>> ^marinara:

been fighting the captcha for 15 min now


I just rolled over and put my pants down.

been fighting the captcha for 15 min now

OMG just had to deal with this. Used the bookmarklet thing and changed all the info on the submission page. The submission page info was then reset after the captcha thing didnt work. Not cool.

I got this earlier. I restarted my browser and it went away. Very strange. I really hope we don't have to involve Captcha's going forward...

I vote for a CAPTCHA drunk/high test every time you vote. "Are you sure you're not high?"

It's been said already, but I'll say it again. 'Free market' doesn't apply here. They didn't just release their data and ask someone else to do it for them. FoldIt is a crowd-sourced protein-folder. It's a fancy version of the programs that spammers use to crack CAPTCHAs: you farm the problem that's difficult for a computer to do out to human labor. This is no different from the researchers hiring computer time at Amazon or releasing an @Home distributed computing program to get more computer time. The only novel thing here, that makes for a good headline, is that it's in the shape of a video game on the labor's end.

That's what it was the last time I played FoldIt, anyway. Is there something different here?

please enter the captcha code to continue

fuuuuuuuuu

Hey @lucky760 isn't it about time we make a little simple captcha for logging in on a P for the first time? (or do we already have that?)

*discard

How to censor whoever you dislike (I think):
Method A:
1. Create 30 youtube accounts via 30 different proxy servers.
2. Flag a user's videos from each of those accountgraterhe timing is done right it will be indistinguishable from distinct users)
3. Sit back and watch that user get b&.
(This whole process could be automated with a script that just asks you for the captcha solutions)

Method B:
1. Post on a forum full of like-minded people who also dislike that user, and get them to all report him.
2. Sit back and watch that user get b&.




Youtube really needs to fix their automatic censorship junk.
They won't fix the broken system unless it becomes a HUGE problem, which means they're not gonna fix it until mayhem occurs as a result of someone posting such a script publicly.

They could start fortifying their defenses by allowing each IP address a maximum of 3 flaggings per year, and ignoring all subsequent flaggings coming from that IP address. They could ignore flaggings from all known open proxies and tor nodes. They could ignore flaggings from anyone who didn't actually watch the video in question. They could require that the greater of 50 or 50% of viewers flag a video before it will be taken down. They could permanently ignore flaggings from IP addresses of flaggers who submit fallacious flaggings (as determined by being the 1 flagger among a million viewers).
A somewhat better defense against fallacious one-guy-in-a-garage-with-a-script censorship would be a human volunteer network akin to wikipedia, but my preferred solution is to abandon censorship altogether (information wants to be free). If you don't like something, don't watch it! Copyright? Bah!

Thanks for sharing. Makes sense. Simple, but neat idea.

In reply to this comment by winkler1:
Cute anti-spam technique:



Easy way to kill most spam on the spot:

- rename the name/link/etc. fields to something weird
- put this in your form:

(Leave these fields blank!)

- put this in the site stylesheet:
div.trap { display: none; visibility: hidden }

Then when processing the form, if there’s anything in the ‘name’ or ‘link’ fields, drop the post. This method alone has cut my spam by about 90-95%. I have no captcha, and no wonky heuristics that are eventually bound to flag legitimate data as spam at some point or another. Just a couple of innocent-looking fields that spambots fill in because they look important.

http://blog.dixo.net/2007/08/21/pastebin-fights-the-spam/

Cute anti-spam technique:



Easy way to kill most spam on the spot:

- rename the name/link/etc. fields to something weird
- put this in your form:

(Leave these fields blank!)

- put this in the site stylesheet:
div.trap { display: none; visibility: hidden }

Then when processing the form, if there’s anything in the ‘name’ or ‘link’ fields, drop the post. This method alone has cut my spam by about 90-95%. I have no captcha, and no wonky heuristics that are eventually bound to flag legitimate data as spam at some point or another. Just a couple of innocent-looking fields that spambots fill in because they look important.

http://blog.dixo.net/2007/08/21/pastebin-fights-the-spam/

The problem though is that people are probably specifically designing bots for our user pages. We could no doubt change them in some way, but it would simply result in a new bot. In fact we have changed the format of our profile pages several times since we started the site. One option would be to generate images, REALLY HIGH SERVER LOAD, but even that would only take some simple captcha technology to circumvent. If you have any suggestions I would love to hear them, but doubt there is really a viable solution.