CAPTCHAs are those annoying little puzzles you have to fill out before commenting on posts, contacting people, signing up for stuff on the Internet and so on. Generally it's in the form of "here's some mostly unreadable letters, please type what you think they might say below". We've got them here (mathematical version), we've discussed how to code them but no mention as yet on these pages has been made of their comedic potential.

The Poorhouse was cruising around...ahem...myspace (sssssh!) recently when the following image was presented. Presumably having the mind-set of a 13-year old at that moment for some reason, this caused much amusement. It had come to the point in ones' life where Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation was requiring the Poorhouse to type a word more commonly associated with Hugh Hefner's Playboy magazine into a website. Snigger snigger etc. This of course set the thought processes going (be warned, there is slight profanity after the "read more")...

Surely, unless they are specifically coded to remove them in every language available, by chance some sites must give out rather rude captchas now and then to fill in. In fact it wouldn't surprise the Poorhouse too much if some only gave out filthy words.

A minor bit of research revealed that indeed the odd crudity did come up. The best / worst one chanced upon by the Poorhouse's amazing team of dedicated researchers was that from Regan Judd's blog. Whilst putting an advert on the ultra-famous classifieds site Craigslist he was presented with the following text to transcribe.

Shocks! Gasps! Corruption of our children!

It is however possibly not the funniest captcha of all time. The following may also not be, but either way it wins the Poorhouse laugh-out-loud vote for being exactly the sort of thing to cause political (in)correctness fights amongst the sensitive. Look what "Do no evil" Google did to someone, as posted on WorseThanFailure.