Re: Open Source Games and Cheating - a paradoxum?

[iain d broadfoot <ibroadfo@cis.strath.ac.uk>]

* Daniel Burrows (dnb114@psu.edu) wrote:
>   Perhaps, but can you write a computer program to test that? :P
> 
>   One thing I read recently (in the NYT) is that someone -- Yahoo,
> perhaps -- is working on a login system designed to defeat webcrawlers.
> When you log in, it gives you a problem known to be easy to
> generate/check on a computer, but hard to solve: for instance, an image
> containing several overlapping words.
> 
>   You could probably do something like that to stop a bot from logging
> in automatically.  In fact, I almost mentioned it myself in another post
> on this thread, because it's a great example of an inadequate
> countermeasure.
> 
>   Think about it -- if it's just a login test, the human setting up the
> bot just has to answer the question for the bot.  The only way to really
> screen computers out would be to pop up the question on a regular basis,
> annoying every legitimate player.  And this would only catch bots
> running unattended -- if a human is keeping an eye on the game, they
> could answer the question for the computer.  (also, this doesn't catch
> cheats that merely improve the human's ability, rather than cutting them
> out of the loop entirely or breaking the rules -- eg, giving them more
> accurate aim)

perhaps the answer then is to make games based on things that are hard
to automate - problem solving etc, rather than things that don't need
any thinking.

iain

-- 
wh33, y1p33 3tc.