Saturday, September 27, 2003

Quick and simple file finder ASFileFinder excels at the frequent task of searching for a file by its name.  It is just over 75KB in size, and runs as a standalone executable -- no DLLs, not even an installation routine.  When you run it, it asks you to choose a drive, and then does a quick survey of all the files on that drive.  The process takes no more than a few seconds, and then it is ready to search.  You then start to type in letters, and it displays the file names which match the entry.  If you are looking for "The Year of Living Dangerously", type in "liv" and only those file names containing that string are displayed.  (If you have used PowerMarks, you know the power of this simple search technique.)  Type in a second entry to narrow it further.  Type "liv", then a space, then "dan" and it is likely that only the one desired file will display. Double-click on the file name to open it.  Very simple, and much faster than Windows' search tool, particularly if you need to do several different searches of a single drive one after the other. 11:02:08 PM     WTC insurance ruling How Appealing informed us about the release of this opinion (PDF) from the Second Circuit, deciding the long-contested insurance issue arising from the 9-11 loss of the World Trade Center:  Was it one occurrence or two?  Howard was coy, not revealing the outcome, but I think weblog readers need to be informed.  The result was that the District Court's ruling that the events of 9-11 constituted one occurrence rather than two was affirmed.  The loss was considered to have resulted from one "occurrence",  and only one $3.5 billion policy limit is involved. The reasoning is of interest.  The operative language for most carriers was a proposal submitted by the insured's broker, thus an agent of the insured, which defined "occurrence" as follows: "Occurrence" shall mean all losses or damages that are attributable directly or indirectly to one cause or to one series of similar causes. All such losses will be added together and the total amount of such losses will be treated as one occurrence irrespective of the period of time or area over which such losses occur. The reason for this carefully crafted definition, the court noted, was to ensure that the insured would not be subject to several deductibles in the event of a loss involving a series of similar events.  Also of interest are the following: The lead plaintiff, Silverstein Properties, had just taken over as property manager, having been the successful bidder in the Spring of 2001 on a 99-year lease from the Port Authority. Since insurance coverage had just been issued in July, only one of the consortium of insurers had issued a full policy.  So insurance coverage issues in this litigation proceeded on the terms of binders that had been issued by the companies.  These binders incorporated the terms of the broker's proposal form, hence the significance of the language used therein. There was much argument over whether the excess insurers which had issued binders had agreed to "follow the form" of the primary Travelers policy, which had been issued and under which a different definition of "occurrence" was found.  That policy was issued in final form on September 14, three days after the loss, and the court ruled that any custom or usage surrounding the use of a lead policy would come into force only when the lead policy was in fact issued. 10:16:21 AM     Franco's first law Tom Mighell posted: A Brighter Outlook for Spam Sufferers -- Jeff Beard has a nice post outlining some of the new features available in the soon-to-be-released Outlook 2003. One thing that Jeff and I both are looking forward to is the enhanced spam filter. Read more about it in David Pogue's Microsoft Office 2003 Reviewed. While you're at it, head over to the New York Times E-mail subscription page and sign up for "Circuits," David's weekly newsletter. Definitely worth a read. I tried to comment, but his commenting machine is broken, resulting in three copies of the following appearing at Tom's comment section: Franco's First Law: Any solution from Microsoft is more terrifying than the problem. 8:30:03 AM     Where have the heroes gone? Gizmodo reveals that the Consumer Products Safety Commission has announced a recall of certain models of the Segway Human Transporter after some injuries have been sustained.  Where are these guys now that we need them? 8:12:30 AM

© Copyright 2003 Franco Castalone. Last update: 10/2/2003; 4:24:53 PM.