Comments on: I thought the computer was supposed to do the work: Part 1 http://community.plus.net/blog/2007/09/17/i-thought-the-computer-was-supposed-to-do-the-work-part-1/ News and Updates on the Community. Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:19:22 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Tamlyn http://community.plus.net/blog/2007/09/17/i-thought-the-computer-was-supposed-to-do-the-work-part-1/comment-page-1/#comment-728 Tamlyn Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:44:10 +0000 http://community.plus.net/blog/2007/09/17/i-thought-the-computer-was-supposed-to-do-the-work-part-1/#comment-728 Neat idea but... Q: But if a computer can't read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? A: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. So they're not really tapping into the estimated 150,000 hours of human effort spent on CAPTCHAs each day, they're actually *adding* to it (albeit for a useful purpose)! Neat idea but...

Q: But if a computer can't read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle?
A: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words.

So they're not really tapping into the estimated 150,000 hours of human effort spent on CAPTCHAs each day, they're actually *adding* to it (albeit for a useful purpose)!

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