# Stupid Captchas!...
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [April 20, 2009, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675 "2009-04-20T00:58:32Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@EpicNonsense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EpicNonsense)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2009, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/1 "2009-04-20T00:58:32Z")
You know, those images that have a few letters and numbers crammed together in an unreadable manner so that ‘bots’ or whatever cannot submit a form. Fuck! These things used to be readable to some extent but now it’s getting so stupid I cannot submit forms, and in turn, I, am now the robot… :mad:
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### Author:  [@dgrdfd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dgrdfd)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2009, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/2 "2009-04-20T01:01:16Z")
I hate them because they use:
1. 9’s that loos like g’s
2. l’s that look like 1’s and I’s
3. o’s that look like 0’s
Why the fuck do they have to use those characters? And if you MUST, then make them distinguishable.
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### Author:  [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2009, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/3 "2009-04-20T01:03:00Z")
No shit. Just ask me a question or something. Like: what team did the Orioles trade a player to to make room for Cal Ripken. I could get that. Is that a 4 or an H? Is that a 6 or a G? Fuck that.
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### Author:  [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2009, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/4 "2009-04-20T01:10:47Z")
And sometimes the letters are upper and lower case but you don’t know if the required answer is case sensitive.
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### Author:  [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2009, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/5 "2009-04-20T01:15:27Z")
They piss me off. If they’re still around and I manage to learn good programming skills my flirt OCR project will be open source and for defeating all captchas to end their tyranny.
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### Author:  [@fifty-six](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fifty-six)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2009, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/6 "2009-04-20T01:22:59Z")
Or crammed so close together you couldn’t tell even with clear type.
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### Author:  [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2009, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/7 "2009-04-20T02:08:28Z")
And a lot of times, it’s weird color combinations, with lines going through the letters and numbers.
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### Author:  [@fifty-six](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fifty-six)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2009, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/8 "2009-04-20T02:19:43Z")
Well watch this all the way though and at least you may be able to chuckle a bit every time you see one. Except they make my head explode.
NSFW Language
[Internet Commenter Business Meeting](http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1771556)
And while I am at it:
NSFW Language
[Flame War](http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1907543)
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### Author:  [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2009, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/9 "2009-04-20T19:19:30Z")
> [@runner pat](#):
>
> And sometimes the letters are upper and lower case but you don’t know if the required answer is case sensitive.
Or you do know that it’s case sensitive, but everything is stretched and warped so much that you can’t tell if it’s w or W. o or O? How about the S’s? Or maybe they’re 5’s. Can I have a Z anyone?
Full on board with this rant.
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### Author:  [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2009, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/10 "2009-04-20T19:43:37Z")
Good news is, they’re working on something more bearable. The new Captcha would have, for example, a bunch of random animal pictures, and it would ask you which ones are cats. Not very hard for a human, but still impossible for a machine.
The bad news is, I don’t think it’s going to be ready any time soon. At least, _I_ haven’t seen it.
The worse news is, you just know that spammers are going to come up with a Kitty Identification Bot, and then we’ll be back to where we started.
P.S. Gmail, oh Gmail! I was trying to change my password the other day, and -gahhh!!! It’s not only safe from spambots, it’s safe from people alltogether!
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### Author:  [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2009, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/11 "2009-04-20T20:11:55Z")
Do they have a workaround for fake porn-captchas that require a “captcha” to enter the site, but you are really filling out a captcha for a spambot on some other unrelated site? I would think those would work with kitty-recognition captchas as well (unless the humans-tricked-into-filling-out-captchas-for-other-sites story was not true.)
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### Author:  [@Capcha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capcha)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2009, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/12 "2009-04-21T02:59:05Z")
> [@](#):
>
> **Stupid Captchas!**
Hey! What did i eve…
oh.
😃
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### Author:  [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2009, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/13 "2009-04-21T03:20:37Z")
I read an article on the interwebs the other day saying that the speed at which hacker/spammers are succeeding at applying artifical intelligence to captchas that is amazing to AI researchers. Getting hackers to work on each AI problem like this will allow Terminators to take over the world much sooner.
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### Author:  [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2009, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/14 "2009-04-22T04:31:36Z")
They could at least give us a break. Why don’t they let the user pass if they get, say, 5 out of 6 characters right?
Seems to me that would still fulfill the purpose as well as eliminate most of the frustration.
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### Author:  [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2009, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/15 "2009-04-22T07:05:56Z")
And what the fuck is up with the ones that give you **two** words to type? They don’t tell you if there should be a space between them, or if you should run them together.
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### Author:  [@EpicNonsense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EpicNonsense)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2009, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/16 "2009-04-22T07:17:09Z")
> [@elfkin477](#):
>
> And what the fuck is up with the ones that give you **two** words to type? They don’t tell you if there should be a space between them, or if you should run them together.
ReCaptcha..
Ya, those irritate the heck out of me. You usually have to refresh the damn images 20 times before they are even near legible.. Even then you’re still guessing at least 5 characters..
But hey.. those books need to be digitized! Our sanity is of no importance.
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### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2009, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/17 "2009-04-22T09:23:42Z")
I’ve never had a problem with ReCaptcha and I like it when sites use that system: The words are usually pretty readable and, hey, I’m helping to digitize some work I’ve never heard of! As a long-time Project Gutenberg fanatic, I can fully get behind that.
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### Author:  [@Amblydoper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amblydoper)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2009, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/18 "2009-04-22T10:20:08Z")
> [@EpicNonsense](#):
>
> ReCaptcha..
>
> Ya, those irritate the heck out of me. You usually have to refresh the damn images 20 times before they are even near legible.. Even then you’re still guessing at least 5 characters..
And a hearty FUCK OFF to the sites that don’t have a “new image” button, and make you refill the entire form when you get it wrong. FUCK.
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### Author:  [@Wheeljack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wheeljack)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2009, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/19 "2009-04-22T10:25:59Z")
How do those “digitize the books” CAPTCHAs work? Aren’t the books already digitized? Otherwise, what are they comparing the input to?
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### Author:  [@EpicNonsense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EpicNonsense)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2009, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-captchas/493675/20 "2009-04-22T10:32:02Z")
> [@Wheeljack](#):
>
> How do those “digitize the books” CAPTCHAs work? Aren’t the books already digitized? Otherwise, what are they comparing the input to?
[http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html](http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html)
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