Patent ID: 8184804

Claim:
A hashing method performed by a computing apparatus and comprising the acts of: (a) receiving a message at an input port; (b) storing the received message at a first computer readable storage medium coupled to the input port; (c) generating a pseudo random or derived value from a portion of the stored message by a computer processor coupled to the first storage medium; (d) the processor determining a description from the pseudo random or derived value, the description including a form parameter, a color parameter, and a position parameter; (e) storing a set of values representing a matrix in a second computer readable storage medium coupled to the processor, the matrix representing a board in a tetromino stacking algorithm, and the form, color and position parameters representing attributes of a piece in the stacking algorithm; (f) updating the matrix by applying the stacking algorithm to the matrix and the description; (g) repeating acts (c), (d), (e), and (f) until the stacking algorithm reaches a predetermined state; (h) using the updated matrix resulting from act (g) to provide a hash value of the message; and (i) the processor storing the hash value in a third computer readable storage medium.