• Microsoft "blogger" Todd Bishop at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer rounds up some reactions.
• Howard positive/negative on the deal.
• Fred Wilson stands by the comment  "[he] made on this when the news of discussions first broke that the valuation of this deal is irrelevant."
• Of course as GigaOm points out, who needs Facebook the way MSFT is apparently doing anyway.

Idea-a-Palooza

• Contrary Canary with a bevy of IBD charts and a thought I totally agree with. Elevated volatility making option purchases tough here.
• Uglychart on Vonage (VG).
• Great tool here via Schaefers, just enter a symbol and you can see the history of put/call open interest ratios in the name. Hat tip bzb trader.

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• Barry on the path to $92 oil.
• $90 the base now, says Stocktube.
• Just an aside, but if I had a dollar for every time the TV tells me the "market is higher, despite higher oil.... "  Um,run a chart, they've been doing this for a while now

Run for the Border

• As Darren Rovell notes, "a World Series game broke out in the middle of a Taco Bell commercial last night. "
• In case you missed it, Jacoby Ellsbury had what has to go down as the second most famous stolen base in Fenway history, and now we all get free tacos from Taco Bell. On October 30th. Between 2 pm and 5 pm.
• And of course he has a new name, "Tacoby Shellsbury" as per Awful Announcing.
• Was Royce Clayton on the Taco Bell payroll? You can be the judge from this clip courtesy of Todd at ValuePlays. I'm going to say yes on the thougt that I can't think of any other reason he is in the Red Sox dugout.
• So how much was all this face time worth to Taco Bell? About $8 million according to Eric Wright of Joyce Julius & Associates, a sponsorship research firm (as per Rovell).
• Great segue incidentally between a glorified infomercial with the Taco Bell CEO in the middle of the 5th inning and a return to the actual game. "From shilling to Schilling" said Joe Buck.