Web Site Trashed (Again)

Richard A. O'Keefe ok at cs.otago.ac.nz
Fri Dec 10 03:45:01 UTC 2004


John Pierce <john.raymond.pierce at gmail.com> wrote:
	Lastly, while I think that is interesting to try to find a puzzler
	that is easy to answer in Squeak, we could keep the captcha far
	simpler with the probably the same results.
	
Oh agreed.

	For instance, make the captcha be a very simple reading comprehension
	problem or painfully simple trivia, like the following:
	
	Jim and Suzy are the children of Jack and Betty.  Suzy is what to Jim?
"a sibling"; "annoying"; ...
	What do we call water when it freezes?
"cold"
	Richard Alan Butler's middle name is?
"whatever he wants it to be.  Anyone remember 'Mark Ethan Smith'?"
	Dallas, TX is the capital of what state?
"How should I know?  I'm not an American."
	Please tell me what 1 plus 3 minus 2 equals (enter as a numeric)?
2 (but be careful, 1+2*3 is 9 in Smalltalk but 7 to ordinary mortals)

	Of course, you'd have to have hundreds of trivial trivia problems, but
	I could contribute 30 or 40 in short order.
	
Be careful about that.  Ones which require knowledge of USA state
abbreviations are a good way to lock out non-Americans.  
And be careful about names:  "Georgina Te Heuheu" does not have "Te" as
a middle name, nor does "Adrian van Gelder" have "van" as a middle name.

The thing I like about a captcha that requires you to run Squeak is that
just because someone is human doesn't mean they are not a vandal.  Someone
who _has_ to be running Squeak to answer correctly has _some_ stake in the
Squeak community.





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