I doubt that would work in the long run. All it takes is for a bot owner to go and look at the page and identify which image is the captcha for the bot.
It works because it's not worth the bot-owner's time to do that. Spamming a typical small forum is worth about $0.001 -- if it takes more than a second or two to adjust the bot, he's lost money spamming it.
The character outlines are nicely distinct, which means that even basic OCR software should be able to break the CAPTCHA. Since it's so easy to break, you want to hide it from any bots that come by: remove all references to "captcha" from the page source, and you might want to move the HTML for the image away from the HTML for the entry box.
Food prices change every day/month too. What's your point?
The difference is the rate of change. I can reasonably expect that the person in front of me in line is paying the same as I am for that gallon of milk, that I'll pay the same regardless of whether I go shopping before work, after work, or on my lunch break, and that the price probably won't change until next Wednesday (which is when the weekly grocery ads come out). IBM's system permits the price to change continuously, so until I get to the tollboth, I don't know how much I'll be paying. For all I know, there might be a sale at Macy's and the resulting traffic has just raised my morning commute above what I can pay. Or I could be at the tail end of rush hour, and by waiting three minutes, I'd pay half as much.
As I recall, Angband has a game-breaking strategy that requires spending hundreds of thousands of turns on the first level. It's too tedious for most humans, but computers don't get bored. The presence of this strategy makes writing an AI for Angband easier than it is for most other games.
With spring-loaded prosthetic legs like these, it's very hard to do anything *but* run: walking is difficult, and it's almost impossible to stand still without holding on to something.
Why not just suck water out of a sponge? This is twice as good as a silly straw (aka "corckscrew cup") because you could use it to clean up spills as well as prevent them.
Bacteria love sponges. All that surface area means they'll hold water for a long time, and it's impossible to clean them properly.
A great example of this is the results for the sample query "Mayors of US cities higher than 1000m" -- of the ten results, Roger Reed, mayor of Fredericktown, Ohio, is mayor of a city that is 1090 feet above sea level.
The English language changes over time. If you've got a problem with that, move to France -- I hear they've got an entire organization devoted to defining exactly what each word means.
Or, can you tell me the relevance of having access to the complete works of Wikipedia versus getting Polio vaccinations, or vitamin supplements?
Would you rather have a foreigner come in and vaccinate you against the galloping shits, or would you rather read up on sanitation and learn that boiling your drinking water would prevent them in the first place? Would you rather head to the local charity for your monthly supply of vitamin pills, or would you rather learn about nutrition and decide to suppliment your rice crop with wheat?
For $75, we foreigners can come in and fix a few of the problems they're facing. Or, for $75, we can teach them how to fix many of the problems they're facing. Which is a better investment?
Or why not just make sure they all get their vaccinations, a good supply of pencils and paper, and an interesting book to read from the nearby library each week? Doubt that would cost more than $75 per child in desperately-poor Thirdworldistan.
$75 per child might get you a school library of a couple thousand books, but wouldn't you rather give them all of Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg?
As a motorcycle owner, I'd trust a computer controlled cage much more than a human controlled one.
As a car driver, I agree. A black-clad motorcyclist on a small black-and-chrome vehicle on black pavement under a cloudy sky is hard to see. It's even worse in the rain or at night. I'd much prefer having a computer-controlled radar system keeping an eye on you to having to do it myself.
You know, there's a reason why most of us don't trust URL redirector links posted on Slashdot. Still, I'm disappointed. The traditional target for these links is Goatse.
Machine guns were also incredibly ineffective. Damn near every wheeled or tracked vehicle had at least one antiaircraft machine gun, and even so, ground-attack aircraft usually got away unharmed.
It seems to be human nature to want to try and quantify, classify and plan everything, however some things (like research) can't be effectively estimated beforehand because of the unknowns.
Building a space probe and putting it into the correct place is engineering, not research. We've put enough of them in various places that by now, we should have a reasonable idea of how much various bits cost, and in such a case, trying to keep costs down is reasonable.
Once the probe reaches its target, that's when the research starts and the costs become less predictable.
Didn't they spend some ridiculous sum (> $100) on a nut and bolt once?
For most applications, parts can be qualified for use in batches: take a few parts from the batch, test them to destruction, and if they meet spec, the whole batch is qualified. When I worked in a mechanical testing lab, strength-testing a bolt to destruction would cost (equipment + labor + overhead) $1.50. At the typical ratio of one part tested out of every ten thousand, that's a tiny fraction of a penny per bolt.
Military hardware requirements generally state that each individual part meet spec. This requires non-destructive testing. The company I worked for never did non-destructive testing, but the one time we were asked for a quote, it was $30 per part. If that's typical for the industry, it's obvious why the military was spending $100 per bolt.
There was technology back then, and still exists today, that could have stopped that. It would cost a couple hundred thousand dollars but would essentially retrofit the cargo compartments with blast proof material. The containers themselves would also be fitted with it.
