[thelist] CAPTCHA

[Hassan Schroeder]

On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 6:38 PM, Jeremy Weiss<eccentric.one at gmail.com> wrote:

> I wondered about that myself. But what about simple color/shape
> combinations. 'red triangle' or 'blue circle'.

Ruh roh. Now we're straying into the whole color-blindness arena :-)

And, to a non-technical person, is a 4-sided shape with 90° angled
corners a "rectangle" or a "box"? :-)

Wait, are the sides exactly equal? So, it's not a rectangle, it's well,
technically, it's both a rectangle and a square, and a trapezoid, and
a polygon.

Even the W3C HTML recommendations distinguish between "disc"
and "circle" for the UL "type" attribute. They're both round. Or is that
really a "ball"?

I've seen CAPTCHAs that sucked, yes, but personally I'd be more
inclined to just go with the "what's 2 + 2" question approach rather
than stretch too far into interpretation based on what may not be a
shared worldview.

At least until our computers are capable of a much more nuanced
interpretation of responses. Meanwhile, excuse me a sec --

"HAL, open the pod bay door."  ... "HAL?" ... damn, /brb

-- 
Hassan Schroeder ------------------------ hassan.schroeder at gmail.com
twitter: @hassan