ApathySketchpad<\/a> as viable alternatives.<\/p>\nI’m comment-impaired at the best of times. I’ll try and comment on a blog and find that my comment just disappears. Granted, this suggests the universe has an innate capacity for mercy. But, just occasionally, the words that disappear into the net’s black hole were comments that I really wanted to make. So, I’ll try and rewrite it, in a half-hearted fashion. It will disappear again. I’ll have a final stab at writing. And sending. But by this time, it’s incoherent garbage, sent only to show the comment-eating demon who’s boss.<\/p>\n
And then the captcha is there mocking you. Matt Mullenweg is so right, except, on his own proud boast, at least he gets them right half of the time. Falling foul of captcha is a daily occurrence here at WhyDontYou Towers. And a score of 50% correct is just a fond dream.<\/p>\n
The idea is that only humans can read the things. A reverse Turing test. This whole concept falls down on the point that any shapes that are too unlike characters to be read by a souped up OCR-style algorithm are much too unlike letters or numbers for human beings to interpret them. <\/p>\n
Even when you can distinguish those shapes that are meant to be characters from the deliberately inserted wavy lines, you face something like:<\/p>\n
oo9I0g<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There is no way to reliably distinguish between 9<\/strong> and g<\/strong>, 0<\/strong> and O<\/strong>, 1<\/strong> and l<\/strong> and I<\/strong>. <\/p>\nSo you type in zero zero nine one zero g, on the offchance. It rejects you. You don’t get another shot at the ambiguous letters. <\/p>\n
Oh no. A fresh bleeding captcha. This time you find you have to choose between identifying a letter as either a very thin letter j or the letter i with a slight curve at the bottom. Failed again.<\/p>\n
Next time it’s either an l with a slight curve at the top or an anorexic letter c. Ok, got the c right but then you thought that oddly shaped capital A was a 4, didn’t you? Robotic fool.<\/p>\n
By this time, the human-detector software has often decided you are a bot cos you couldn’t even guess one out of 3. So your comment is bounced anyway.<\/p>\n
If you’ve ever thought that you might as well go for the disabled option, don’t bother. That’s not worth it either. Captchas that claim to be for the disabled are actually even harder to use than their able-bodied comrades. Different experiences you can have with the accessibility captcha include:<\/p>\n