flyingbird From Sweden, joined Mar 2005, 150 posts, RR: 0 Posted (1 year 4 months 2 weeks 6 days 2 hours ago) and read 10633 times:
About 6 weeks ago Ryanair introduced the reCAPTCHA system on their web page to stop robots from scraping their web page. Some days a client who was trying to book a ticket was asked to type "Al-Qaida" to continue with the booking process.
kl911 From Ireland, joined Jul 2003, 4977 posts, RR: 14 Reply 1, posted (1 year 4 months 2 weeks 5 days 21 hours ago) and read 10006 times:
Lol! Good that they have the robot though, more airlines should do that, those websites are a rippoff. More then 25 euro more expensive then booking direct with an airline.
" The European consumer would crawl naked over broken glass to get low fares." Michael O'Leary
Pe@rson From United Kingdom, joined Jan 2001, 18826 posts, RR: 54 Reply 3, posted (1 year 4 months 2 weeks 5 days 20 hours ago) and read 9654 times:
FR should try to get some mind-altering things in there, where customers have to type the likes of 'Ryanair cheapest' and 'Ryanair low fares' and 'good punctuality Ryanair' or whatever. There must be hundreds of possibilities. Just need to intersperse with the random stuff so a computer can't determine when they will appear.
"Everyone writing for the Telegraph knows that the way to grab eyeballs is with Ryanair and/or sex."
tharanga From United States of America, joined Apr 2009, 1778 posts, RR: 1 Reply 5, posted (1 year 4 months 2 weeks 5 days 18 hours ago) and read 9324 times:
that doesn't look like a normal re-captcha.
if you google 'inglip', you'll see some people have created a mythology around the hidden messages they find in re-captcha. Sort of amusing.
ltbewr From United States of America, joined Jan 2004, 12330 posts, RR: 12 Reply 6, posted (1 year 4 months 2 weeks 5 days 18 hours ago) and read 9282 times:
I am quite sure something could be put into, or is already into the algorithm that creates the ReCAPTCHA codes that prevents the use of offensive words or phrases. Perhaps some tweaking is needed to make sure the names of terror groups like al-Queda won't show up. Of course, the programmers may have put in an 'Easter egg' like item like this to have some private fun.
L410Turbolet From Czech Republic, joined May 2004, 5392 posts, RR: 19 Reply 7, posted (1 year 4 months 2 weeks 5 days 16 hours ago) and read 8627 times:
Quoting kl911 (Reply 1): Good that they have the robot though, more airlines should do that, those websites are a rippoff. More then 25 euro more expensive then booking direct with an airline.
Funny, well kinda sad actually what sort of bs potential FR customer has to go through if he dares to spend his money with them. It seems like someone is really afraid of their propaganda about being "cheapest" being actually subject to scrutiny and direct comparison by those who use software like Azuon.
aeroblogger From India, joined Dec 2011, 1363 posts, RR: 0 Reply 8, posted (1 year 4 months 2 weeks 5 days 16 hours ago) and read 8057 times:
Quoting Pe@rson (Reply 3): FR should try to get some mind-altering things in there, where customers have to type the likes of 'Ryanair cheapest' and 'Ryanair low fares' and 'good punctuality Ryanair' or whatever. There must be hundreds of possibilities. Just need to intersperse with the random stuff so a computer can't determine when they will appear.
Brilliant idea.
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kalvado From United States of America, joined Feb 2006, 471 posts, RR: 0 Reply 9, posted (1 year 4 months 2 weeks 5 days 16 hours ago) and read 7918 times:
First time I have heard of the captcha thingy being a recognisable word/name.
ReCaptcha is using human input to recognize printed text in cases computer has problems reading the text. One of 2 words to be decoded is actually a piece of a book being OCRed - and is likely to be a meaningful word..
Once in a while one may see some strange things - like formulas, text in Greek (what should I do if I have no Greek keyboard layout?) and so on.
CUSSkiosks From Canada, joined Dec 2005, 22 posts, RR: 0 Reply 10, posted (1 year 4 months 2 weeks 5 days 5 hours ago) and read 3107 times:
Quoting kalvado (Reply 9): ReCaptcha is using human input to recognize printed text in cases computer has problems reading the text. One of 2 words to be decoded is actually a piece of a book being OCRed - and is likely to be a meaningful word..
Once in a while one may see some strange things - like formulas, text in Greek (what should I do if I have no Greek keyboard layout?) and so on.
Yup, exactly. People who enter CAPTCHAs frequently can easily recognize which text is the "generated" content, and which is the actual image of some actual text from some source. In this case "Al-Quaida/" is quite obvious as the scanned actual text.
Part of the business model of ReCAPTCHA is to have users submit answers to challenging (but real) scan/OCR translation. Fragmented and piecemeal, millions of user contributions or these distinct words helps contribute to increased quality of legacy documents that have been digitized.
But... Pro-Tip: You don't need to type in the "actual text from some source" in the response to the CAPTCHA challenge, only the text from the "generated text". This halves the time it takes to answer most CAPTCHAs.
kl911 From Ireland, joined Jul 2003, 4977 posts, RR: 14 Reply 11, posted (1 year 4 months 2 weeks 4 days 17 hours ago) and read 1959 times:
Quoting L410Turbolet (Reply 7): Funny, well kinda sad actually what sort of bs potential FR customer has to go through if he dares to spend his money with them. It seems like someone is really afraid of their propaganda about being "cheapest" being actually subject to scrutiny and direct comparison by those who use software like Azuon.
Huh? Why? It makes it cheaper for the customer to book direct with the airline, instead of those fake websites that do nothing more then the airline does, but charge you 25 euro extra for it.
And indeed, why would i want to compare Ryanair prices to others? 1st, they are often the only one on the route, and 2nd, 99% of the time they are the cheapest, also when compared to larger airports in the area.
" The European consumer would crawl naked over broken glass to get low fares." Michael O'Leary
waketurbulence From United States of America, joined Apr 2004, 1288 posts, RR: 18 Reply 12, posted (1 year 4 months 2 weeks 4 days 17 hours ago) and read 1869 times:
Anyone interested in the re-captcha process should look at this video on TED. The inventor talks about massive online collaboration to digitize books and his new plan to translate Wikipedia into multiple languages for free. I found it interesting. http://www.ted.com/talks/luis_von_ah...ve_scale_online_collaboration.html
gabrielchew From United Kingdom, joined Aug 2005, 2512 posts, RR: 13 Reply 13, posted (1 year 4 months 2 weeks 4 days 16 hours ago) and read 1826 times:
It's so annoying having to put that ReCAPTCHA in every time you look for flights. A few months ago they took away the prices for flights on dates near your chosen one so it now just says "low fares available". Sometimes there aren't even flights that day, but the same things shows up. It seems like FR are tying to make find a flight even more difficult. Those scraping webites are great if you are looking for general fares. If you find them a rip off, don't buy from them! Skyscanner still seems to be able to find FR flights as of today....
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