As spammers get better at defeating text-based Human Interactive Proofs [HIPs], the next step in anti-spam technology may rely on photos of kittens and other images that are easy for humans to identify, but difficult for machines. An executive at Microsoft has an unusual idea for beating spammers. Powerful software tools and supercomputers aren't involved, but kittens are or rather, photos of kittens. Kevin Larson, a researcher at Microsoft's advanced reading technologies group, has found that asking a user to identify the subject of a photo, like a kitten, could help block spam programs. One twist on the HIP idea that they've worked on is to display 16 or more photos and ask for identification of the photos. In an example, he suggested using pictures of cats and dogs. The problem with the concept, however, is that Microsoft would have to create a massive catalog of photos, otherwise the programmers could match the correct response with each photo in the catalog and begin to spoof the system. >>