April 8th, 2006
Tired of CAPTCHAs? KittenAuth Offers a Cute Alternative to End Comment Spam
By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
First, some of you may be wondering … what exactly is a CAPTCHA? It means “Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart.” It’s those wonderful “tests” consisting of mangled and obscured characters that you have to complete on many sites to enter a comment, register, etc. etc. And yes, it’s to prevent spambots from signing up on discussion forums, etc. and telling all the people at say, a forum on Security how wonderful Viagra is for them.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who hates these things, and also not the only one to fail a test when I couldn’t figure out exactly what the characters were since, because character recognition has gotten so much better, the amount of distortion applied to the characters has gotten so much worse. Enter “Oli”, and a form of verification that should stump bots while cuting out humans … KittenAuth.
I went with kittens and other cute animals for the ultimate “awwww” factor. But you could use motorcycles and bicycles, family members and friends or powerpuff-girl characters and dexter’s lab characters… Anything that your user base will understand and be able to decipher. Source: The PC Spy
We Say: You can try a sample test here. And yes, I tried it, and yes, they’re cute, and yes, sign me up. 3 pictures out of 9 is a 1 out of 84 chance of getting it right with a random selection, but as “Oli” points out, you could of course increase the total number of cells.
Before You Go…
–CuteOverload is Too Cute for Words < --Brace Yourself
–Self-Weighing Suitcase
–Ripped Off? Burned CD-Rs Have 2 Year Shelf Life
–Catalytic Converters Are Hot Property for Thieves
Ah heck…More RealTechNews
Anonymous says:
Isn’t it a 1 out of 504 chance of randomly guessing 3 pictures of 9? 1/9 * 1/8 * 1/7 = 1/504
April 8th, 2006 at 10:44 pm
Michael says:
The odds would be 3/9 to randomly pick a kitten on the first try, 2/8 on the second, and 1/7 on the third. This yields odds of 6/504, or 1/84, of picking a kitten on all three picks.
April 9th, 2006 at 1:58 am
silverpie says:
No, because you don’t have to catch them in a specific order, so it’s 3/9 x 2/8 x 1/7 = 6/504 = 1/84
April 9th, 2006 at 3:47 am
Anonymous says:
Nope… Order doesn’t matter, so divide your result by 3*2*1…
April 9th, 2006 at 4:27 am
MathTeacher says:
The odds are 1 / 504 only if they have to be chosen in a particular order. For example, “Click pictures of cats, from youngest to oldest”.
April 9th, 2006 at 4:30 am
draco says:
Seems that 4 of 9 would give better odds, 1/126 if my calculations are correct.
April 9th, 2006 at 9:38 am
Anonymous says:
Finally my eigenspace-based kitten recognition can be put to good use!
April 9th, 2006 at 10:35 am
Daniel Davis says:
Isn’t it 1/9 x 1/9 x 1/9 = 1/729 because a truly random selection could randomly select the same square more than once?
April 9th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
Oli says:
I’m glad you’re having so much fun over my maths =)
As far as I know Its 9C3… That’s “how many combinations of 3 picks are there in 9 choices without being able to select one thing twice” in combinatorial statistics and that gives you 84 choices.
Its not great and I’m working on ways to make it better.
Thanks for the write-up Michael… But why is my name “Oli” and not Oli?
April 9th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
Oli says:
Oh and I’m starting an opensource PHP version with most of the best suggestions on www.kittenauth.com
Details on the project should follow there shortly.
April 9th, 2006 at 3:43 pm
citym.org says:
New trends in CAPTCHA
CAPTCHAs, or Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, are ubiquitous these days. Basically, end users are confronted with an image like this: Users then are asked to type in the the sequence of characters. This…
April 10th, 2006 at 7:45 pm
Crunchy Nougat says:
As a professional mathematician, I am not going to comment on the combinations and permutations. You rank amateurs need the practice. I just want to say that I think the test is clever and cute. Maybe it could be improved upon by showing the user just a couple of pictures and asking the user to select from a multiple-choice list to identify them. Kitten, apple, monkey, whatever. Monkeys are always good. Oh yes, the monkeys. Sure, monkeys in a barrel sounds like a lot of fun until UPS delivers the package and a bunch of dead monkeys fall out.
July 17th, 2006 at 7:29 pm
Des says:
It is 1 in 84. Basic probability.
(6! x 3!)/9!
=
(720 x 6)/362880
=
4320/362880
=
0.0119
which is 1/84
July 24th, 2007 at 7:18 am
yirrvuwnzo says:
Hello! Good Site! Thanks you! qnzdgdakrnx
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:24 pm