Look,on the web! It's an undecipherable letter

Snark · Post by **Snark** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 7:23 pm

Third one

'J', 'U', 'C', 'L', 'I', 'V', and maybe the Kanji for 'evil' are all reasonable choices.

Clements · Post by **Clements** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 7:27 pm

Starman Ghost · Post by **Starman Ghost** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 7:29 pm

That's a pretty evil 'r', but upon closer inspection, it is 'r'.

Snark · Post by **Snark** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 7:30 pm

Clements wrote:'r'

Crap... You're right

I didn't realise the stupid slash wasn't part of the letter...doh

Jikmo · Post by **Jikmo** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 9:23 pm

Those things are supposed to confuse spambots but be readable by humans, but it seems like a good deal of them are just completely unreadable. More than once, I've had to refresh a page several times (and fail at several guesses) before I got a code that made sense.

Snark · Post by **Snark** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 9:36 pm

Jikmo wrote:Those things are supposed to confuse spambots but be readable by humans, but it seems like a good deal of them are just completely unreadable. More than once, I've had to refresh a page several times (and fail at several guesses) before I got a code that made sense.

Yeah, but what I'm wondering is do they have to make ultra convoluted letters patterns...Are there really spambots/programs that can sucessfully "read" those things? I know image recognition technology has come a long way but still...

edit: at least now I know sometimes you just have to tilt your head slightly to see the right letter heh.

Clements · Post by **Clements** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 10:53 pm

Also, the 0's and O's can be difficult to distinguish.

Cyrus · Post by **Cyrus** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 3:16 am

Clements wrote:Also, the 0's and O's can be difficult to distinguish.

Some sites accept both for either one.

lockharte · Post by **lockharte** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 3:21 am

i don't like the 5 and S 's

whicker · Post by **whicker** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 4:05 am

lockharte wrote:i don't like the 5 and S 's

especially if the captcha picks a 7-segment digital font for that letter.

Jikmo · Post by **Jikmo** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 5:29 am

what's worse is when letters are turned at random angles. Then N and Z, and C and U become completely indistinguishable. I've seriously wanted to kiiill whoever wrote that program several times. Why is it that programmers are so often entirely out of touch with reality when it comes to usability??? (Entirely rhetorical, have had way too many conversations about this already)

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 4:52 pm

Jikmo wrote:what's worse is when letters are turned at random angles. Then N and Z, and C and U become completely indistinguishable. I've seriously wanted to kiiill whoever wrote that program several times. Why is it that programmers are so often entirely out of touch with reality when it comes to usability??? (Entirely rhetorical, have had way too many conversations about this already)

It has more to do with one's capability of pattern matching. This one isn't bad, but there has been worse.

soulmata · Post by **soulmata** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 7:25 pm

Snark wrote:
Jikmo wrote:Those things are supposed to confuse spambots but be readable by humans, but it seems like a good deal of them are just completely unreadable. More than once, I've had to refresh a page several times (and fail at several guesses) before I got a code that made sense.
Yeah, but what I'm wondering is do they have to make ultra convoluted letters patterns...Are there really spambots/programs that can sucessfully "read" those things? I know image recognition technology has come a long way but still...

edit: at least now I know sometimes you just have to tilt your head slightly to see the right letter heh.

Yes. The longer a captcha has been around, the more time bot authors have had to adjust their algorithms. Older captchas have 100% failure rates. Bots can read most of them.

kieran_ · Post by **kieran_** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 7:45 pm

I had a similar problem trying to enter the cd-key for Neverwinter Nights.