Did it ever occur to anyone that maybe bots like to participate on forums? I'm pretty sure I was in a flame war with one once. Seriously though, it's an arms race as previously mentioned. Someone builds a better CAPTCHA, someone else cracks it. The alternatives are a little 'Big Brother' in their implementation... maybe when IPv6 really kicks in and we can all be assigned an individual IP?

My boss has a tendency to view IT as non profit making and costly. I remind him that before me he had two people doing my job at an overall cost of way over twice what I make. Then I show him the number of issues I've resolved in the last month and ask him how he thinks the business would run without someone on site to handle these problems. Then I show him how much value I add to the company by doing lots of other jobs, such as going in on a weekend and helping with PAT testing, ordering ink cartridges and writing pages for the website. Finally I show him how much it would cost to outsource to someone that charges an hourly rate and see if I can actually hear his sphincter tighten. It's really simple: If (!IT){ sales==0; }