Thank you, o gloriously generous Internet! For today I received two great gifts from you: (1) a free download of the beta Google Desktop Search, which is so wonderful I would say I am speechless, if it weren’t for this posting; and (2) a link from a fellow Oregon blogger that led me to The Smoking Gun story, “O’Reilly Hit with Sex Harass Suit,” which contains marvelously explicit descriptions of the sexual fantasies Bill O’Reilly purportedly shared with an unwilling staffer.
The Google gift seems to work precisely as promised. After this teeny-tiny (for what it does) 400kb download installed itself on my computer, it spent an hour or so cataloging emails, cached Internet pages, and other files on my hard drive. I then was able to get Google search results for my own computer in exactly the same fashion as Google does for the entire Internet.
This is just so cool, I can’t praise Google Desktop Search enough. It comes up with the search results almost instantaneously, no matter what combination of terms I tried to stump it with. The results are categorized by “emails,” “files,” and “web history” (plus “chats,” if you are an online chatter, which I’m not). It is much faster and more flexible than Outlook’s email search feature; ditto compared to the Windows file searching process.
In my opinion Google Desktop Search is a must for every Windows XP and Windows 2000 user (the only operating systems it works with, so far; plus, you have to be using Outlook/Outlook Express and Internet Explorer 5+). Try it out and be amazed.
You’ll also be amazed to read the lengthy complaint filed against Bill O’Reilly that is accessible from the link above. The Smoking Gun kindly has pointers to the more provocative pages of the complaint, saving those of us who just want to read the “good stuff” from wading through boring legalese.
If it was anybody but O’Reilly who was the subject of this complaint, I’d feel somewhat guilty about being privy to a man’s sexual fantasies (and also behavior, given what Andrea Mackris claims in the brief). However, O’Reilly treats guests on his radio and TV programs with such contempt, and is so irritatingly arrogant and self-righteous, I found myself gleefully reading page after page of Ms. Mackris’ allegations.
Maybe the allegations will turn out to be unfounded. Maybe Mackris and her lawyer really were trying to unfairly shake down O’Reilly and Fox for $60 million, as another story on The Smoking Gun web site reports (Fox first filed a lawsuit against Mackris, which led to Mackris’ complaint against O’Reilly). Whatever the truth of this matter really is, I’ll bet that O’Reilly turns out to be less pure than the No-Spin Angel he presents himself as.
You might also then like to download Mozilla FireFox and then some of the add-ons and enhancements which are also all free.
I have converted to this browser over and above IE.
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
Posted by: DrSirius | October 15, 2004 at 12:12 AM