Bill Gates, that paragon of love, has suggested that people show their affection for each other this Valentine’s Day by purchasing Microsoft software. Which, thinking about it, makes sense. After all, this is the company whose applications enabled the wonderful “I Love You” virus a couple of years ago. Nothing says “undying love” like wiping out your hard drive.

Of course, considering his audience (developers at a keynote announcing Visual Studio.net), it’s very possible software is exactly what their significant others want. Assuming they have significant others.

And speaking of things that’ll never happen, looks like Microsoft’s push to secure their software is taking its time getting off the ground. Yet another flaw was found, and, in an Alanis Morissette-ish stroke of irony, it was in a software option meant to prevent a common problem: a new version of their Visual C++.Net compiler may be responsible for creating buffer overflows instead of eliminating them.

Of course, Microsoft being the consumer-friendly company it is, immediately halted the release of the product until the flaw could be fixed.

Ha ha! No, of course not. Just having a bit of the fun. What they really did, of course, is attack the company that brought the issue to the public’s attention, insinuating that they did it because a competitor got a Microsoft contract instead.

At least they didn’t outright deny the problem, which can be considered an improvement.

Microsoft, those cuddly teddy-bears, care so much about the public, they’ve requested that people who find security breaches in their software contact Microsoft and give them 30 days before talking about it.

Supposedly in that month, Microsoft will release a fix, and no one will be vulnerable to an attack in the meantime because no one knows the problem exists.

This is what techies call “Security through Obscurity”. Regular folks call it “Sticking your head in the sand”, otherwise known as “la la la I can’t hear you!”.

Any reasonable person knows that by announcing a problem, you give people the opportunity assess their risk and take what they consider to be appropriate action. I’m guessing Microsoft is concerned that “appropriate action” might include wiping your drive and forswearing all things Windows.

Apple’s relationship with the mainstream press has always been one of love-to-hate: on the one hand, Apple is the underdog to Microsoft’s homogeny, and a media darling, the company who creates stunningly-designed, easy-to-use computers. On the other, they’re an arrogant, marginalized, ready-to-fold business with a sub-five-percent marketshare, which cares more about form than function; and the press revels in painting Apple in a bad light.

So when Apple announced recently that they were ready to release the next generation of their QuickTime software, which would include MPEG-4 (along with other products based on the new version) and at the same time announced that they would delay shipping QuickTime until they could negotiate better user licenses from the MPEG group, it came as little surprise (but with great frustration) that the press headlined with “Apple delays next version of QuickTime”.

Well, what do you expect from an industry that for years must have though the company’s full name was “beleaguered Apple Computer”?

From the headlines (another example, from the L.A. Times: “Apple Set to Withhold Latest QuickTime”), you’d think there was a technical reason that forced them to delay the release, when in fact it’s because Apple is trying to do the right thing by its customers.

The issue at hand is MPEG-LA (the largest group of MPEG-4 patent holders) wants to charge both the companies making the software using MPEG-4 and the people creating and streaming content using MPEG-4. In other words, they’re double-dipping, wanting their cake and to eat it too….

Apple on the other hand, thinks content providers should be able to use MPEG-4 without paying additional royalties to stream their creations.

The sound you just heard was a massive, collective Duh! from the creative community.

Content providers have no problem paying for software to create their masterpieces, but will balk, rightly, at being asked to pony up two cents for every hour of paid video.

So here we have Apple taking a stance to protect an important part of their customer base (many of whom are media, by-the-way), and instead of being praised to the heavens for doing so, are made to look like incompents for “not getting their software out on time”.

The mainstream media has to start giving Apple some even, unbiased coverage for a change. In this case, a simple “Apple’s newest QuickTime software ready but delayed by licensing concerns” would have sufficed and gotten both important facts out.

You’ve heard the cliché: there are two types of businesses in this world, those that have lost data, and those that will. When 30 gigs of valuable corporate information pull a Houdini and you don’t have current backups, there is an option besides chaining yourself into a vat of water: a data recovery service.

