FBI wants records kept of Web sites visited

Big Brother 2010! This article can be found in full at the link below.

"The FBI is pressing Internet service providers to record which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years, a requirement that law enforcement believes could help it in investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes.

FBI Director Robert Mueller supports storing Internet users' "origin and destination information," a bureau attorney said at a federal task force meeting on Thursday.

As far back as a 2006 speech, Mueller had called for data retention on the part of Internet providers, and emphasized the point two years later when explicitly asking Congress to enact a law making it mandatory. But it had not been clear before that the FBI was asking companies to begin to keep logs of what Web sites are visited, which few if any currently do."

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Office Software Alternatives

I am writing in response to a reader's request to discuss this topic. Specifically, the discussion revolves around Microsoft (MS) Office 2003, MS Office 2007, and Open Office (http://about.openoffice.org/). In this case, the writer has MS Office 2003. Most people, I find, have the Student and Home Edition of MS Office 2003. This is/was a fee product ans most users got it to have MS Word and MS Excel.

If I had MS Office 2003 and Windows XP in place, and I had no plans to go out and get a new computer, I would stick with 2003 and XP. Remember, Windows XP will be supported through 2014, and Office 2003 should work just as well until that time. There is no reason you need to upgrade or change. Chances are good that Word & Excel are working well now, are compatible with the new version of MS Office 2007, and there is a free program from Microsoft that will let you read MS Word 2007 documents (Exchanging files between previous releases of Microsoft Office and the 2007 Microsoft Office release).

If I did not have Office 2003 but needed an office package, I would recommend Open Office and, if necessary, the above referenced compatibility pack.

Your input

I am glad that so many of you are visiting this blog as often as you do. I believe I can make this a more valuable resource for you if I could get some input from you all. Please consider letting me know of any questions or issues that are important to you, and I would hope others, that you would like to see me address on this blog. Just below the Blog Archives on the right side of this screen there is a CONTACT THE PC DOC link. Or, please write me directly at pcdoc at brpcdoc dot com. In either case, please use the subject "Suggestion for blog". Thanks.

Writing a daily (weekdays) blog can be tough. I sometimes think I am being redundant since I have been at this for so long and my memory ain't what it used to be! :-)

Of course, you can always write a comment to any blog post just by clicking on COMMENTS below each post.

Moving your Outlook data files

Are you a Microsoft Outlook user? If you are, do you back up your mail folders regularly, so that if your hard drive failed or became corrupted you would still be able to recreate your e-mail environment without losing much?

For several years I did not even know how or where Outlook stored my mail files and address book, or contacts as Outlook likes to call them. Once I had figured all of this out, I got to thinking and realized tht even though I was backing up My Documents to an external hard drive, I had not taken any steps to ever back up my e-mail. I asked around, on online forums and such, and found out that the nearly hidden, very hard to find, location of my e-mail could be changed. Changed, in fact, to a location such as a folder of any name I chose within the My Documents folder if that is what I wanted. It turns out that this is exactly what I wanted to do. With all of my e-mail stored within My Documents in a separate e-mail folder (I call it My Outlook Mail Folders), it would then be backed up on a regular basis whenever I backed up My Documents and all of its contents. This is such an easy thing to do that I recommend it for all Outlook users.

You can read about it here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA011124801033.aspx