links for 2009-09-21

"The music business." Indeed.

"By shifting to direct federal lending, the Obama administration said it would save more than $80 billion over 10 years, which would go into higher Pell grants for low-income students, new investments in community colleges, early-childhood programs and other education efforts."

"either Google or Apple is flat out lying to the FCC"

"Police in Pakistan say they have raided the offices of a private security firm hired by the US embassy in Islamabad. Officials in Pakistan allege that the haul of 61 assault riffles, nine pistols and ammunition were unlicensed."

"Using data from the social network Facebook, they made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person’s online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay. They did this with a software program that looked at the gender and sexuality of a person’s friends and, using statistical analysis, made a prediction. The two students had no way of checking all of their predictions, but based on their own knowledge outside the Facebook world, their computer program appeared quite accurate for men, they said. People may be effectively “outing” themselves just by the virtual company they keep." Cool.

"Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has denied Western claims that Iran intends to develop nuclear arms. "We fundamentally reject nuclear weapons and prohibit the production and the use of nuclear weapons," he said in a speech broadcast on state television." Interesting.

"According to Houston Chronicle blogger Eric Berger, there’s a proposal to remove Neil Armstrong’s name from social studies textbooks." Smack your forehead kids.

"Do you suspect a programmer may have put together the terrible user interface on that “enterprise” software you’re forced to use every day? There are some give-away indicators. Look out for them in your software, hunt down the developer and force them to read a book about user interface design. If you’re suitably senior, force them to a) improve it, or even better b) get someone with real UI experience to fix it."

"First of all let me clarify, that if you are looking for a Symfony, CodeIgniter, CakePHP.. etc article, this is not what you are looking for. In this article you will find small and extra lightweight PHP frameworks that in some cases, can make your life easier. Really."

"Another two US banks have been closed by the federal regulator, taking the total number of American banking failures this year to 94."