[sugar] Disconnected backups.

[Benjamin M. Schwartz]

On Tue, 2008-02-19 at 13:08 -0500, Chris Ball wrote:

> * Encryption/privacy probably isn't desirable here -- we're dealing with
>   objects that the user has chosen to have backed up.

The Bitfrost spec refers to this as a "primary backup". It is
inevitable, since in the case of hardware failure, any encryption key
would be lost along with the data.

>   Also, this would
>   provide a good way for kids to turn in homework to their teachers: the
>   teacher passes around a USB key, and as each child inserts the key,
>   their homework gets automatically copied over to a directory named
>   after them if it's marked favorite.

Strongly disagree.  This is precisely what the mesh is for.  If handing
in homework is an important, unsolved use case, we should solve it in
software.

> It
> would also be good to have some consensus from the deployment team that
> this (backups without a school server) is something that's going to be
> needed and is worth spending time on.

As a student growing up in the '90s, I know that my friends and I
endured completely unreliable computers that routinely ate our homework
due to hardware and software failures.  Nobody made backups.  It was
still a huge improvement over typewriters or handwriting.  For children,
data loss is simply not a big problem.  Backups are nice, but they are
only critical if the government says so.