On 02/10/2014 10:48 AM, Feliz Xett wrote: > > Hi Pierre and others, > > thank you for your replies. > > > Thomas Bächler: >> By reading manpages (readily available on the internet), an online >> sha256 calculator and some brain function, you can easily solve this >> without a Linux computer. > > I know I could have solved it, as could have every other Arch user. All > I'm saying is that while I understand the necessity of a good captcha, I > found this one to be over the top. It's that kind of humor that I can't > appreciate after hours of fiddling around with a broken system. I wanted > to register for a forum, not find out where to best calculate SHA sums. > > > Pierre Schmitz: >> I implemented this "captcha" some years ago as we had massive spam and >> troll problems. We are not just fighting spam bots but actual humans >> here. [...] >> > Ok, I didn't imagine you actually had severe troll problems, and I > understand that not many trolls would go ahead and try to solve *this* > captcha. In that respect I totally understand why it has to be so > "difficult". > > I don't have a suggestion right now but I thank you for being open about > it and I hope you all can understand my frustration. > > This is a classic example of the balance that must be struck to keep a list, forum, whatever usable in today's perverted world of commercial and nefarious bots and spiders that work to crack and exploit every process available on the internet. I can sympathize with, and understand, Feliz's frustration when faced with a non-working arch install, turning to the forum for help only to be whipsawed with a non-standard captcha. (I know I wouldn't automatically think about on-line web-based shasum calculators) I have also learned that Pierre and the rest of the Arch developers usually do things for good reasons and in a very thought out way (once you understand what or why they did what they did) I do not have the answer, but would simply suggest when things like this are implemented, normal human nature and reaction should be considered and something as simple as a note dropped underneath the widget (or whatever) giving succinct information needed to navigate further. In the case of this captcha, something simple like the following would suffice: ** this captcha can be solved from the command line or with on-line tools. I think the Arch captcha is a very clever, solution, but as this issue has exposed, it is not without its downside. As always - great job and thanks Archdevs, and for the rest of us, just remember that with Arch, there is probably a really good reason behind whatever challenge you are facing. (mostly) -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