Below is a brief list of companies that will do their best to resuscitate your drive, and some things to consider next time your disk treats your data like a distant relative. Print it out and stick it next to your computers as a talisman.

Of course, a good backup-and-recovery policy is your best friend in case of drive failure or data loss. Is your policy adequately protecting your information?

Data Recovery Companies

ActionFront/DataRec: www.actionfront.com 800.563.1167

CBL Tech: www.cbltech.com 800.551.3917

Data Recovery Group: www.datarecoverygroup.com 888.462.3282

Disk Doctors: www.diskdoctors.com 800.347.5377

DriveSavers: www.drivesavers.com 800.440.1904

Lazarus: www.lazarus.com 800.341.3282

MDS Disk Service: www.mdsdiskservice.com 909.352.2425

OnTrack: www.ontrack.com 800.872.2599

Things to consider

1. If your drive whines, clicks or screeches, shut down your machine immediately. These are potential signs of a head crash, maybe the worst type of drive failure around. Disconnect the drive, contact one of the companies on the list, and pray.
2. Despite what you’ve heard, hitting, tapping or shaking a drive to get it working is not a good idea. Hard drives are delicate creatures, and a sharp blow can break the microscopic alignment among drive elements.
3. If you accidentally delete files, stop working. The odds of getting your data back are best before you write new information to your drive. Use a file recovery program like Symantec’s Norton Utilities, and save recovered files to a different disk, or you may end up overwriting the very files you’re trying to recover. Ouch.
4. These companies aren’t cheap. Most offer a free assessment, but you might pay as much as $8,000 to get your data back. Far cheaper is a reliable backup. Start by deciding how much work you’re willing to re-create after a data loss, and back up at least that often (I backup twice a day). You don’t have to get elaborate; even copying to a CD-ROM or another hard drive manually will suffice in a pinch.

Entourage (Microsoft’s email app that comes with Office v.X for Mac OS X) has some great features. The seemingly unlimited criteria and actions for rules (filters) makes managing vast quantities of email a breeze. Other features I particularly appreciate are the ability to link messages to contacts automatically, and to filter messages based on categories in your address book (for example, I keep email addresses I accept direct mail to in a category called Direct Mail OK, and with one filter I can move them into a single mailbox. Much better than creating dozens of individual rules).

But Microsoft giveth and Microsoft taketh away: they sometimes do something so awfully stupid, you wonder if their software’s written by a schizoid programming team. For example, they have both “rules” to filter your incoming email, and “mailing list rules”… to filter your incoming email from a mailing list.

The difference? I’m not sure, really, but some mailing lists aren’t recognized as such, meaning you have to make a regular old rule if you want to filter it anyway!

So why bother with a separate “mailing list rule”?!

Another annoyance is Microsoft’s definition of “preference”. They offer you the “choice,” for example, of turning off the ability to view attached images in the body of your email.

But choosing that preference doesn’t work. How do I know? Because right now I’m looking at porn-spam, with attachments — pictures of naked women showing me how well-shaved they are — right in the body of my email.

Entourage also has an “option” to turn off “complex” html. What its definition of “complex” is I don’t know, because I’m constantly getting spam with color backgrounds, font changes and horizontal rules. I suppose “complex” includes only tables and CSS.

I dislike HTML email because it’s both a significant privacy and security hazard; by sending a “web tag” — an image hosted on a website — anyone can validate your email address: the minute you read the message they know you’re legit. They can also craft HTML that exposes your system to future attacks. Why would anyone want that feature turned on? And if you turn it off, why won’t it be honored?

But suppose I should feel secure that I’ve also turned off the “allow network access when displaying complex html” option, and rely on Microsoft’s stellar track record providing stable, well-designed and secure software.

Seriously though… Entourage has a slew of time-saving features (I haven’t even begun to delve into the calendaring system), but as glitzy as it is, the shortcomings, like the inability to completely turn off html email will probably be the number one reason I run back into the warm, comforting arms of Eudora 5.1b20 for OS x. I just value my privacy and security to0 much to be seduced by the pretty baubles.