Jigsaw solver

[mensanator at aol.com]

bearophileHUGS at lycos.com wrote:
> This can be interesting:
> http://science.slashdot.org/science/05/03/01/2340238.shtml
>
> Bearophile

Hey, that DataGlyph demo works pretty neat.

<quote>
Decoding your DataGlyph.

DataGlyph decoded successfully.

four score and seven years ago our fathers brought
forth on this continent a new nation conceived in
liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all
men are created equal

To test the robustness and error correction DataGlyphs
provide, you might want to "damage" a DataGlyph by
editing it with paint program, obscuring some of the
marks and uploading the damaged image for decoding.

Serious aficionados have been known to print out
their DataGlyph, spill some coffee on it, tear off
small pieces, fold it into a paper airplane, run over
it with a car, light small portions on fire, then scan
the document back in and try to extract the message.
If you are such an enthusiast, have fun, be safe, and
remember even great technologies have their limits.
</quote>


Of course, being an old System Test Engineer whose job it
was to figure out how to break software, I couldn't let
this challenge go unanswered.

So, picking up the gauntlet, I broke it in 5 seconds.

<quote>
Decoding your DataGlyph.

Decoding dataglyph59683-2.bmp...
Unable to decode this dataglyph

Top 5 reasons a DataGlyph might fail to decode

1. Hey... that's not a DataGlyph
2. Not enough of the DataGlyph is present
3. Way too much damage
4. Trouble locating the DataGlyph
5. Cosmic rays

Usually if a human being can make out the individual
marks, the decoding software should also be able to
do so. This online decoder is optimized for scanned
images from a paper documents.

If you are a technical user evaluating DataGlyphs,
please be aware that this online DataGlyph decoder
is expecting mainstream DG500 DataGlyphs. This online
decoder will not work if you are testing a specialized
DataGlyph variant such as serpentone, yellow DataGlyph
or address carpet.

Finally, note that a customized image processing
front-end or a customized DataGlyph locator algorithm
might yield better results in application scenarios
such as handheld camera images with severe perspective
distortion.
</quote>

Naturally, the real answer is none of the above.

And the damage can be undone in 5 seconds also.

And, under the right circumstances, an undamaged
DataGlyph could suffer the same fate (which also implies
that the damaged DataGlyph could be read under the
same circumstances).

ObPuzzle: how did I "damage" the image?