Is there an easier way to prove I'm not a robot?

Question

After 4 attempts at captcha images I finally managed to prove I'm a real person and have my answer posted. Is there any easier way to do it? Something that doesn't involve squinting at the screen to try to decipher badly printed letters? Right now I'm not interested in trying to answer any more questions. I'm sure the world contains other people with at least as good an understanding as I have, and with better eyes.

I noticed a comment on the post where I first answered a question, stating 1 reason the bounty went to the other answer was that it was posted 4 minutes earlier. I suspect if I had not had to go through 7 captcha challenges, my post would have been up before the other one.\

Please tell me there is some easier way to prove I'm not a robot.

EDIT: Now I'm really confused. When I tried to post this I got another captcha challenge, and I was so furious I just randomly typed something that approximated the images. And my post went through first go. Does this mean you thought I was a robot because I was taking time to look at the images and get the right answer?

Answer 1

The captcha is difficult to make it also difficult for a robot to solve. You can blame pimply adolescent script kiddies hacking in basements, and other scum of the earth, for your difficulties.

ReCaptcha has two words. One word requires an exact match, and the other word just requires a guess. The match for the first word is based on what others have said the word is. The guess word doesn't require you to be correct; it's there so that people typing in their guesses can serve as a "poor man's OCR" for the unknown image.

Some proxys make working with the captchas more difficult, because they screw up your post timing. Also, there is a button on the captcha that you can press to get a new image, if the one you see is too difficult to decipher.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA

Answer 2

What's your workflow for posting here.

I've found that if I type my questions and answers into the text areas on the site and then hit submit I rarely (if ever) get the CAPTCHA.

However, if I create my text in Notepad or Word etc. and then paste into the text areas I almost always get the CAPTCHA.

Therefore, if you take more time over your posts from when you first enter the text to the time you hit "Post" then you should find that you don't get the "are you a human" test. However, as Robert points out - don't take too long either.