9 billion backups

I am running "GNU Emacs 21.4.1 (i486-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d
scroll bars) of 2006-05-17 on rothera, modified by Debian" on Ubuntu
6.06. There are two things that are frustrating the heck out of me and
I can't seem to figure out how to change:

1. I get like 9 billion backups of every file (e.g. foo.~1~ ... foo.~39~) .
2. Auto-fill-mode is always on by default.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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