I tried to leave a comment on Digg recently and had trouble deciphering its CAPTCHA . I was eventually successful, but only after I got annoyed. Simply put, CAPTCHAs are evil.

There’s no need to rehash why, since plenty has been said so far. They don’t really work and they exclude lots of people even if you do use an alternative audio check. As a left-handed person, who curses every time he picks up an “ergonomically” designed scissors, I kind of imagine how it is when things are designed for a majority you don’t belong to.

However, even if you could make them completely accessible (doubtful) and would somehow be able to resolve the overlap between smartest programs and, well, less-gifted humans (impossible), I’d still dislike them. What they say to your readers is: “I’ll make you work so I don’t have to.”

Is this the message you want to communicate?

P.S: WordPress users, you really ought to take a look at Akismet , if you haven’t done so.

I think it was Jon Udell who gave the advice to include information about author and date of publication in the title tag of each document. I think it’s a smashing idea, but I have a problem.

I have no clue how to do it in WordPress. It seems every WordPress date or title tag wants to reside inside of its loop and document title is firmly outside of it. Anyone have any ideas?

Update: Fry’s plugin came to rescue .

Another piece of chicken fillet went into the trash bin, because I didn’t check its expiration date when I bought it a few days ago and hence didn’t see it expired on the same day.

Would it be really that hard to clearly label food that is going to expire in a couple of days?

As a customer I’d appreciate this greatly as it would allow me to plan a little bit better by when to use what. Either no one has thought of something so obvious or Mercator finds it worthwhile to aggravate me for few dollars. Lucky for them their competition isn’t any better so this might not even cost them a customer.