Captchas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA) are getting impossibly difficult to read. Captchas are those images with words and numbers that are wavy, have lines through them and are skewed. You frequently encounter them at login pages, registration pages, and other pages requiring human user verification. They used to work great, but they’ve been slowly becoming more difficult to read. I assume that “bots” are getting smarter and determining what the Captchas are. The problem now is that the images distort the words/numbers/letters so badly I can’t tell what they are. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
At what point does it become a hiderance and not a security mechanism. At the moment its starting to border on security theater. Ok yes it helps keeps bots out, but surely there are better ways? I mean when I have to reload the page or captcha 3 times before, me, a human, a sentient being with a brain unparalleled by any thing else on the planet, can figure out what it is… its time to call it quits on catpchas and find a new mechanism.
Here’s a pretty awesome view of the history of computing languages. Yay for O’Reilly. Very cool chart indeed. Its kind of scary how old C is now. And its still kicking around doing big jobs.
Keeping in the language vein, here’s a blogger who says you can learn (but not master) any language in the short space of time of an hour. To me his suggestions seem obvious, but maybe its because I’m inherently analytical about things. Still the author poses an interesting argument. As to whether it can be a method repeatable by anyone is yet to be seen.
Recently watched these two documentaries and they say a lot about the world we live in today. Its not just by chance we live in the modern world as we do. It has been carefully constructed.
This beginner’s guide to photography seems like a good start, but since I’m a beginner I can’t tell if its really good or not. I want to lean on the side of saying its informative and seems to be accurate, but I speak from a slightly uninformed position. Anyway, your mileage may vary.
Sollemnis sent me this video and its an intruiging and thought provoking watch. It asks the question what makes us happy. While I’m not sure I’m entirely convinced by his argument, he does have a good point. Go make yourself happy by watching it here. Of course its a TED talk, so be prepared for awesomeness.
I just wanted to plug a friend’s blog. He does many cooky, and impressive things with virtualization. You can read his adventures here: http://virtuallyfun.blogspot.com/
CMU (Carnegie Mellon University) has a lecture series called the last lecture, where professor are encouraged to give a lecture as though it were their last. A really interesting idea to say the least. Well for one professor, it really is his last. Randy Pausch was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and doctors said he only had a few months left to live. His last lecture was one of the most brilliant, insightful, and inspirational lectures I’ve ever seen. While it is lengthy, clocking in at about 1 hour 30 mins, its definitely worth the while.
Keeping in a math related vein, here’s a documentary entitled Dangerous Knowledge. While its an interesting watch, I did not care for the slant that was present in the film. As I understood it, the thinkers profiled (Cantor, Turing, et al) were not so much “destroyed” by “dangerous knowledge” as the film wants us to believe. From what I understood, they were subject to societal (read: peer) pressures and specific personality foibles. Often those who are avant-garde thinkers tend to have peculiar personality traits which frequently leads to mental instability. I’m no doctor of course, but thats my general observation. Anyway, whether I’m incorrect or not, the piece was worth a watch.
