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I went to bed at 11:30 last night in hope that I’d be able to get up early without a problem. Clearly, this effort cannot be successful. I was awake in bed until about 2 or 2:30, then fell asleep for a bit, got back up at 3:30, and got back up at 5, finally waking up and getting out of bed at 6:20, the time my alarm was set for. Not a great night for sleep, hopefully that’s the last time in a while.

In the morning I helped with registration and then attended the workshop. There were about 25 attendees, from a variety of companies (including Microsoft, IBM and Yahoo) and universities. I learned a whole lot about Human Interactive Proofs through all the presentations and was able to talk with the presenters during the breaks. I’m amazed how fast they can evaluate new ideas, it’s hard to keep up even when I know what they’re talking about. It’s nice to see a room full of smart people from time to time. I especially liked when people from competing companies worked together to try to improve their methods.

(brief technical aside)
CAPTCHAs, a popular type of Human Interactive Proofs are distorted text tests that look like this:

and is used to differentiate humans from computers (these puzzles are hard for computers but relatively easy for humans).

After all the presentations and panel sessions during the day, there was a banquet which gave us a chance to talk with all the attendees and enjoy some really good food (and some not as good wine, but that’s ok). I sat next to the guy who worked for AltaVista with the group that made the first CAPTCHA, he gave a presentation at dinner.

I’m definitely glad I was able to make it to this, I’ve learned a lot about HIPs, CAPTCHAS, and the academic world.

HIP is an acronym for Human Interactive Proof, and is sometimes pronounced like the word hip. I started laughing quietly when the Microsoft presentation on computerized attacks of these problems discussed “breaking HIPs” and “having strong HIPs”. Oh, man, the image analysis community is hilarious.