Friday Linkfest

How to go green on a budget - Personally I feel being "green" is mostly marketing hype. Does paying double for a head of lettuce that wasn't sprayed to keep bugs from ravaging the crops save the world?
Supreme court okays price fixing - So retailers can no longer offer discounts on certain products below the manufacturer's suggest price? Another great reason to buy used!
New era for cable subscribers - Regulators now force cable companies to allow you to use your own cable boxes and offer a "CableCard" to insert into them. Possibly worth it? I think you'd have to have the same cable/DVR for a while to break even, and no doubt they will becoming out with newer and better versions every few years. Personally, I prefer to just plug the cable right into my TV, good old analog.
Cellphone company finds profits in latin America - Will their customer service be outsourced to the US staffed by rude Americans with accents they can't understand?
More woes for housing - I'm not expecting housing to recover any time soon. But at least if the value of my house crashes I can dispute my tax appraisal!
Lose your 401k? - A Roth IRA and a traditional IRA fall under the same yearly caps. No 401k available? Options are to work on the side and fund your own as a self-employed individual, invest in other tax-efficient funds, or convince your employer to offer a 401k.
iPod mania spreads across the country - People are lined up outside to get them in my town.
Inflation tame as income, spending miss forecasts - Maybe everyone was saving up for the iPhone?
Why does adoption cost so much? - I've always wondered the same thing, you'd think the government would be happy to offer adoptions for a small administrative cost.
Credit score confusion reigns - You bet it does! The big problem is that the credit bureaus don't list anywhere on their site how to just buy a one time credit score, I'm guessing you have to call up and ask for it directly. If you don't already know they offer it, they don't seem eager to tell you. And Experian/Transunions FICO scores? They offer Vanguard, but they have another score they won't let you get without some product - like "Credit Monitoring" - which is a ripoff (unless you believe you are a victim of identify theft). myFICO.com offers credit monitoring, but their descriptions of what everything includes is completely vague - their "standard" $15 package should just be the scores, but who knows, it doesn't say for sure (and then it says you can "choose" from one of the credit unions, so $15 only gets you one score?). Could they make it any more difficult?