Death to Captchas

Beck when machines had trouble solving simple Captchas, they weren't a bad idea.

Now the machines are much better at solving them than we are. I see red when I see a Captcha, no matter the color of the cursed thing...

Recent Stuff That Bothers Me - Pogue’s Posts - NYTimes.com

... These days, blogs and Web sites often require you to prove that you’re human by typing in the text version of some distorted picture of a word. The idea is to screen out automated software spambots that fill the Comments area with auto-generated ads...

... I suddenly realized how much I hate these things when I got a note from reader Jason Donovan, who’s started a Web site where you can post your favorite (meaning most ridiculous) Captcha images.

Some of the starter images posted there aren’t hard to figure out. But the ones in color, one of which I’ve pasted here, are living, breathing proof that these things have gotten quite out of control.

I moderate all comments and foreswear the cursed Captcha. It was a nice try, but the experiment failed. The machines aced the Turing test.