OT; Groan

Yep, that's online governance. Try employing one or two or more people. I had to employ a part timer to manage the hassle. Light bulb moment~ do I need this crap, I'm well past retirement age? Paid off the staff and am in process of winding the firm down. Nick.

"Nick" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net:

Well done.

I had a similar revelation when Gordon Brown introduced IR35 and wanted me to pay tax on a significant proportion of my business expenses.

After reviewing my finances I decided that I didn't really need the aggravation and gave it all up, I was 42.

Life has never been better.

Good Lord, change the font, people! Wasn't this problem solved in the

Oh how I hate those "prove you are human" CAPTCHA forms that can't be bothered to make it clear if they are using 0 or O or I, l or 1.

It's sometimes hard enough working out what some of the corrupted letters are without having to guess between options that look the same in plain font.

tim

I get daily passwords emailed to my phone from work.

The displayed font makes 0oO (zero, lower and upper case O) easy to distinguish, the problem I have is with 1Il (One, upper case I lower case L) which all look identical. Also j&J look almost the same with the font used.

Given that those passwords are presumably computer-generated in some random fashion, it beggars belief that the algorithm doesn't simply discard any result containing any of 0O1Il. I mean, writing a password-generator like that presumably requires some intelligence, so why don't they actually use that intelligence?

I remember when zeros had a diagonal line through them - it would be a good idea to adopt that where it matters.

I suppose some people would think that it was an O which had been crossed out and ignore it.

I read in the news yesterday : "The report?s author, Dr Blll Kirkup"

It would be relatively easy to trap that particular error and suggest trying it with 0 at the end I'd have thought? Brian

Or even have the other end swap the offending trailing O for a 0.

It isn't like it is a password. It is a common problem.

I don't understand why people mix alphanumerics with ambiguities in reference numbers - it guarantees that users get frustrated!

The thing that really annoys me is when software comes with a high entropy activation codes with multiple ambiguities in a 4pt font.

Being all hard to distinguish and requiring an eyeglass to see!

In message , Brian Gaff writes

Long way back now but when they were trying to teach me to write basic software zeroes had a diagonal bar.

And Z had a horizontal bar to distinguish it from 2.

I did that once for similar reasons... I think it's called (variations of) "lineprinter font".

I still do that.

I have seen an opposite convention (letter O with a line through) so there is room for confusion! I don't really care as I only do it for my later benefit.

I used it when filling in coding sheets for having cards punched.

Seems to be exactly the case here - I'm reading this in Thunderbird/Windows/Default Font and the 0's do have a diagonal line through them but the O's don't.

Well that reduces the number of options. Plus as an example an easy way of remmebring some passwords is to use numbers where letters would be. when ever there's a o in the word use a 0 (ZERO) and L (use ONE).

they tried using AI but it came out as A1 ;-)

Like amazon you mean their ASIN numbers. I get hand written order forms with l1Lo0O and 2 look like S's there's only a certain amount I substitute before giving up.