[WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

[Neil Harris]

Mak wrote:
> ...continuing masturbatory tech talk....
> What kind of audio captchas have people tried? I would think that asking
> people to identify a piece of music would be a pretty good captcha, although
> could be difficult to not make it Eurocentric. For instance, if you had a
> bunch of songs as universally recognisable as, say happy birthday, and then
> had a bunch of different recordings of those, it would be extraordinarily
> difficult for a computer to recognise the piece, since it could be in any
> key, in any tuning, with slight rhythmic diffences, but would still be
> recognisable to anyone who knew the piece. Yes, you would have to figure out
> what pieces to use and get the recordings, but it would still be cool. Of
> course, Carnildo/Mark's workaround would still be there.
> Makemi
>   

"Happy Birthday to You" wouldn't be an option: it's still in copyright. 
See http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.asp

Also, tune recognition is pretty much a done deal, thanks to the 
[[Parsons code]] and similar techniques. There are a number of 
commercial music recognition products available.

-- Neil