I should know better than complain about a programming task on a programmer's
mailing list. Thanks for the perl code (still shuddering). I'll keep it in
handy. I just might end up using it.
···
On Wednesday 10 November 2004 08:12 pm, Bill Kelly wrote:
From: "Jim Weirich" <jim@weirichhouse.org>
> (3) Detecting the addition of links is difficult because the change is
> submitted to the wiki as a whole page, with nothing to distinguish the
> new material from the old. To determine that we would have to run a diff
> algorithm between the old and new content.
How about:
--
-- Jim Weirich jim@weirichhouse.org http://onestepback.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct,
not tried it." -- Donald Knuth (in a memo to Peter van Emde Boas)
This is known as a Captcha test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha\). As
mentioned earlier, I think most of the simple minded bots have been
eliminated, and the remaining spammers are either human or bots closely
monitored by humans. I suspect that captcha will have less of an effect
than we would hope. Of course I could be wrong and may setup a test of
this. Also, as someone else noted, captcha systems suffer from some
concern over accessibility issues.
I always hear about accessibility issues when the idea of Captchas comes up. I also hear about it when people talk about Flash on web pages, and on frames, and on image heavy pages, and so on.
There are two things I have yet to hear:
* I'm blind, and X bothers me. Here's something that would work.
* I talked to a blind person / organization / read on a site dedicated to accessibility that you should do Y.
I heard that. I even heard it for things I'd never had thought could be related, such as cdrecord and cdparanoia (it seem that braille displays just work with \n so the updating tricks with just \r were a problem).
Has anybody actually gone out to try to find a blind advocacy group, or a blind person, and actually asked them what they suggest? It sounds like there's a whole lot of speculation going on, but I would expect that if Captchas are a problem, the most likely place to find a solution is by talking to blind people.
dunno, there are lots of web sites (and I think some regulation in EU and USA) that basically is "non text stuff should have a text reprsentation", but given a text representation even automated things can parse that (except if it requires some non obvious logic).
But as Jim Weirich reported it seem that most automated attackas were stopped, and actually it seem that no spam happened on rubygarden today.
Has anybody actually gone out to try to find a blind advocacy group, or a blind person, and actually asked them what they suggest? It sounds like there's a whole lot of speculation going on, but I would expect that if Captchas are a problem, the most likely place to find a solution is by talking to blind people.
Good point. There used to be a blind reader of this list that I knew.
Haven't seen him de-lurk in ages.
Someone who simply has really poor eyesight can configure their
browsers for large font. They would be able to read the wiki, but not
contribute to it because the strangely formed text within an image may
not be readable to them. These people are certainly capable of
contributing to the wiki.
And people who are blind have the text-to-speech option. Whether or
not they are able to contribute, I'm not sure, but it seems silly to
punish someone with a visual disability for spammer bad behaviour.
···
On Thu, 11 Nov 2004 06:04:31 +0900, Nikolai Weibull <mailing-lists.ruby-talk@rawuncut.elitemail.org> wrote:
* Michael DeHaan <michael.dehaan@gmail.com> [Nov 10, 2004 21:20]:
> CAPTCHA systems are a roadblock to blind and visually impaired users.
What possibilities do they have in altering the contents of the pages?
I'm not being sarcastic, I'd actually like to know if there are any.
nikolai
--
::: name: Nikolai Weibull :: aliases: pcp / lone-star / aka :::
::: born: Chicago, IL USA :: loc atm: Gothenburg, Sweden :::
::: page: www.pcppopper.org :: fun atm: gf,lps,ruby,lisp,war3 :::
main(){printf(&linux["\021%six\012\0"],(linux)["have"]+"fun"-97);}
But as Jim Weirich reported it seem that most automated attackas were
stopped, and actually it seem that no spam happened on rubygarden today.
There have been only a few updates today at all, and none of them were
attacks (do spammers take Thursday off?).
One user changed a existing page (added a "1" to the page in a random
spot), and then created a home page with a rambling stream of
consciousness style to the entry. They did create a couple links to their
web page, but it didn't look like spam.
All in all, a boring day so far in the world of spam.
···
--
-- Jim Weirich jim@weirichhouse.org http://onestepback.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct,
not tried it." -- Donald Knuth (in a memo to Peter van Emde Boas)
But as Jim Weirich reported it seem that most automated attackas were
stopped, and actually it seem that no spam happened on rubygarden today.
There have been only a few updates today at all, and none of them were
attacks (do spammers take Thursday off?).
I thought this amusing (note to non USA folks: Thursday is a federal holiday in the States), but then I wondered if spam is down because office machines have been turned off, so malware stealth code cannot run on infected office PCs.
Quoteing jan@spam.spam, on Fri, Nov 12, 2004 at 09:48:27AM +0900:
James Britt wrote:
>Jim Weirich wrote:
>>
>>
>>There have been only a few updates today at all, and none of them were
>>attacks (do spammers take Thursday off?).
>
>
>(note to non USA folks: Thursday is a federal holiday in the States),
(note to USA folks: it's also a holiday in most other countries that
took part of WOI :))
Here in Canada Rememberance Day isn't a stat holiday, we have to work.
Its a holiday in Europe and most of the rest of the commonwealth, then?
FYI: Most of europe is not part of the commonwealth.
Regards,
Brian
···
On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 10:28:45 +0900 Sam Roberts <sroberts@uniserve.com> wrote:
Quoteing jan@spam.spam, on Fri, Nov 12, 2004 at 09:48:27AM +0900:
> James Britt wrote:
> >Jim Weirich wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>There have been only a few updates today at all, and none of them were
> >>attacks (do spammers take Thursday off?).
> >
> >
> >(note to non USA folks: Thursday is a federal holiday in the States),
>
> (note to USA folks: it's also a holiday in most other countries that
> took part of WOI :))
Here in Canada Rememberance Day isn't a stat holiday, we have to work.
Its a holiday in Europe and most of the rest of the commonwealth, then?
* Robert McGovern <robert.mcgovern@gmail.com> [1138 09:38]:
···
On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 10:28:45 +0900, Sam Roberts <> wrote:
> Here in Canada Rememberance Day isn't a stat holiday, we have to work.
>
> Its a holiday in Europe and most of the rest of the commonwealth, then?
Certainly not in the UK Sam
You get to not talk for two minutes, what more do you want?
Get back to work!
--
Power corrupts. Absolute power - is kind of neat.
- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns
It's not a holiday day in Germany, not even in part of it. My calendar says it is one in France and Belgium.
What's WOI? I'm quite sure it's not "Wildlist Organizational International", the only meaning www.acronymfinder.com offers.
It is the Dutch abreviation for World War I (WereldOorlog I).
Ahh, live and learn.
FWIW, it used to be called "Armistice Day" over here -- long before I
was born -- but I suppose it was changed to "Veterans' Day" after WWII
(or WOII?).
