Free Republic

<p>Some sales reps at brick-and-mortar retailers convince PC purchasers to buy unnecessary store-made backups.</p> <p>When Ian Griffith of Queens, New York, purchased an HP notebook from a Circuit City store in Brooklyn earlier this year, the salesperson urged him to have the chain's in-store Fire Dog technicians create Windows XP recovery discs in case Griffith needed to reinstall the OS.</p>

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - When Endeavour lifts off, former schoolteacher Barbara Morgan will be seated on the lower deck in the middle, exactly where Christa McAuliffe sat 21 years ago. And she'll be flying aboard Endeavour, the space shuttle that was built to replace the Challenger. Morgan, who was McAuliffe's backup, is used to all the comparisons. In fact, she welcomes them. "I think the great thing about it is that people will be thinking about Challenger and thinking about all the hard work lots of folks over many years have done to continue their mission," Morgan said last month....

WASHINGTON, March 24, 2006 – As Iraqi forces assume more responsibility for security duties, they're receiving backup and other kinds of support from the U.S. military, a senior Defense Department spokesman said here today. "U.S. military forces remain in supporting roles with the ability to offer a surge capability to Iraqi security forces," Bryan Whitman told Pentagon reporters. U.S. forces in Iraq also provide logistical support to fledgling Iraqi security forces, Whitman said. Whitman agreed with Army Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey's assessment during a briefing from Iraq earlier today that Iraqi forces are rapidly moving toward taking over border- control...

Housekeeper at UW has backup job System president's employee guaranteed an academic spot By CHASE DAVIS cdavis@journalsentinel.com Highlighting what critics called the pervasiveness of backup appointments across the University of Wisconsin System, officials confirmed Friday that President Kevin Reilly's own housekeeper holds one of the controversial positions, although Reilly has said he learned of it only recently. Section: State politics UW spokeswoman Kate Dixon confirmed Friday that Mary Lou Gritzmacher, the housekeeper at Reilly's official residence, was among the UW staff and administrators guaranteed a backup job - a three-year academic staff position. The parameters of that job are unclear....

Last week, I had my PC worked. The techs took all of my programs and put them in a back-up file on my C drive. My printer/scanner is sitting in that back-up file. How do I get it out of C drive and re-install it on my PC? I've tried messing with it and can't seem to make it work. I have a Compaq Presario and the printer/scanner is a Lexmark X1150. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

I have a DVD I need to salvage if possible. My kids have managed to scratch it (but it doesn't look horribly scratched, just superficial scuffs). I have heard there is programs that allow one to extract the infomation so I can record it (or just view it on my computer). I can watch about 2/3rds of the disk without problems then it starts lagging and eventually stops (and locks up). I have tried numerous players from my home tv dvd player to my two dvd players (one is a recorder) on my computer. All sources lock up about the...

Optimal Drive Partitioning Dear Fred; Thank you for your fine newsletter and all the great information you provide. I will definitely renew my Plus subscription.   Now I have a question that I would like to see discussed.  I have read in one or two different publications that if you're formatting a new hard drive or reformatting an older one for some reason, that it is well to set the drive up in three [3] different partitions.  One for your O/S and Drivers, one for your Applications and one for your Data.   Now I can see the advantages...

If we get hit by a DoS attack or something else on Election Night, were is our mirror site?

SACRAMENTO – If voters reject Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's $15 billion fiscal-recovery bond measure in March, his administration said yesterday, a backup bond plan would be smaller than originally thought and would leave a larger budget gap. The governor's top budget aide, Donna Arduin, notified legislators yesterday that the amount of the backup bond, if it survives a court challenge, would drop from $10.7 billion to $8.6 billion. Arduin said the amount of the bond is determined by the deficit at the end of the fiscal year last June, and the deficit has recently been recalculated to be about $2 billion...

My four year old Dell Pentium-III/450MHz PC has become overwhelmed by multi-tasking (I'm a writer/researcher and typically have 6-8 screens open at a time) and crashes at least once a day. In looking at new PCs I find that they no longer offer built-in Zip drives. This is very bad news as I have perhaps 100 zip disks containing needed and irreplacable material. 1. Can one still buy a new PC with a Zip drive? 2. If not, what is the best way to convert all zipped data to CD format, and what accessories are needed? Thanks.

Any PRODUCTIVE recommendations? And please, Mac Users and MS haters, please try to fight the impulse to tell me to stop using MS products. I know it's hard to resist an opportunity to bash MS. But I'm sure that if you put your whole mind to it, say a prayer, and grit your teeth, you can triumph over those evil urges.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) -- A 22-year-old man was charged with impersonating a sheriff's deputy after he pulled over a pickup truck and then called for assistance when the occupants fled. It appeared that Jeremy Lepianka of Syracuse had been posing as a Onondaga County Sheriff's deputy for about two years and had stopped motorists - and lectured them - on other occasions, police said. "He told investigators he had been working as a volunteer deputy for about two years. He said traffic violations were his main thing. Hopefully, it didn't go beyond that," Lt. Joe Cecile, a Syracuse police spokesman,...

<p>Locate backup data on the moon? Now that sounds like a rock-solid business model.</p> <p>However strange the idea may sound, TransOrbital of La Jolla, California is taking it and other proposals for marrying high-tech and the Earth's only natural satellite seriously. The company is getting ready to send a commercial mission to the moon and intends to send servers, data, handheld computers, and digital cameras along for the ride.</p>

I am looking for a good foolproof back-up option for my computer. I have a Dell Dimension 4300 that I purchased in October of 2001. It runs Windows XP Pro, has an 80 gig hard drive, and is not networked. I purchased it with a CD-RW drive installed, but it does not appear to be compatible with any back-up software that I have found. The Roxio CD writer program that also came installed is really cumbersome to use for backing up data files. I have been thinking of paying the $300 per year to subscribe to the Internet backup service...

The Portland Fire Bureau which said the United Staes flag was being removed Monday to protect Firefighter from peace protestors, rescinded the order at 9AM Tuesday.That was about three hours after City Comissioner Erik Sten, who oversees the Fire Bureau, picked up his Monday evening newspaper and read about Monday's orderSten said he had not been consulted about the decision.As phone calls and e-mails flooded in from far away as Texas to his office, he decided to tell the Bereau to reverse course.

The gerbils have slowed to a crawl. If anyone has an alternate backup FR site please post. Please suggest FR-sponsored websites ONLY.

The New Internet Backup and the Multimillion-Dollar MD5 Digital Signature Gamble You probably don't backup your computer. I don't, and my job revolves around it. Basically, there is very little on my computer that I care about. My current projects/pictures/documents are all in known directories. Every once in a while I copy these directories to another computer, and I am all right. I know if my drive crashes, it will take some time to become useful again. I am willing to take that risk versus being more vigilant. Well backing up computers. over the Internet, is slowly going through...