It's a bit more expensive than that. The refit would only cost $100,000, but over the expected 30-year life of an average 747, the increased weight and reduced cargo capacity would have an additional cost of around $10,000,000.
Slashdot Mirror
My first reaction was to check to see if I'd clicked on the right link -- I thought somebody'd slipped a link to a Slashdot parody into the article.
It works because it's not worth the bot-owner's time to do that. Spamming a typical small forum is worth about $0.001 -- if it takes more than a second or two to adjust the bot, he's lost money spamming it.
The character outlines are nicely distinct, which means that even basic OCR software should be able to break the CAPTCHA. Since it's so easy to break, you want to hide it from any bots that come by: remove all references to "captcha" from the page source, and you might want to move the HTML for the image away from the HTML for the entry box.
The difference is the rate of change. I can reasonably expect that the person in front of me in line is paying the same as I am for that gallon of milk, that I'll pay the same regardless of whether I go shopping before work, after work, or on my lunch break, and that the price probably won't change until next Wednesday (which is when the weekly grocery ads come out). IBM's system permits the price to change continuously, so until I get to the tollboth, I don't know how much I'll be paying. For all I know, there might be a sale at Macy's and the resulting traffic has just raised my morning commute above what I can pay. Or I could be at the tail end of rush hour, and by waiting three minutes, I'd pay half as much.
Wasn't there a copyright-infringement lawsuit over four minutes and thirty-three seconds of no sound?
As I recall, Angband has a game-breaking strategy that requires spending hundreds of thousands of turns on the first level. It's too tedious for most humans, but computers don't get bored. The presence of this strategy makes writing an AI for Angband easier than it is for most other games.
With spring-loaded prosthetic legs like these, it's very hard to do anything *but* run: walking is difficult, and it's almost impossible to stand still without holding on to something.
Bacteria love sponges. All that surface area means they'll hold water for a long time, and it's impossible to clean them properly.
A great example of this is the results for the sample query "Mayors of US cities higher than 1000m" -- of the ten results, Roger Reed, mayor of Fredericktown, Ohio, is mayor of a city that is 1090 feet above sea level.
The English language changes over time. If you've got a problem with that, move to France -- I hear they've got an entire organization devoted to defining exactly what each word means.
There, fixed that for you.
Would you rather have a foreigner come in and vaccinate you against the galloping shits, or would you rather read up on sanitation and learn that boiling your drinking water would prevent them in the first place? Would you rather head to the local charity for your monthly supply of vitamin pills, or would you rather learn about nutrition and decide to suppliment your rice crop with wheat?
For $75, we foreigners can come in and fix a few of the problems they're facing. Or, for $75, we can teach them how to fix many of the problems they're facing. Which is a better investment?
And if you measure in Euros, it'll be 60 of 'em before and after.
$75 per child might get you a school library of a couple thousand books, but wouldn't you rather give them all of Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg?
Yes. A single mud-splattered under-spec taillight blends in quite nicely against the much brighter lights of the car ahead of it.
Historically, that's been GM's core market: corporate and rental fleets.
As a car driver, I agree. A black-clad motorcyclist on a small black-and-chrome vehicle on black pavement under a cloudy sky is hard to see. It's even worse in the rain or at night. I'd much prefer having a computer-controlled radar system keeping an eye on you to having to do it myself.
I can afford vision-correction surgery just fine. I just value my night vision too much to risk it.
It's easier to get a $400 billion subsidy than it is to get a $400 billion 40-year loan.
You know, there's a reason why most of us don't trust URL redirector links posted on Slashdot. Still, I'm disappointed. The traditional target for these links is Goatse.
Machine guns were also incredibly ineffective. Damn near every wheeled or tracked vehicle had at least one antiaircraft machine gun, and even so, ground-attack aircraft usually got away unharmed.
Building a space probe and putting it into the correct place is engineering, not research. We've put enough of them in various places that by now, we should have a reasonable idea of how much various bits cost, and in such a case, trying to keep costs down is reasonable.
Once the probe reaches its target, that's when the research starts and the costs become less predictable.
For most applications, parts can be qualified for use in batches: take a few parts from the batch, test them to destruction, and if they meet spec, the whole batch is qualified. When I worked in a mechanical testing lab, strength-testing a bolt to destruction would cost (equipment + labor + overhead) $1.50. At the typical ratio of one part tested out of every ten thousand, that's a tiny fraction of a penny per bolt.
Military hardware requirements generally state that each individual part meet spec. This requires non-destructive testing. The company I worked for never did non-destructive testing, but the one time we were asked for a quote, it was $30 per part. If that's typical for the industry, it's obvious why the military was spending $100 per bolt.
It's a bit more expensive than that. The refit would only cost $100,000, but over the expected 30-year life of an average 747, the increased weight and reduced cargo capacity would have an additional cost of around $10,000,000.
I'm still looking for a three-way CFL that will actually fit in the fixtures I've got.