Isn't it about time we retired this technology:

I created several IM accounts yesterday for use at work, and every single time I had to contend with one of these awful, awful forms, regardless of whose IM service I was registering to use. I think I may have typed the "word" correctly about 50% of the time. On one form it took me 4 tries to get it right.

I understand the purpose behind these forms (I even used one on another blog I run for a while -- until I found an easier solution), but there has got to be a better way to enforce security for these services. How about a tool like Bad Behavior? When it works properly, a web user never even knows it's there. And it works beautifully.

If MSN, AOL, and Yahoo! really wanted people using their web services, wouldn't they ditch these forms?