Here’s the deal. Completely automated public Turing tests to tell computers and humans apart (or CAPTTTTCAHA…or the more commonly shortened shortened version, CAPTCHA) are annoying. You know these things. The words written with squiggly letters that you have to correctly identify to do anything on the internet. Yep, those.
This distorted text is designed to be legible by humans, but unreadable by computer programs and to protect websites from bots. Sure, computers can run complex programs, defeat chess grandmasters, and perform millions of intricate calculations in seconds…but show them a consonant with a little wiggle to it and they’re completely lost. Hmmmm, who knew bots were so easily defeated? They didn’t have to waste all that time running from the Terminators, they could have just held up a CAPTCHA.
“Take me to Sarah Connor.”
“Sure, if you can read this!”
“What? Those letters are so squiggly. Does not compute. Must self terminate.”
So, yeah, it seems like a good idea. The problem is, about 34% of the time these things can’t be read by computers or humans. For example, what the hell does this say?
heturin ygeen? limlnrris ygeen? halvrrh ygeen? Can I just type in “something ygeen?” I can’t count the number of times I’ve misidentified a CAPTCHA and have been instructed to try again. Sometimes it makes me wonder if I’m actually a highly developed android and I don’t know it. That might explain why I find the toaster so attractive…
So, how am I going to do it? How will I put an end to my embarrassment at not being able to correctly identify myself as a member of the species Homo sapiens by reading a blurred text? We simply need to find a different method of differentiating the humans from the bots. Couldn’t we just ask some simple questions that only humans would know the answers to? For example, aren’t emotions cool? Or, isn’t it great having blood pumping through your veins? Or maybe – to _____ is human. (For those humans who need help with these questions, the answers, disguised in case any bots are reading this, are yes, yes and err). I don’t know whether or not this will work, but something must be done. Because I don’t care if you’re a human or a bot, nobody knows what a limlnrris ygeen is.