Chan's Personal Blog

Just when you thought the Yahoo/Microsoft merger was over, a new menace has emerged. Activist/Corproate Raider Carl Icahn has thrown his hat into the ring, and is declaring war on the Yahoo board of directors. For those unfamiliar with Icahn, he's a billionaire investor who buys up shares of struggling companies, and install directors to do his bidding. Recently he installed a puppet regime in BEA Systems (who didn't want to merge with Oracle), and steered the company towards the merger.

Here's an article from TheStreet.com entitled, "Icahn Targets Yahoo! Board of Directors."


Basically how this works is, he'll propose his directors, and if shareholders hold his view, they'll elect his directors onto the board. The more of them he has on the Yahoo! board of directors, the bigger the pain in the butt he can be. Some of the things he can do can include forcing Yahoo! to reopen talks to Microsoft, or even get the CEO/Founder fired.

More coverage at Silicon Alley Insider.

I came across this really neat flash game called Ayiti: The Cost of Life. It's a game where you take control of a rural family of five living in Haiti. The object of the game is to acquire education, health, money, and happiness.

It's kind of an eye opener of how difficult life is for the poor, as every move you make is a huge tradeoff. For example, sending kids to school is quite the trade-off. They could have helped work to bring in cash, but instead they're off to school. Sure, they'll get a better career in the future and bring in more money; however, that's a long-term investment, and very tough to do if you don't have a lot of money. So, maybe we could send the whole family to work. Well, with not a lot of education, that means working at risky jobs where people can get hurt. An injury or sickness means a trip to the hospital which can be quite expensive.

The game's also kind of neat, in that you can buy different things for your house to improve the quality of life of your family. Running water is quite the luxury that I haven't managed to get yet.

Nature also plays a very expensive role. Every year, there's hurricane season, and if you don't spend money preparing for the hurricane, nature can destroy your house and throw you into huge debt.

Life kind of sucks eh?

In either case, my high score has been, all 5 members of the family surviving, with 5 diplomas, and a chicken on the farm. I'm not exactly sure how anyone can afford a computer in the game.

Anyway, very educational game, and pretty fun. I've wasted 1.5 hours on this game so far. Maybe next time I should try sacrificing the kids... they cost too much money to maintain j/k.

We've got some late breaking news. The Microsoft-Yahoo deal has collapsed and Microsoft is withdrawing its bid, and will not go hostile against Yahoo. The Silicon Valley Insider has full coverage.


Click on the article above to view Steve Ballmer's letter to Jerry Yang. Some open questions remain. First, people are wondering how much Yahoo's stock is going to drop when Monday comes, and the stock markets open. The other is, will Microsoft return again in the future to try to buy Yahoo again. Last year, there were private negotiations between Yahoo and Microsoft about a potential merger, but it went nowhere.

The New York Times has an article entitled, "Guessing Yahoo’s Opening Stock Price.