stlplace

Today Xerox announced a $6.4 billion deal to buy BPO (short for busines process outsourcing, basically IT service) company Affiliate Computer Services (NYSE:ACS), refer to this MarketWatch article for more details.
Both companies are not new to me, because I know Xerox (Palo Alto Research Center, Wiki entry, PARC own web site) invented the computer […]

Went to St. John’s Mercy hospital last week, accompanying my wife for the baby ultrasound thing. I am familar with St. John’s because I went there couple times before (once was I hurt myself during roller blade skating, and I had to get two stitches there).
As I said in my previous healthcare reform post, 10 […]

VHS:blockbuster vs. DVD:Netflix
This is the GRE (Graduate Record Exam) analogy I would use for movie rental companies Blockbuster (NYSE:BBI) and Netflix (Nasdaq:NFLX). The popularity of VHS tape made the success of Blockbuster, as I read from Wiki, the first Blockbuster movie rental store was established in Dallas in 1985 (24 years ago). By similar token, […]

I started Financial Times subscription this week. Last week, I took advantage an offer (or a bait) of $49 for 6 months subscription. I have subscribed and read FT in the past (a few years ago when I did not know much about finance). The main reason is my WSJ and Barrons subscription are expiring, […]

I read two news this week, which makes me think this is coming. Keep in mind many local governments are upside down in terms of budget and debts, any tax revenue helps. Collecting tax revenue from online merchants in remote places like Seattle (HQ of Amazon) is a convenient choice.
Expedia (Nasdaq: EXPE) tax lawsuit (source: […]

Yesterday President Obama announced he is going to support the Tobacco bill (details by AP). Ironically the President was (is?) a smoker himself.

This is a good thing, right? Put Cigarettes in the hands of FDA will streamline the regulations, and hopefully fewer young people will smoke the cigarettes in the future. But wait a minute, […]

For some of the auto dealers in this country. I know this title is a bit misleading, but it’s no worse than those “attention getting” balloons flying outside of car dealerships

Seriously, this is tough time for many Chrysler (Jeep, Dodge), and GM (Chevrolet, Buick, GMAC, Pontiac, Cadillac) dealers, whose franchise are taken […]

I remember a few years ago Warren expressed his dismal view on Newspapers future (in his annual shareholder letter). A few days ago Redstone (the controlling shareholder of CBS and Viacom) said something similar in an interview.
“The reason we have not gone to newspapers is because its a slow growth industry and I think […]

(Update 23Apr09) It seems Obama administration is going to make credit card more consumer friendly (marketWatch). So are they going to socialize the credit card: I mean, you and me (i.e., honest guys) pay the credit cards on time each month, will bail out the deadbeats, after we bailed out the Wall Street ??? We […]

Chinese solar stocks are on the fire these days, mostly due to the Chinese goverment subsidy news (like this one). For me, this solar thing is ONS, not for long term investments at this time. The most worrisome thing for solar, is not the over-supply (competition), is not the volatility of raw material cost (as […]