There's a (hoax) history about the spatial run at the Cold War times, telling that while the US spent millions of dollars to develop a pen to use in space, the Russians just get... pencil.

Although it's a hoax, it's a good history. Something similar happens with CAPTCHA systems these days. They're somewhat hard to implement and a bad choice for people that wants to have some interaction with their readers.

BUT, in the link above from the Hackszine.com, there's another - simple&smart - solution. Just to put a false e-mail field (hidden by some CSS code or just a hidden field at all) and, if it comes filled, then you know a robot tried to post it.

It has some flaws, of course. Bot-code could be adapted; if you use CSS or Javascript to hide the field it would display in browsers that don't support these features, etc. But it's, again, simple and smart enough for most of the common situations. And sure it's simpler to the user, who hasn't to prove he's a human being - the work comes back to the bot programmer, who has to implement "intelligence" in it's bot.

Links related to "Just get the pencil"

Spatial program: Soviet vs. American - who was the best? (in Portuguese)

Space pen (and its related rumours) in Wikipedia

Labels: captcha, simplicity, usability

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