I've been using CAPTCHA -- Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart", that little graphic showing a string of numbers that needs to be typed in to submit a comment to this blog. Guess what - I see furious reloads of the comment page generated by spambots, yet 0 comment spam. Zero! I changed the script that generates my CAPTCHA so that it would make it easier for people. It's weak enough that an automated solution might solve it, but I am yet to see a spammer sophisticated enough. There are enough unprotected blogs out there to make this sort of effort useless.

I guess soon enough we will see some kind of a spam Cold War when companies like Google will start using CAPTCHA as a method for email SPAM protection. We need to take our email back - now most of the time I don't even feel like writing to people - there's a very good chance that my email will get lost and ignored (well, that might also be that the people I write ignore my emails on their merits, but I like to stay optimistic). What's funny, is that like with Cold War arms race, we might get some fringe benefits in the field of Artificial Intelligence. I say, bring it on.