I do agree, the iPhone needs a more impressive lock screen notification system, notification aggregation, and a good home screen. They're reportedly working on that, and they've taken a step forward on notifications. Keep in mind, 2 years ago, there were no apps, and 18 months ago, no notifications. The OS was never intended to do that,so they've got a lot more back end work to do to make it seamless while also not breaking other apps. the OS constantly moves forward, with regular interval, and for little issue with older devices (though the 2G is getting very little of OS 4 at all, it is getting SOME features).

We'll see improvement here over the next year. Android added what people saw missing from iPhone OS. iPhone is catching up to user demand while remaining stable and true to form, Android is fragmenting, having device compatibility and manufacturer will issues, and virus problems. I'll take slow over questionable any day. (not to mention, there's probably patent/license issues Apple has to work around here too).

I've been using D2D offsite backups for 7 years. Shipping disks every day. 1 time we had an issue recovering from 1 disk, and best we could tell it was because the backup actually never finished, the disk was 100% fine.

I've used tapes for 20 years. I have at best 20% success rate recovering entire systems from a tape thats been offsite for more than 1 week, and maybe 60% success recovering single files or folders, and if the drive heads have been changed since the tape was made, recovery likelyhood drops to about 10%.

A 5 year old tape is very hard to find a reader for. A SATA port can be added to even the oldest boards, and an IDE port can be added the the newest. No special hardware or software is required to read my disk backups.

If a tape drive breaks (had that happen many many times in my career) old tapes rarely read on the new drive (even same model). If my server farm is destroyed, i don't even need the same legacy teck, I can use the insurance money on shiny new hardware and still read my offsite disks with no issues.

Backups tapes are cheap plastic and exposed to air, and are a linear set. one bad tape equals an entire bad dataset. Disks we archive in 4 disk RAID 5 sets, are hermetically sealed, and far more resilient. Drisk inside of rail kists that use rubber grommets for better protection packed into hard cases of foam liner. We've dropped them off a 5th story roof to a driveway as a test, and the plastic casing on the rails was instact and we got 100% successful bit read across 8 disks. I've dropped tapes 6 incheas onto a table and fail bit verifies (I used to do that as an example in a demo of how unreliable tape is).

HDDs can be rebuilt, easy, and relatively cheap. The MTBF of an unused disk on a shelf is measured in years, and the "stuck spindle" issue is a forgone issue and no longer applies to modern disks (even a slight vibration overrides locked disks). Tapes settle, unspool, are open to the air and bacteria and corrosion, and the tiny chip in the tape is critical to it being readable, the chips in a HDD can be replaced with no trouble.

Metalic tape has a MTBF of 30 days for bit failure. Their long terms storage is entirely dependent on their parity algorithm. MTBF of a bit on a physical disk is measured in YEARS. Also, a single tape failure in a backup set can ruin the entire set, where a disk failure in a striped RAID disk archive means NOTHING (its a RAID!).

1) a good D2D system uses RAID 5 data sets across disk sets, not individual disks. Tapes don;t do parity striping scross sets so loosing jkust 1 tape in a job set can ruin the entire backup set. Loosing 1 disk means nothing.
2) i used to do DR demos, and I'd drop a bit verified tape just 6 inches and watch it fail a bit level verify, while I had a hard disk I made the team play hot-potato with for 10 minutes, then pass a bit verify.

HDDs are designed for 300G shocks, and when not in use can survive freezing and fairly extreme heat, and are immune to basic environmental issues (even rain if allowed to dry, worst case you replace the board...).

When shipping HDDs, typically they''re in sleeves, bubble wrap, or a foam case. Tapes are stacked in a box.

If you;re telling me cheap plastic and an open air medium is more resilient than a metal casing and hermetic sealing, i want what you smoke.

A HDD can survive a 300G shock, and is atmosphere nuetral. Tapes can't survive 20G shocks, are open exposed to the environment, and even LIGHTING can degrade their state.

MTBF at the bit level on a tape is measured at 30 days, for optical it's about 90 days, for HDD platters its measured in years. HDDs also can easily be rebuilt if there are head issues in an old drive, and data recovery is easy. With a tape, it's virtually impossible to even read a good tape in a drive it was not made on.

oh, 1.6TB compressed? Really?

Compared to a $100 1.5TB HDD, that's 3TB compressed vs your 2 tapes to meet the same, so the cost is nearly a wash on media, and the HDD caddy for 16 drives is under $1K, but the tape drive to read 1 tape at a time in that capacity is probably $4K, and only accepts that capacity and some limited older tape support (not larger in the future, or 10 year old SATA disks from the past).

But, lets look at some REAL numbers:
a) what actually IS your compression ratio?
b) what actually is the max capacity of your tapes in reality (check your logs).

