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Love it when my "n" key doesn't work. Lets try that again. My Website. There we are. Much better

Even if Capchas are broken in, say, 1 second by this system - we have greatly raised the cost of sending an email, posting a blog-spam comment, or some other such irritant.

Sure, maybe they're not perfect.

I use them on my website mostly because I want to avoid people posting advertisements on my blog. Individuals do it occasionaly, but those are easy enough to delete. When someone coded my blog comment form into a bot somewhere and I started getting 100+ spam comments a day I started useing captchas.

I'm sure the one I'm using is one of the weakest ones out there - but it's free and required very little time and energy to deploy.

I use Captchas.net's free service. Here is an example page rendered from my server.

There's really no good way to solve this problem with Wikipedia. Part and parcel of the entire point of the site is that anyone can put the information up there. The standing theory is that, given the choice, people won't change it unless they're sure. I might think Washington's Birthday is on April the 22, but given that Wikipedia says otherwise and I don't have anything to back up my groundless assertion, I'm not going to change it.

The problem, is not willfull ignorance, as the Intelligent Design bit would suggest (to read my take on Intelegent Design click here and here) but simple ignorance. There is no hair brained cult that belives that Washington was born on some other day and doesn't like to be told otherwise. However, I've not the slightest idea when he was born, and as a consequence won't change the date if it's wrong.

Of course, the more obscure the article the more likely it is to be so undermined. Some 8th grader doing a report on Washington is likely to notice a birthday discrepancy. This is less likely for an article on an obscure branch of materials science.

There's really no good way to solve this problem with Wikipedia. Part and parcel of the entire point of the site is that anyone can put the information up there. The standing theory is that, given the choice, people won't change it unless they're sure. I might think Washington's Birthday is on April the 22, but given that Wikipedia says otherwise and I don't have anything to back up my groundless assertion, I'm not going to change it.

The problem, is not willfull ignorance, as the Intelligent Design bit would suggest (to read my take on Intelegent Design click here and here) but simple ignorance. There is no hair brained cult that belives that Washington was born on some other day and doesn't like to be told otherwise. However, I've not the slightest idea when he was born, and as a consequence won't change the date if it's wrong.

Of course, the more obscure the article the more likely it is to be so undermined. Some 8th grader doing a report on Washington is likely to notice a birthday discrepancy. This is less likely for an article on an obscure branch of materials science.

Personally I think this entire thread is self defeating. Think about it.... "what's your favorite blog?"

I don't know about the rest of you, but I thumb through a huge number of blogs/news sites/etc looking for material that catches my interest. Then I do my own research (not as in depth as I'd like sometimes) and try to make my own contribution, be it emotional or analytical to the topic.

So my favorite blog is [The Nephandus Weblog (aka Mephistopheles' Journal)] which is... well... mine if you'll pardon the plug. I'm surprised more people aren't saying that. The macroscopic purpose of bloging is to get the individual's ideas out there, to circumvent the established publication process and to bring a voice to the masses.

Admittedly, the masses are sometimes dumb as rocks. Rather than complain about the blogs you don't like, start your own! I know my blog doesn't get the traffic that the big names get, but it does get some and I'd like to think that those that see it are in some way influenced by it.

On the flip side, this thread has been a wonderful resource for me, because now I have even more to thumb through. The average /.er has at least a more skeptical view of the world than most, to say nothing of technical ability etc. I'd like to read what more of you have to say outside the bounds of this community.

I view my blog as just that, a log of my meanderings through the web. I stumble upon a few other blogs and when I do so (and I like what I see) I'll make mention of them. I also cite where my stuff comes from though.

I try to include other stuff too, breif reviews of products, sometimes comments on slashdot stories that don't seem to fit with the overall comments in the thread, stuff like that.

I'm also fairly certain I won't be seeing much of my content replicated because google won't talk to php pages for some reason.

Blatent plug for my blog aside, I think it's good that content propigates through the blogs. It results that information rising in the public awareness, which basicly means that blogs serve as a human crawler for interesting web content. The inherently democratic nature of the internet forces that content to the surface as more people link to it and comment on it.

Note -- I'm one of those crazy liberal people. If you're inclined to get angry about that I'll advise you to spare yourself the heartburn and just not read my blog.