Looking to spend $3,999 on a painting of recently-deceased hellraiser Andrew Breitbart in a coat of armor? May want to rethink that decision, based on this allegation that the armor is actually copied from an Assassin’s Creed video game. (So in other words, this story, in reverse.) Oops.
So will you pay $500 for this Harry Potter Blu-ray bundle? We’ll admit, it’s certainly cooler than your standard Blu-ray packaging. But five hundred dollars? That seems a bit steep to us. source
» To put this in perspective: If you hop on your iPhone and reload this page roughly 80 times, that’s about a megabyte. If you hop on Pandora and listen to half of a two-minute Ramones song, that’s about a megabyte. When AT&T implemented its capped data plan a year ago, many people were upset about the 2 gig data cap for $25 dollars. Doing the math, that plan is roughly 82 megabytes per dollar. If the half-Euro-per-megabyte roaming price cuts in Europe take hold, those 82 megabytes would cost around $59 U.S. dollars, considering current exchange rates. Now multiply that by 25. Exactly our point.
» A fight that directly affects small businesses: We’ve been to many small businesses in our day that have gone out of their way to avoid using debit cards, specifically for this reason. We’re with them in this case; really high charges for every purchase, even tiny ones, is straight up greedy. Fortunately, a key senator, Dick Durbin, agrees with us: ”Honestly, are we going to stand here and say we can’t protect small businesses across America struggling to survive?” The fight for keeping the fees has bipartisan support; the main guys backing banks in the Senate are Bob Corker (R-TN) and Jon Tester (D-MT). They claim that banks will have to replace the interchange charges with higher fees on consumers. Maybe they should; the benefit to small business as an economic driver makes it worth it.
» Why this is a big deal: Two reasons. First of all, the intelligence spending numbers were never reported during the most recent Bush Administration – this is the first time we’ve gotten new numbers here in nearly a decade. Secondly, the intelligence budget has effectively doubled in the ten years – which makes sense if, you know, you account for 9/11 happening in the meantime. If you’re a high-spending government looking for something to cut to correct years of fiscal irresponsibility, though, this might be a good spot to look.
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