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Subject: Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems

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  • From: Adam Back <adam AT cypherspace.org>
  • To: Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems <bluesky AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Think cash
  • Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 04:28:47 -0400


A friend of mine had a go at building such a puzzle to
deter automated downloads of activation codes. He built a
prototype.

It was just a pattern matching problem. It would take a
set of numbers draw them in a pixel array and munge it
around a bit, scatter random pixels over it. Humans can
easily read off the number. It would take a bit of effort
to build OCR software that can read through that noise.
But I'm pretty sure it could be done if somone were
motivated.

You see a similar thing where people render their email
addresses as a GIF to hide it from spiders.

Adam

On Fri, Mar 09, 2001 at 02:17:47AM -0600, Tony Kimball wrote:
>
> It seems not so hard to me.
>
> For example, abstractly, the computer can make a picture, and ask a
> question about it which requires significant understanding,
> and parse the reply trivially.




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