Category: observations

clarification/amplification on spam comment interdiction

In response to this

I like the second of the two, since it’s not exclusionary. How hard would it be to defeat? And what countermeasures could be written into it (present the string as HTML entities that have to be decoded by a parser? present the word reversed? don’t use real words at all? make the letter position the result of a simple equation [what letter is in the 2^2 position in the string uiwplkg?]?)

a friend writes:

None of those countermeasures would be effective against a computer parser; most of that stuff doesn’t even matter to a computer, like whether it’s a real word or if there’s an expression to evaluate. That’s all stuff that a computer is really good at.

On the other hand, you could describe the operation to be performed in such a way that it’s hard to get the gist without fully grokking the English:

“In an attempt to verify that you are a living, breathing human being and not a mindless computer program, and not having the time or resources to arrange a Turing Test, we would like you to enter, in the blank below, the answer indicated by the following paragraph.

The previous paragraph contains words of several parts of speech: prepositions, articles, nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives. Locate the first word which belongs in that last category and enter the letter which appears in it twice.

Enter answer here:[ ]”

Of course, that’s a bad example because it exclude people who were ignorant of the intricacies of English parts of speech (when is a verb form an adjective?). But it’s the right kind of example, I feel. The idea is to make the statement of the problem as hard to parse as possible. Avoid using digits; spell out numbers and require them to be spelled out. Pull together various parts of the text with references that are unambiguous but not computationally precise. That sort of thing. And of course, there has to be a very, very large set of potential problems and answers so that it doesn’t boil down to capturing all of the questions and memorizing the correct responses with no grokkage required at all.

So randomness (to create a large problem set) and high degree of difficulty in parsing, in effect negating simple parsing, are the specifications.

[Posted with ecto]

learning to spin

Took another turn on the bike today, another 15 or so miles to Tracy Owen Station in Kenmore and back. Pretty uneventful, though the replacement pedals I just got were harder to get into than the old ones. I lost some time on the outbound leg messing with the left one.

For today’s adventure, I decided to forego speed and concentrate on cadence, or spinning. I find a cadence of 85-90 to be pretty comfortable so I tried to keep it there and just use the gears to keep me on track. That worked pretty well: I was pretty tired when I was done, so it must have done me some good. My speed on the outbound was about 17 mph and on the return into the wind, about 14. My cadence was not as good in the last couple of miles, but it gives me something to work on.

[Posted with ecto]

thoughts on comment spam/prevention strategies

There’s a lot of effort going into how to prevent comment spam in movabletype and other weblogs. The key seems to be finding something that approximates a crude Turing test: the post request must meet some challenge that only a human can meet.

There are a few coping strategies in the field. One is a “captcha” engine that creates a gif of a number string and requires the numbers to be keyed as a kind of authentication: the gif is somewhat obscured, making it a problem for the sight-impaired and, we suppose, OCR software.

Another idea, not yet fielded, is a challenge-response where the question is something like “what is the X letter of word Y”? The arguments against this seem to be that a parser could be written to sort that out . . . I suppose so.

I like the second of the two, since it’s not exclusionary. How hard would it be to defeat? And what countermeasures could be written into it (present the string as HTML entities that have to be decoded by a parser? present the word reversed? don’t use real words at all? make the letter position the result of a simple equation [what letter is in the 2^2 position in the string uiwplkg?]?)

With the understanding that no scheme is perfect, what makes the bar sufficiently high as to dissuade all but the morally bankrupt with a lot of time on their hands?

[Posted with ecto]

tonight’s entertainment: raccoons fighting in a tree, 30 feet up

Apparently a mother with two cubs large raccoon of indeterminate gender felt crowded by another ‘coon and applied its considerable powers of persuasion (screeching and clawing, mostly) to make the point. Got me and my neighbors outside to see what the ruckus was (I had never heard anything like it, though I have seen some of the masked bandits about).

I brought out a really bright halogen worklight that picked them out quite easily: the victor was quite a specimen and clearly wasn’t going anywhere. The vanquished, smaller but still a good size, backed down the tree and around the side of our house, in search of unprotected cat and dog food dishes.

A good story for school tomorrow . . .

[Posted with ecto]
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conflict of interest?

Harpers.org:

“Vice President Dick Cheney defended Halliburton, which continues to pay him a salary, from what he said were “desperate attacks” by opponents of the Bush Administration. “They’re rendering great service,” he said. “They do it because they’re good at it, because they won the contract to do it. And frankly the company takes a certain amount of pride in rendering this kind of service to U.S. military forces.” Halliburton, which received most of its Iraq contracts by administrative fiat rather than through a competitive bidding process, admitted that its employees in Iraq have accepted $6.3 million in kickbacks.”

Unlike Jimmy Carter:

While he was president, Carter’s investments had been placed in a blind trust managed beyond his control to avoid any conflict of interest.

I think taking a salary from any entity during fulltime public service is a breach of faith, and for it to come from a company that by all accounts is engaged in war profiteering really stinks.

[Posted with ecto]

so being socially progressive and having a robust economy aren’t mutually exclusive?

A Fistful of Euros:

“Or, to summarise, social spending is good for personal productivity, and democracy is effective in ensuring that real-world governments avoid the costly mistakes that anti-welfare theorists assume. Apart from illustrating the dangers of hand-waving economic arguments, this tells us that the choice between a European-style high-welfare state, and a US-style low-welfare state, has nothing to do with promoting economic growth and is simply a matter of which kind of society we find more pleasant to live in.”

Which would you prefer?

See more here and here.

[Posted with ecto]

two great tastes that go great together: coffee and chocolate

Leigh-Anne’s AR Recipes: Six-Minute Chocolate Cake:

(actually, she uses the same recipe I do, from one of the Moosewood collective books: I have made a few ingredient and process changes.)

  • 1-1/2 cups unbleached white flour
  • 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 cup cold water or brewed coffee (espresso makes this sublime: use 2 shots)
  • 2 tsps pure vanilla extract
  • 2 tbsp (cider) vinegar

0. Preheat the oven to 375-degrees.

1. Grease/oil a 9 inch round or 8 inch square cake pan: dredge lightly with flour and cocoa powder.

2. Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt and sugar into an ungreased 8-inch square or 9-inch round baking pan (preferrably non-stick) a mixing bowl.

3. In a 2-cup measuring cup, measure and mix the oil, water (or coffee), and vanilla. Slowly and gently pour the liquid ingredients into the baking pan bowl and mix the batter with a fork or a small whisk.

4. When the batter is smooth, add the vinegar and stir quickly. There will be pale swirls (and some bubbling) in the batter where the baking soda and vinegar are reacting.

5. Stir just until the vinegar is evenly distributed throughout the batter (the color becomes more consistent throughout).

6. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes — testing with a toothpick. Remove to a cooling rack and make frosting.

Frosting is optional: I have used 10x sugar but the cake is so moist, it ends up soaking in. The latest Moosewood book has some more refined suggestions (speading a thin coating of fruit glaze or thinned fruit preserves to seal the cake, for example): sadly, the cake is too good to let it sit around long enough.

[Posted with ecto]

know thyself

Mind Media Brain Persuasion Test:

Your Brain Usage Profile
Auditory : 62%
Visual : 37%
Left : 47%
Right : 52%

I suppose it should say something about low mileage . . . .

The balance between left and right is interesting. And I don’t know how they differentiate between visual and auditory if it’s solely a visual test (perhaps if your answers make no sense, they assume you’re an auditory person? That would explain the low visual score . . . )

Don Nunn’s breakdown was very different from mine.

[Posted with ecto]