On Tue, 12 Feb 2008, Tim wrote: > On Mon, 2008-02-11 at 08:14 -0600, Michael Hennebry wrote: > > The *medium* is not write-only. > > Even if glued in place, the write-protect latch > > is only a flag to respectiable hardware. > > If I fear, correctly or otherwise, editing by people > > with non-respectable hardware tape doesn't work. > > While you couldn't edit a DVD backup, you could make a doctored copy, > and slip it into place. You can also foul up a DVD-R by burning over > the top of it, all that takes is something that STUPIDLY doesn't check > whether a disc is blank before writing to it (like my Liteon DVD > recorder). Sometimes bad data is worse than no data. A write-once medium won't protect one from substitution, but it will allow detection of the other problems. Having the backup maintainer sign them (ALL of them, aarrrg) is about the only thing I can think of to detect substitution. If he's the bad guy, that doesn't help either, but then, nothing does. > There's no guarantees. If you want to save your backups, then you need > to keep them out of the hands of anyone who might foul them up, whether > deliberately, or stupidly. Which means rotating one's backup maintainers. Writer's cramp can make people nasty. -- Michael hennebry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx "Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised) are called Hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called Software."