1.6Tb is the max theoretical storage at 2:1 compression, but that assumes no write failures, and assumes your hardware based compression (oh, that costs extra?), actually meets 2:1. See, with a disk, if there's a write failure during backup (rare on spinning disk), it rewrites to the same disk sector. If a tape has a write failure on backup, just 1 bit, it markes a whole tape block with a hash and keeps running. Your cleaning light comes on when you have between 8 and 16 write failures IN A ROW on more than 3 separate places on the same tape, imagine how much tape your wasting when those failures are not all in a row... I've seen 400GB native tapes have a validated capacity under 80GB after a "successful" backup.

Check your tape logs and see just how much tape you are ACTUALLY using, vs the tape your wasting.

Tapes can be cheaper, if you use LOTS of them every day, and have a ridiculous regiment for storing all tapes indefinitely, and rarely if ever overwrite tapes with new backups. however, if your drives are aging, tapes are heavily used, you're wasting money rotating and disposing of them (no tape should ever be used more than 15 times, tapes for long term archive should be brand new and never part of a rotation, a mistake most people make only archiving their oldest tapes, dumb). You're loosing tape storage, your compression ratio is likely nowhere near reality (especially if its not hardware based), and a 1.6Tb tape, just like a HDD, doesn't store 1.6TB of compressed data (most 800s are lucky to get 600GB native 1,000-1100 compressed). ...and that doesn't factor tape hardware costs, chip-in-tape costs, cleaning tape costs (oh, btw, how often are you using/replacing your cleaning tapes?) and more.

SATA ports have been on mainboards for nearly 10 years. IDE is a near 20 year old technology and IDE drives are still available. The format methods for disks are current, and data is EASILY migrated from one partition format to another. SATA 6 is backward compatible with SATA I drives and PCI IDE adapters cost about $15. (or USB external adapters)

Backups should not do 10 years without being migrated, and disk hardware 10m years from now is practically guaranteed to be available to read your disks, and legacy hardware is cheap and easily acquired. Tape hardware migrates to new formats every few years, can only be read in proprietary devices by proprietary software in most cases. Acquiring even a 5 year old legacy tape drive is near impossible, and new tape drives have significant issues reading any more than 1 previous tape generation. Migration to new tapes should happen every 3 years, at a cost of about $80/tape. HDD can go 7-10 years between migrations, at a cost of about the same per drive, but with greater capacity in most cases, easier migration tools, readily available, and drive sets can be RAID sets adding reliability and parity on inexpensive hardware.

Mean time between bit failure on a linear tape is 30 days.

That means 1 bit on that tape will be unreadable, or flipped, within 30 days. Assuming your tape uses parity writing, that's not much of an issue, but data failure may occur after a few months. This assumes lab quality storage conditions and treatment of the tape. imagine the same tape traveling in an iron box across town and back, and all the shuffling in warehouses and back to you eventually, not to mention the magnetic interference going up/down a few elevator shafts...

MTBF for bits on a HDD platter are measured in years, not days.

...and that's why offline HDD storage should equally be in RAID format.

That said, I worked for a D2D disaster recovery provider, and one time only we had issues recovering data from an archive drive due to disk failure. Suspicion was the drives were pulled before the job actually finished.

Now, HDDs sitting idle have a bit failure decay measured in years. Worst case, if the drive mechanism failes, the platters are still fully readable and easily recovered. Data being pulled from legal hold usually has no timeframe recovery requirements (unlike disaster recovery, there's no SLA for court requests of data), and worst case, HDD repair is a viable option.

Tapes have a bit failure rate measured in days, typically 30 for most tapes, and once data decays from the tape, it can not be recovered. Also, most typically, a tape recorded on one set of drives can not be read by another set of identical drives. often, the very same drive has trouble reading its own tapes if they've been shuffled out of the building and back in months later. I used to do an experiment in a classroom teaching DR methods where I'd perform a backup and bit-level verify (and only 3 in 10 pass verify at the bit level, but assuming it passed I'd continue, then I'd take the tape out of the drive, drop it just 6 inches to a table, flat, then put it back in the drive and repeat verify, and it would predictably fail 100% of the time. I'd repeat that with a hard disk backup of the same data set, let each person in the room drop the drive from shoulder height to the floor, then repeat the verify, and I never once had a failure (though once I had trouble getting the drive back in the tray slot).

Huh? the red flag rules are almost all covered already by HIPAA and Sox. There's immense overlap between them, red flag just applies to a lot more than medical and legal records... Doctors already are required to obey these rules, and most small doctors, due to the cost, already use intermediary companies to handle billing and colelction eliminating them from direct responsibility (and the creditor lablel).

