Spam weapon helps preserve books

Fascinating story on the BBC News website about how a spam weapon is helping to preserve books! CAPTCHAs are an automated test to tell computers and humans apart when signing up to an account or logging in. Created as a tool created to foil spammers, the test consists of typing in a few random letters in an image. Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is using this test to help decipher words in books that machines cannot read by letting sites use them to authenticate log-ins. A common complaint is that Internet users "waste" time while trying to interpret heavily distorted CAPTCHAs. However, the CMU research team has devised an ingenious system - reCAPTCHA - to put the time used interpreting CAPTCHAs to good use in the cause of preserving old books and manuscripts. [More info on the reCAPTCHA website]