I know the Captcha boxes you get when signing in are an easy target, but still.

I screwed up my log-in on Twitter a couple of times, and then this came up:

...preceded by a pop-up that asked 'We just want to know - are you a human?'.

The last time I checked, yes I was. This is why I am unable to read text that has been written underwater and then spacewarped beyond recognition. That is not how you check for humans. It is how you check for deranged alien intelligence.

Also - please stop abusing language by calling these 'words'. A word is a 'distinct, meaningful element of speech or writing'. I am not aware that 'stsBiri' has any particular meaning, and if I search for 'define stsBiri' Google just looks at me funny. The instructions should read 'Type the sort-of-word and then guess at the squirming pile of letters next to it.'

But still, that's not enough for Captcha. What if I'm a human with robotic sensibilities? It could happen.

Best to filter out all humans, just to be on the safe side. So let's include A LETTER THAT CANNOT BE TYPED ON ANY STANDARD KEYBOARD! BWA-HA-HA-HAAAAA!

You see that 'ae' combo at the end of the word 'Tincturae'?

Well, its name is an 'ash' (thank you Wikipedia), and it exists as a letter only in Old English, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic. Oh, and Faroese.

It's not totally inaccessible of course - I can simply follow these instructions:

"The characters can be entered by holding the Alt key while typing in 0198 (upper case) or 0230 (lower case) on the number pad on Windows systems (the Alt key and 145 for æ or 146 for Æ may also work from the legacy IBM437 codepage)."

...et voila!

It's around this point that I decide I can live the rest of my life without Twitter. I type in 'I am a robot', and shut down the browser.

Is this just me? Does anyone else feel disproportionate rage when faced with Captcha requests? Is there no more sensible way of doing this?!!!