Earlier quoted context omitted.
They send the captcha to their servers and how they solve them is a secret. http://www.webvisum.com/en/main/faq#q15
Is there a web service where one could purchase AI recognition of fuzzy text, e.g. a street sign or book cover in a photo?
Are You a Robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA”
361–370 of 442 posts
Re: Are You a Robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA”
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you trade a fish for a service it isn't free. If you trade a gold bar for a service it isn't free. If you trade a service for a service it isn't free. If you trade data for a service it is not free. To consider "free" a function only of fiat currency is naive, both of history and of economics. Google search is not free. If it is I have no idea how they made so much money... Or maybe you can tell me what 'free actu…
By that broad definition, there is practically no free website on the web (analytics, logs, etc.). Actually, by posting this on HN, I just "traded data, screen real estate and attention". Would you argue HN isn't free as well? I get what you mean but I don't think this is how the word free is commonly used. Besides, I believe the original point made still makes sense if "free" is assumed to mean "non paid".
A note that screen real estate and attention here pertains mostly to paid impressions - be they advertisements or politicizing messages. When it comes to content sought by the user, it's hard to say that the user is giving the service provider real estate and attention. It is only when the service provider is showing content not for the benefit of the consumer but for their own self that the attention and real estate can be thought of as 'rented' to them.
I would agree with the assertion that there are practically no free websites on the web. Since when did we convince ourselves we can get things for free?
There are major exceptions. Wikipedia is for the most part free. It does not advertise to you, nor does it siphon and sell your data. It does not track you around the web, it does not sell your Wikipedia viewing behavior to urchin for cents. It is driven by donations.
HN also appears legitimately free to me. As far as I know YCombinator does not mine or sell your data or collect data other that what is required for the forum to be a forum. YCombinator makes its money by other means. It certainly benefits by cultivating a technical online community, which is why I think it does it - though what influence YC can/does project on the community could be thought of as a social cost (I know very little to nil about whether or how much this is done).
Google, however, is not one of these cases. Nor is most of the web.
I'm not sure if the original point still makes sense with 'non paid' (nor am I sure 'non paid' is right). The original point uses 'free' (in caps) to emphasize a sense of charity they use to inform their 'entitled' argument. First, their argument is essentially 'What you expect this to be free? You are entitled!' Second, I'm not sure that replacing the term will work, unless it also communicates charity.
The point here is that the exchange does not constitute charity. Google thinks the trade is a very good deal. Presumably internet surfers do too. But there is an exchange and that needs to be recognized.
Anyway this means that any term that communicates 'charity' will be ignorant of the conditions of how Google's service works - and I would have posted the same misgivings.
Re: Are You a Robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA”
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and it's frankly very insulting and rather disturbing that they think someone who inputs "unusual" search queries, according to their measure, is not human. Insulting? how is that insulting? You are entitled. You are entitled you block scripts, use Google's FREE service to perform any search query to search the web while blocking any program that attempts to identify you as not a bot. But if while using their free…
No one should complain about anything, ever.
They should, but the proper response would be a solution that solves what others can't not complaining about someone not solving something you decided yourself to try out.
Re: Are You a Robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA”
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and it's frankly very insulting and rather disturbing that they think someone who inputs "unusual" search queries, according to their measure, is not human. Insulting? how is that insulting? You are entitled. You are entitled you block scripts, use Google's FREE service to perform any search query to search the web while blocking any program that attempts to identify you as not a bot. But if while using their free…
Google's services are not free. You trade your data, screen real estate, and attention for their service. This is worth a lot - Google is worth a lot. They didn't do it by giving out services for free.
free as in beer: Free in the sense of costing no money; gratis.[1]
Re: Are You a Robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA”
#365I always assumed Google's use of reCAPTCHA was to augment the OCR used to digitize Google Books, particularly in results the software couldn't confidently match to a word. Is this true? It's interesting that it's still the fallback for the new method.
That was the original goal of the project. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA "By presenting two words it both protects websites from bots attempting to access restricted areas[2] and helps digitize the text of books." For some time, you could pass a reCAPTCHA test by just entering the more distorted word correctly.
I only ever enter the distorted one, works every time.
Re: Are You a Robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA”
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google's services are free. By trying to redefine what free actually means into 'has no cost whatsoever to anyone' you ruin the word.
If you trade a fish for a service it isn't free. If you trade a gold bar for a service it isn't free. If you trade a service for a service it isn't free. If you trade data for a service it is not free. To consider "free" a function only of fiat currency is naive, both of history and of economics. Google search is not free. If it is I have no idea how they made so much money... Or maybe you can tell me what 'free actu…
Google Search is free to search. It's not free to advertise on. Searchers are not Google's customer.
Re: Are You a Robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA”
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a web service where one could purchase AI recognition of fuzzy text, e.g. a street sign or book cover in a photo?
http://www.deathbycaptcha.com/ http://www.captchasniper.com/ http://captcha-breaker.gsa-online.de/ http://textcaptcha.com/
Very helpful, thank you! I have a difficult OCR problem to solve, rather than identity. Interesting to see that the market price for "being human" is $0.00139.
Re: Are You a Robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA”
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://www.deathbycaptcha.com/ http://www.captchasniper.com/ http://captcha-breaker.gsa-online.de/ http://textcaptcha.com/
Very helpful, thank you! I have a difficult OCR problem to solve, rather than identity. Interesting to see that the market price for "being human" is $0.00139.
For non-captcha OCR also consider Mechanical Turk. And there are a variety of services built on Turk too.
Re: Are You a Robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA”
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google's services are not free. You trade your data, screen real estate, and attention for their service. This is worth a lot - Google is worth a lot. They didn't do it by giving out services for free.
free as in beer: Free in the sense of costing no money ; gratis.[1] [1] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/free_as_in_beer
I don't understand how this clarifies the term free? Free as in beer is used to specify the freeness of a product or service, rather than the freeness of 'freedom', say from authoritarianism.
This conversation is about the meaning of 'money' modulo this understanding of free-as-in-beer - i.e. whether non-fiat scarce resources (user data/screen real estate) count as money.
Re: Are You a Robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA”
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you trade a fish for a service it isn't free. If you trade a gold bar for a service it isn't free. If you trade a service for a service it isn't free. If you trade data for a service it is not free. To consider "free" a function only of fiat currency is naive, both of history and of economics. Google search is not free. If it is I have no idea how they made so much money... Or maybe you can tell me what 'free actu…
Google Search is free to search. It's not free to advertise on. Searchers are not Google's customer.
In this sense the searcher, her data, her screen real estate and her attention are the product Google offers to advertisers.
These are the things the searcher trades for the service.