[sldev] CAPTCHA to validate land sales.

[Argent Stonecutter]

On 03-Oct-2007, at 11:15, Dale Glass wrote:
> Why? The bots probably hunt for real bargains first of all.

The problem isn't the bots looking for real bargains.

It's the bots looking for ANY land that's below a price per square  
meter that's "enough" below the market.

It doesn't matter if they're going for land underpriced by 5% or 10%  
or 15%, that just changes where the tail gets cut off, and no matter  
what the market is automated buying based purely on price without  
taking the land into account cuts the tail off.

> Plus, with a bot you can still edge it out a lot in your favor. If  
> I was
> running it, I'd display the located parcels in a grid, sorted by  
> potential
> profit, with a very quick and convenient interface. Given enough  
> time it's
> even possible to make a bot teleport to the area and render it. And  
> after
> using this for a week I could probably reply to the captcha much  
> faster
> than a normal resident.

That's fine. If you take the land into account, then the tail of less  
desirable plots remains. It doesn't matter how you do it... the point  
isn't (in my mind) to slow down the bots, its to keep it froim being  
so cheap to run them without a human in the loop that they can write  
off the less attractive plots and still make a profit.