Playing with CAPTCHAs
Security Now! #101 with Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte covered the
deceptively 
simple challenge of
differentiating human from non-human automated clients (great podcast as always .. check it out). Commonly this is done
with distorted text like the sample on the right.
The Official CAPTCHA Site has a wealth of information about this field, including
discussion of the relay attack that has the potential
to defeat any "are you a human?" test (because it enrolls unwitting human accomplices to do the work).
The coolest piece of work though is the reCAPTCHA project. This is a project of the
School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and it provides a public service for plugging-in a CAPTCHA to
your site. But unlike other systems that are just wasting 10 seconds of your time, this system is actually
digitizing public domain archives at the same time (getting you to fix the translation of words that
have defied the best OCR software)!
Perl is one language that you can easily use reCAPTCHA with, using Andy Armstrong's Captcha::reCAPTCHA module.
After installing the module, it just takes a few minutes to register your site and setup a test page. I built a quick
reCAPTCHA cgi in perl .. you can try it out here
(sorry, currently may find it offline but get the script source here: myReCaptcha.pl. I think I spent 10
minutes setting this up, and then an hour playing with it;) All in the name of digitizing historical works...
But I'm afraid the humour archive has the best captcha ever ..
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blink
After reading The Tipping Point,
I realised blink
was also by Malcolm Gladwell so I picked it up at the first opportunity.
If anything, I found blink even more engaging and interesting than The Tipping Point. It
explores and tries to explain what happens in those first microseconds of automatic insight. Even more
challenging is the question of whether you can harness and train this "power of thinking without thinking" ...
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The Tipping Point
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell is one of those books that you suddenly realise is everywhere -
bookshops, airports, being read by people on the bus or train.
It's an easy and engaging read - Gladwell is a compelling story teller - and does a convincing job of exploring
and explaining just how social epidemics work. He uses a simple model of three concepts to organise the
book:
- The Law of the Few : Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen
-
- The Stickiness Factor
-
- The Power of Context
In one of his case studies, Gladwell even makes a very convincing argument for why public health policy has got it completely wrong in regard to controlling smoking!
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Fellow travellers on the road to Fusion..
At one point, the cynical would have said that Fusion is just a con to placate all the PeopleSoft, Siebel and
JD Edwards customers. Others just complained about the con-fusion.
Of course, Fusion Applications are still a way off in the future, and I'm not sure if even Oracle Development really
know in full cinematic detail what shipping the products will really entail. Its all still fairly big-picture stuff .. although in classic Oracle
style, the user/user experience seems to have got lost along the way. But there's enough pressure and creativity that I think we will see the current Fusion formula grow an
additional term at some point. i.e.
Fusion = Grid Computing + SOA + Enterprise Information ArchitectureIn other words, potentially the best darn definition of "Enterprise 2.0" in the market so far!
will become
Fusion = Grid Computing + SOA + Enterprise Information Architecture + Web 2.0
In the meantime however, some things are coming into clear focus. One is the critical importance of SOA and Security Fusion Middleware components (a.k.a. Oracle Application Server). This struck home for me when listening to the recent AppCast interview with Cliff Godwin who is now heading Oracle's Fusion Upgrade Program Office. What is the world coming to.. Oracle Applications folks selling technology?!!
The true test of fusion will be the extent to which it is embraced by customers and the user community. It was great to see Floyd Teter kick-off a new series on his blog where he will be covering his company's Detailed Roadmap to Fusion Applications. Hats off to Floyd for the courage to do this in the open, and to provide the necessary detail that will actually make this useful for others considering the same path.
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