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West Somerset Railway General Discussion

Discussion in 'Heritage Railways & Centres in the UK' started by gwr4090, Nov 15, 2007.

  1. D1039

    D1039 Guest

    Plagiarism! The SVR Charitable Trust has a magazine of that name.

    In seriousness, I've been impressed by how railways have upped their game to keep interest up.

    Patrick
     
  2. staffordian

    staffordian Well-Known Member

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    Worked ok for me, BUT I almost gave up after the fourth "Are you human" "Select the squares in the picture" puzzle, two if which asked about crosswalks. As I've no idea what they are, it perhaps didn't help...
     
  3. nanstallon

    nanstallon Part of the furniture

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    To be fair, the plc responded to my second e-mail, complaining about being left out. I now have 'Platform' on my PC; hoping that I am now back in the land of the living!

    John
     
  4. RailWest

    RailWest Part of the furniture

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    Ironically....

    I read the item on the website, so signed up there for it, but so far no Platform by that route.
    Later, I got a message from HOPS with a link to a copy.
    Later again, I got a message from FoBAS with a copy.

    Anyone want spare???

    I wonder if S&DRT members will get copies ??? :)
     
  5. RailWest

    RailWest Part of the furniture

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    Why should one need to be human to get a copy? - a bit discriminatory for intelligent chimps, visiting aliens and AIs :)
     
  6. nanstallon

    nanstallon Part of the furniture

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    I edited my post because the plc replied to my second e-mail and sent me 'Platform'. So, I gave them the benefit of the doubt as to receiving future communications, such as Annual Reports and AGM notices. Better to light a candle than complain about the darkness!

    John
     
    Wenlock likes this.
  7. I would expect the monthly newsletters to be published on the official site here:

    www.west-somerset-railway.co.uk/monthly-newsletters

    Not there yet though. 'The Platform' appears to have replaced the defunct newsletter 'On Line'.
     
    malcolm imps likes this.
  8. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    So where's the newsletter - I've signed up, but no newsletter?

    I think they could do with rather more explicit information about how the railway is going to use my data as well; I couldn't see any point in the process where that was explained - something I would have thought was pretty basic requirement these days.

    Tom
     
  9. GDPR has yet to reach some parts of Somerset.....
     
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  10. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    So it seems - and its a serious point, not least for trust.

    Tom
     
  11. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    I'm pretty certain those things work largely regardless of what you click on - what they are testing is the ability to click, not the ability to recognise a crosswalk.

    Years ago, the reCaptcha images were based on text that had been distorted. Apart from proving a human was looking at the text, both the right and wrong answers were very useful to software developers who were working on text recognition algorithms, i.e. being able to extract text from images.

    That problem is largely solved, so the reCaptchas - at least the common ones you see, which are from Google - show street scenes, and you have to recognise features such as traffic lights, buses, pedestrians etc. Cumulatively the billions of answers given - both right and wrong - are teaching Google's AI robots about traffic recognition which is of importance for developing the software that controls driverless cars...

    Tom
     
  12. RailWest

    RailWest Part of the furniture

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    On more general point, what does it matter to the Plc if the 'person' seeks subscription is just a 'bot'? All that will happen probably is that the newsletter will be sent to the net equivalent of a 'black hole'. So what? OK, so there may actually be less humans reading the newsletter than the subscription list might suggest, but so what? After all, in the absence of any GDPR details, one presumes that the Plc has no other use for the info?
     
  13. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    The purpose of putting a reCaptcha on a form isn't primarily to ensure that only humans get your newsletter: it is to try to stop bots probing your website, either to find security vulnerabilities, or to launch a denial of service attack.

    Tom
     
  14. free2grice

    free2grice Part of the furniture Friend

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    Jamessquared likes this.
  15. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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  16. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    There may also be a cost associated with the online distribution of the newsletter, or the number of subscriptions in which case deterring bots has a financial value as well.

    I have seen a situation where 5 figure charges have been racked up as the result of a bot attack, where the unit cost was a small fraction of a penny.

    I still hate ReCaptchas with a passion though...


    Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
     
  17. Sidmouth

    Sidmouth Resident of Nat Pres Staff Member Moderator

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    with a growing momentum behind lines reopening to try and capture the summer holiday season , I presume no smoke signals in somerset
     
  18. Sidmouth

    Sidmouth Resident of Nat Pres Staff Member Moderator

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  19. DragonHandler

    DragonHandler Well-Known Member

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    Probably a website glitch, there's no repeat on the PDF I downloaded.
     
  20. free2grice

    free2grice Part of the furniture Friend

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    Just the opposite. <BJ>
     

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