[Tfug] Dispersed Storage / Distributed backups

[Chris Niswander]

At 10:46 PM 8/21/2006 -0700, you wrote:
>Two things come to mind here.
>
>If they're using something like distributed parity to fill in the gaps 
>for when one or more of the nodes goes offline, heh, good luck with that 
>one, chief. Unless the client comes bundled with a magical psychic 
>unicorn that can come up with the missing data out of it's butt, you're 
>going to have one hell of a time rebuilding a stripe because the 

Splitting up a secret into n pieces of information, so that:
1. with any x (x<n) of those pieces the original secret can be regenerated
2. fewer than x of those pieces are inadequate to find out anything
   about the secret.
is a pretty well established area in cryptography by now.

Try keyphrase: secret sharing

In short, this is a feasible thing to do with backups.

In digression: Bowie, are you trolling? ;-)

Chris