Both Great Britain and the United States have long traditions of letting individuals write wills to determine who owns their property when they die. However, most other countries in Europe consider it both remarkable and close to barbaric to allow parents to disinherit their children; indeed, in 26 of 27 European Union countries, a large part of the estate of the deceased is reserved in equal shares for surviving children.

Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post has a new blog post about Microsoft's announced intention to publish the specification of the Personal Storage Table (.pst) file format used by its Outlook E-mail and personal information management application. By documenting the workings of Outlook's Personal Storage Table (PST) format"one of my least-favorite locked formats"Microsoft would make it far easier for developers to write Outlook-compatible software to complement or replace that widely used program.

Having a loved one who is struggling with drug addiction or alcoholism can be an overwhelming situation to navigate. Figuring out what kind of help might work, then finding the program that will fit your needs while having to keep in mind your financial budget is difficult.

Three days ago Jonathan MacDonald witnessed an altercation in the London Underground at the Holborn Station, between -- as Jonathan reports it -- a uniformed Underground staffer an elderly man whose arm had just been released from doors that had closed on it while he was leaving. The staffer was loud and rude, while the passenger was calm and gentlemanly. Jonathan also recorded the last of the event on video " and blogged the event, video and all.

Zeitoun is Dave Eggers' latest about a unique family from New Orleans and their Katrina experience. Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a Syrian immigrant who settles in New Orleans in the mid-80s and builds his own painting and contracting business from the ground up. The book tells the story of how he ends up embroiled in a Kafka-esque nightmare that highlights everything that was wrong with the W. Bush era, and which was so poignantly exposed during the Katrina response.

Veggie Trader (veggietrader.com)envisions becoming a space where folks can share the respective bounty of their yards and gardens, trading with other growers or selling to those without a fertile patch of ground to call their own. It's the ultimate in local, that buzzword du jour, and is even a little subversive in its primarily barter-based economy. I like that"subversion can be at its most effective when it becomes commonplace, everyday. Policy change still needs to happen, but this is something you can do right now, without waiting for the creaky wheels of bureaucracy to turn.

New DNA sequencing technology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) has identified several new unique genetic mutations in mesothelioma cancer cells that were previously unidentified. The findings serve as promising evidence that the improved sensitivity and effectiveness of DNA sequencing technology is providing more pertinent and rapid results in relation to cancer gene profiling.

President Obama announced plans to contribute $5 billion in medical research grants that the White House says will cumulatively provide "cutting-edge medical research in every state across America." The funds will be provided via Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus plan, and will largely be used to aid research into cancer, heart disease and autism. The president made the announcement while visiting the National institutes for Health on September 30.

Back in September, I posted a note about attacks on the two-factor authentication systems used by some online banking sites. One of my recommendations has always been to use a dedicated, carefully configured PC for this function; a PC that is not used for general Web browsing, iTunes, Facebook, and everything else under the sun. I've also suggested that using an OS other than Windows " specifically, Linux " is a useful additional precaution.

The thing that scares Murdoch and the like into wanting to move web content behind a paywall is not the ABC, nor bloggers, nor aggregators. What scares those moghuls most is firefox, or more accurately, the various browser add-ons that let you control what chews up your bandwidth, most notably AdBlock Plus.

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