1) When where the initial 3 versions released each? If the first version was approved long before Apple overhauled their internal scanning practices, it might have slipped through, and continued to do so until someone caught it on a much later update.
2) what new features did 1.2 add, or bring light to that may have been latent or underutilized? Did each revision add something new, and make it more "widget like" eventually ending up as a desktop-style application?
3) where did this app get its "overlay" data, and did someone else complain about this app pulling from their servers for commercial purposes?
4) were any of the data connections the app made in violation of other apple policies? Did it take user data and preferences and send them to central servers outside of the user and Apple's control (potential privacy or identity theft issues)?
5) Was there something else in this app that was a concern? Anyone have it before it got pulled to really look?
6) Were any of this companies other apps pulled or rejected at the same time? Perhaps this "harmless" app is being used as a media example, when in reality, other apps get the dev itself banned.
7) the "no widget" rule is actually fairly well defined. Apps are to access a content resource, or their own data, but "aggregator" apps that provide multi-functions doing little more then pulling from other sources fall under the "no real value" category. A new application is one thing, pulling data from other sites together and making it look like it;s your data, or a unique app is half pointless, and a disservice to users, and those apps get banned, including any that provide desktop like functionality.

i don;t know. Out of 200,000 apps, apple's made a few mistakes, but this app seems half fishy to start with, no genuine content of it's own, and a shady dev who goes running to blogs over 1 app that, lets face it, doesn't really sound like an "investment" a company would be behind?

You know what prevents the dissemination of fingerprints to authorities? THE LAW. a) the scan itself is only a hash, not an image, and certainly not from an evidence admissible source or quality process, so in the first place, no legal authority even cares. b) request of that data would have to be mandated by a judge in an active case and after a search warrant was issued. c) exporting the has of specific students is probably not even possible. d) this data is protected by law the same as any other PII on file with any company or entity. e) the courts can mandate you as a citizen provide your fingerprints or DNA at any time, in association with any active case, in order to compare such to already collected evidence, or anytime you are processed by a prison system for any reason, but if there's no case associated with that data (you, for instance, are suspect of stealing something from school property, and for SOME reason can't be otherwise positively ID'd?). f) this is not a malicious dictatorship with drones who do what the government says, we live in a world of people appointed by US to do their jobs, and where they're held accountable to be themselves imprisoned if the agencies we made them commission to watch their backs find them screwing up.

If some cop requests a fingerprint of my kid, and forced the school to hand it over (and I promise, that is NOT something a school would do without a warrant, they don't give data to anyone unless forced), then that cop would be sent to prison, that judge disbarred, and I;d get a nice half a million payday. I'm OK with those checks and balkanbces such that i believe that system would not be abused (especially given it's lack of any real value to a government agency, being nothing more than a hash in a database, and completely useless without the finger itself to verify the hash).

Bingo.

Your student record must be kept by law in most states after you leave the school until your death in some places or beyond X years in others, which nowhere do i believe that is less than 40 years. A pin access or fingerprint is not part of your student record, its just an access system used to validate your ID, so it has no reason to be kept. That said, is your fingerprint private? PII (Personally Identifiable information) is by court ruling NOT private, it's just illegal to share that information or to provide unauthorized access, or fail to secure it to current government standards.

details? As in the fingerprints in the scanning system? Yes, they're deleted. in fact, the entire system is reseeded every year of enrollment, and purged automatically! Why? simple biometric system like this are only accurate enough to get a "good guess" based on fingerprints in a database. The more prints, the less accurate the response.... They remove the old data to make current data more reliable BY DESIGN.

As for all the OTHER student data, I don't know about there, but here in this state, it has to be kept INDEFINITELY by law. My old high school in NY was just forced to go dig out my records from my time there as part of a government background check. It took them 2 weeks, but they had the data in hardcopy in a warehouse (yea, nothing was on computer back then, at least at a common high school level, I'm old). They have to keep that data at least until my death, released only on request by certain agencies, (not even directly to me, because my record contains confidential information from counselors) and will never become publicly accessible data, but its there, and will never be deleted. A fingerprint of a child is barely valid for a few years, its in constant flux, and generally useless to anyone, and is not at-risk data.

Also, everyone seems to have jumped on this system as something that can be easily abused. Did anybody bother to ask what the second factor of authentication was? a pin number, student ID, anything? i doubt very highly simply the thumb print alone is full and valid identification.

We use a similar system at our grocery store. Enter out phone number, thumb print, then a pin number, and we don't need to have our key-fob store discount card, or any credit cards handy, we select the stored method of payment (we can have several) and the pin number for that card (only works with pin, not signature, as they'll have no card to cross validate), and the transaction is done without taking out a card or wallet.

The odds of someone having my fingerprint, knowing my phone number, system pin, and card pin all at the same time, pretty slim. The store backs it up with a guarantee, and the data and card information is stored to federal PCI network standards.

My kid's fingerprint can be lifted almost anywhere. I really don't care if some database stores it for part of an ID validation, so long as validation requires MORE than the finger. Personally identifiable information (PII) is by law defined as not-private information, its just illegal to SHARE that information.