And the Apple Parade of Shame continues! If you're just tuning in now, you already missed a couple of the more spectacular sights: the local high school marching band's spirited rendition of "Burning Down the House" during its synchronized "Salute to FireWire Data Loss in Panther" had the crowd on its feet, and the Leprous PowerBook Display float making its way through the streets of Cupertino-- with over 10,000 fabulous carnations forming the mysterious white spots-- was nothing short of breathtaking.

But don't worry, because you certainly haven't missed all the fun. Clearly at some point in the none-too-distant past Apple's quality control department was secretly replaced with instant Folgers Crystals, because faithful viewer Chris McDevitt informs us that, according to The Register, Apple has officially owned up to that "FileVault nuking preference settings" bug to which we alluded ever so briefly last week. FileVault, of course, is Panther's integrated and transparent data encryption technology which the company has billed as "safe, secure, and speedy." Given Apple's reported acknowledgement that when FileVault "reclaims lost disk space" it can corrupt the bejeezus out of Keychain data and possibly other stuff, we expect that the "safe" part of that description may soon be edited slightly.

Then again, even if FileVault weren't buggy, we've always felt that anything bearing a bright red, all-caps WARNING containing the ominous phrase "lost forever" is probably stretching the definition of the word "safe" a little in the first place. And now that problems reported from FileVault data corruption include the aforementioned lost preference settings, missing Mail messages, deleted Safari bookmarks, and car keys down the garbage disposal, a substitution of the word "dicey" might be more in line with truth-in-advertising laws.

Worse yet, faithful viewer Eric Beyer informs us that Macworld UK claims that the problem can also lead to "OS instability" and that "some reports claim that this data-loss has extended to other Macs, when users have synchronized plural machines using their .Mac account." Did we say "dicey"? Maybe "unsound" would be a better fit. Or possibly "Encryption Software of the Damned."

Interestingly enough, even though Apple now admits that the problem exists, it still doesn't suggest that people actually turn FileVault off; apparently if FileVault asks for permission to reclaim space and you simply tell it not to, there's no problem. Still, though, there's no denying that this bug deserves representation in the Apple Parade of Shame. If it's deemed not big enough of an embarrassment to warrant its own float, then maybe it can be represented by those Shriners in the tiny cars.