# Flatulent-0.0.1 ascii captcha for the masses

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/flatulent-0-0-1-ascii-captcha-for-the-masses/108396>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [July 3, 2007, 3:11am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/flatulent-0-0-1-ascii-captcha-for-the-masses/108396 "2007-07-03T03:11:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ara.t.howard](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/a8b319/32.png) [@ara.t.howard](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ara.t.howard)\
**Post date:** [July 3, 2007, 3:11am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/flatulent-0-0-1-ascii-captcha-for-the-masses/108396/1 "2007-07-03T03:11:41Z")

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NAME

flatulent : CAPTCHA for FIGLET.

SYNOPSIS

the flatulent gem provides brain dead simple ascii art captcha for  
ruby.

URI

[http://codeforpeople.com/lib/ruby](http://codeforpeople.com/lib/ruby)  
[http://rubyforge.org/projects/codeforpeople](http://rubyforge.org/projects/codeforpeople)

INSTALL

gem install flatulent

EXAMPLE

def index  
if params.has\_key? ‘flatulent’  
Flatulent.validate! params  
end

```
 render :inline => <<-html
   <html><body>

     #{ Flatulent.form }

   </body></html>
 html

```

end

DOCS

see source in lib/\*  
see example rails project in ./rails

ONLINE SAMPLES

[http://drawohara.tumblr.com/post/4791838](http://drawohara.tumblr.com/post/4791838)

enjoy

ps.

sorry for double post - dropped subject on the last one!

-a

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ara.t.howard](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/a8b319/32.png) [@ara.t.howard](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ara.t.howard)\
**Post date:** [July 3, 2007, 7:16am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/flatulent-0-0-1-ascii-captcha-for-the-masses/108396/2 "2007-07-03T07:16:09Z")

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There’s no use in the “noise” unless it’s made of the same ascii  
characters as the letters.

But then again, ascii art captchas are severely broken and there’s  
nothing simple to do about it.

Aur

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**Author:** ![ara.t.howard](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/a8b319/32.png) [@ara.t.howard](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ara.t.howard)\
**Post date:** [July 3, 2007, 8:40am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/flatulent-0-0-1-ascii-captcha-for-the-masses/108396/3 "2007-07-03T08:40:16Z")

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On Jul 2, 2007, at 11:15 PM, SonOfLilit wrote:

> There’s no use in the “noise” unless it’s made of the same ascii  
> characters as the letters.

the new version uses that and blowfish encoded key

> But then again, ascii art captchas are severely broken and there’s  
> nothing simple to do about it.

all captchas are broken and most are also complicated. nevertheless,  
they are extremely effective. i’m curious why you think ascii art  
captchas are more broken than any other?

kind regards.

-a

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ara.t.howard](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/a8b319/32.png) [@ara.t.howard](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ara.t.howard)\
**Post date:** [July 3, 2007, 4:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/flatulent-0-0-1-ascii-captcha-for-the-masses/108396/4 "2007-07-03T16:23:39Z")

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On Jul 3, 2007, at 1:39 AM, ara.t.howard wrote:

> > nothing simple to do about it.  
> > being better. simply reflect on that.  
> > h.h. the 14th dalai lama

Beautiful! another way to do human validation on user entries online!!!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ara.t.howard](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/a8b319/32.png) [@ara.t.howard](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ara.t.howard)\
**Post date:** [July 3, 2007, 4:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/flatulent-0-0-1-ascii-captcha-for-the-masses/108396/5 "2007-07-03T16:50:45Z")

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With so little grid cells and so little possible transformations,  
pattern matching is much much simpler.

Aur

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ara.t.howard](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/a8b319/32.png) [@ara.t.howard](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ara.t.howard)\
**Post date:** [July 3, 2007, 7:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/flatulent-0-0-1-ascii-captcha-for-the-masses/108396/6 "2007-07-03T19:18:59Z")

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On Jul 3, 2007, at 8:49 AM, SonOfLilit wrote:

> With so little grid cells and so little possible transformations,  
> pattern matching is much much simpler.

exactly which ‘grid’ are you referring to? there is no grid and  
there are no ‘word’ chars in the virutal grid. have you looked at  
the source? check out my response to brian.

also, i’m not so sure that that it true: a modest sized ascii  
captcha has around 40960000 simple combinations. the current source  
uses an encoded timestamp which must be submitted with the captcha  
else it’s invalid. that timestamp is only valid for a few minutes  
and that means a program would have to make around 20480000 posts (on  
average) to the same website within a few minutes to crack it using  
brute force. this seems highly unlikely to me.

(ps. neither the timestamp not key are encode in the first release,  
but the repo one has this feature)

the direction i’m heading is to have all virtual grid cells  
positioned via css. which means the only real way to construct a  
grid is to using a rendering engine first, and then to ocr the  
clipped image. i’m very confident that

a) this can be done  
b) it’s even more work than traditional captcha to decode  
c) it’s 100 times less work for web developers

i’m truly very interested in seeing if someone can actually crack  
this (i’m sure that they can) with a reasonable amount of effort.  
remembering that traditional captcha can be broken with a low-medium  
amount of effort yet reduces spam by around 98%.

kind regards.

-a

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ara.t.howard](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/a8b319/32.png) [@ara.t.howard](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ara.t.howard)\
**Post date:** [July 3, 2007, 7:52pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/flatulent-0-0-1-ascii-captcha-for-the-masses/108396/7 "2007-07-03T19:52:04Z")

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On Jul 3, 2007, at 12:17 PM, ara.t.howard wrote:

> i’m truly very interested in seeing if someone can actually crack  
> this (i’m sure that they can) with a reasonable amount of effort.  
> remembering that traditional captcha can be broken with a low-  
> medium amount of effort yet reduces spam by around 98%.

I wonder how solid efforts like this old Ruby Q. are:

[http://www.rubyquiz.com/quiz48.html](http://www.rubyquiz.com/quiz48.html)

James Edward G. II