = Cleatus' cowboy name
Posted by: PCB Rob | January 5, 2010 6:00 PM
Hi BG! Happy New Year!
Posted by: Joyce W. | January 5, 2010 7:40 PM