Rant #3: CAPTCHAs
Originally posted: April 2, 2009 (MySpace)
ANNOYANCE LEVEL: 3
Okay,
let's talk about CAPTCHAs and why they fucking suck. "Boots, wtf is a
CAPTCHA, you might ask?" But you don't need to, cause you know what they
are. Somewhat new to the internet, these pieces of fuck are a major
inconvenience whose main purpose is to keep the internet more secure.
They also have a secondary purpose of fucking with your head and wasting
your time. But if you still don't know what I'm talking about, let me
explain it better.
A CAPTCHA, or "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart", is that damn thing you have to fill out when submitting pretty much any kind of signup form or request or sometimes to even update your MySpace page, those stupid images with the fucked up letters that you have to copy into a box and you can't fucking read half of them. You know those things? If you're still brainless, google CAPTCHA and check the wiki, we'll be on the same page then.
Why am I ranting about CAPTCHAs? Because they're assholes, that's why. Sometimes you can enter them with no problem, but other times they're confusing. They raise questions like "Is that a u or a v? wtf letter is that? am I supposed to include the spaces?" and sometimes you can type them right and they won't even accept it.
I had this problem one day with my video card that I wanted to go to the nVidia forums for, but I had to sign up for the site, so I did and got down to the CAPTCHA. I filled it out and hit okay, and it said it was wrong. I looked again and I guess I had missed a letter, but every fucking time after that it was filled out 100% perfectly and it would not take it. I tried refreshing the page, closing it and coming back to a new one, going back and trying again, nothing I did would make it take my answer. That one was just fucking broken.
And sometimes these digital ass-reamers have a little "can't read this?" button you can click to get a different one, but it doesn't always update the answer field so it's still wanting the previous image to be entered. It's like wtf?!
Some of them also have a "verbal" option where you can have the letters or words read to you, but they are so garbled that you can't understand them (apparently so voice recognition software can't crack them), but how the hell am I supposed to understand someone talking with a huge lump of shit in their mouth?
I know these things are supposed to be a security measure, but what's the big deal if a computer bot signs up for your website. Who cares? What are they gonna do, post in your forums cause, yeah, that's likely...(/sarcasm off).
EDIT: Okay, so I was just poking around MySpace's options and settings, and there's a link there called No More CAPTCHAs. So I thought, "Hey, cool..." and clicked it. This takes you to a screen to enter your phone number so you can get spam from MySpace via text message. WTF?! So you're saying I can trade CAPTCHAs for spam?! Oh gee golly me, where do I sign up? If they have an option to get rid of CAPTCHAs, y'know, the thing that's supposed to make MySpace more secure, then why the fuck are they there in the first place? It's like they sat around and said "How can we get MySpacers to let us advertise to them in a way they'll notice?" and someone goes "Hey I know, let's make something for them to enter their phone numbers to sign up for it!" "Nawww, that'll never work. Nobody would be that fucking stupid." "No, listen, I'm not done. Before we do that, we add some BULLSHIT to the site, like, uh, a CAPTCHA, yeah!, and make them live with that for a few months, THEN introduce this option to get rid of them but only if they sign up for the ad service." "BRILLIANT!"
WHAT THE SHIT?! Now I haven't actually signed up for this to see what happens, I'm considering doing it just to be able to give a more in-depth opinion, it might just be alerts for when you get new messages, who knows, but with the way the 'net normally works, I really doubt it. Seriously MySpace... fuck you.
A CAPTCHA, or "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart", is that damn thing you have to fill out when submitting pretty much any kind of signup form or request or sometimes to even update your MySpace page, those stupid images with the fucked up letters that you have to copy into a box and you can't fucking read half of them. You know those things? If you're still brainless, google CAPTCHA and check the wiki, we'll be on the same page then.
Why am I ranting about CAPTCHAs? Because they're assholes, that's why. Sometimes you can enter them with no problem, but other times they're confusing. They raise questions like "Is that a u or a v? wtf letter is that? am I supposed to include the spaces?" and sometimes you can type them right and they won't even accept it.
I had this problem one day with my video card that I wanted to go to the nVidia forums for, but I had to sign up for the site, so I did and got down to the CAPTCHA. I filled it out and hit okay, and it said it was wrong. I looked again and I guess I had missed a letter, but every fucking time after that it was filled out 100% perfectly and it would not take it. I tried refreshing the page, closing it and coming back to a new one, going back and trying again, nothing I did would make it take my answer. That one was just fucking broken.
And sometimes these digital ass-reamers have a little "can't read this?" button you can click to get a different one, but it doesn't always update the answer field so it's still wanting the previous image to be entered. It's like wtf?!
Some of them also have a "verbal" option where you can have the letters or words read to you, but they are so garbled that you can't understand them (apparently so voice recognition software can't crack them), but how the hell am I supposed to understand someone talking with a huge lump of shit in their mouth?
I know these things are supposed to be a security measure, but what's the big deal if a computer bot signs up for your website. Who cares? What are they gonna do, post in your forums cause, yeah, that's likely...(/sarcasm off).
The bottom line: CAPTCHAs are bullshit,
but if we must endure them, at least make sure they fucking
work!!*cough, nVidia* And why the fuck do I have to enter them to update
my profile? Shouldn't logging in be good enough?! Whoever invented
them... FUCK YOU!
EDIT: Okay, so I was just poking around MySpace's options and settings, and there's a link there called No More CAPTCHAs. So I thought, "Hey, cool..." and clicked it. This takes you to a screen to enter your phone number so you can get spam from MySpace via text message. WTF?! So you're saying I can trade CAPTCHAs for spam?! Oh gee golly me, where do I sign up? If they have an option to get rid of CAPTCHAs, y'know, the thing that's supposed to make MySpace more secure, then why the fuck are they there in the first place? It's like they sat around and said "How can we get MySpacers to let us advertise to them in a way they'll notice?" and someone goes "Hey I know, let's make something for them to enter their phone numbers to sign up for it!" "Nawww, that'll never work. Nobody would be that fucking stupid." "No, listen, I'm not done. Before we do that, we add some BULLSHIT to the site, like, uh, a CAPTCHA, yeah!, and make them live with that for a few months, THEN introduce this option to get rid of them but only if they sign up for the ad service." "BRILLIANT!"
WHAT THE SHIT?! Now I haven't actually signed up for this to see what happens, I'm considering doing it just to be able to give a more in-depth opinion, it might just be alerts for when you get new messages, who knows, but with the way the 'net normally works, I really doubt it. Seriously MySpace... fuck you.