This is Phoebe from friends explaining her mothers death:

Blakely saw her best friend get run over by a car at 16 and got a sense of her mortality and used it as a motivating factor in her life. When she was 29 she had only $5,000 in savings and now owns 100% of her billion dollar company today. Her husband says she’s “50% Lucille Ball, 50% Einstein” and Forbes details some of her more eccentric qualities.

She was a contestant on that Richard Branson reality competition show in 2004 that I never saw but whose commercials stuck with me.

In 2008, she married Jesse Itzler. In 2009, she gave birth to their son, but before I say his name, remember that her maiden name + her married name is Sarah Blakley Itzler. Ookay, now: her sons name is Lazer Blake Itzler.

Her husband also owns a part of the Zico coconut water I am constantly guzzling as well as the Sheets caffeine versions of those Listerine strips.

These are, i guess, a kind of Spanx…

These are evidently the rules of Spanx

Read more here.

Cereal maker Kellogg Co has agreed to buy Pringles potato chips from Procter & Gamble Co for $2.7 billion in a cash deal that will nearly triple the cereal maker’s international snack business. Via Reuters:

The transaction will also let household goods maker P&G finally leave the food business after its agreement with Diamond Foods Inc fell apart.

Shares of Kellogg, which is aiming to expand a snack portfolio that already includes Keebler cookies, Cheez-It crackers and Kashi snack bars, rose 6 percent in Wednesday morning trading.

Adding Pringles chips to the mix will increase the size of Kellogg’s snack business to where it will account for as much of total revenue as its well-known cereal business, the world’s largest, with brands like Special K and Rice Krispies.

P&G had agreed to sell Pringles to Diamond Foods Inc last year, but that deal fell apart this month following the discovery of improper accounting that led Diamond to replace its chief executive and finance chief. The U.S. government is looking into Diamond’s accounting practices.

In the midst of the worst economic downturn in U.S. history, President Obama is abolishing the nation’s oldest and most successful program to direct infrastructure spending to minority-owned small businesses, which could cost them between $25 and $50 billion a year. The President has continued to allow billions of dollars a month in federal small business contracts to be diverted into the hands of big businesses. His administration tried to cover up the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants by destroying data in the Federal Procurement Data System such as the “small business flag” and the “parent DUNS number,” that allowed watchdogs like myself, and the media, to monitor the actual recipients of federal small business contracts.

And now, President Obama will reauthorize a Department of Defense program known as the Comprehensive Subcontracting Plan Test Program (CSPTP) that makes it easier for prime contractors to cheat small businesses out of billions. Under the CSPTP, large defense contractors are exempt from reporting their subcontracting actions and also exempt from any penalty of non-compliance with congressionally mandated small business procurement goals.

The idea of the CSPTP is ludicrous.

Small business you say? Why… I have one of those…

But thats not a requirement to see that this is bullshit of the highest order. read the article and weep.

The bottom line here is that in the U.S., small businesses equal jobs. Taxes, on the other hand do not create jobs. But for some reason, the mainstream media seems more concerned with the handful of pennies that the President and Congress are bickering over in payroll tax cuts than the billions of dollars that are diverted away from small businesses by the federal government every month.

I guess we will never see this product realized:

AT&T and T-Mobile called off their $39-billion merger late today, a move that could cost AT&T $4 billion before taxes in cancellation costs, trim revenues for investment banks by $150 million and give Sprint Nextel another shot at becoming a true player in the mobile market.

The AT&T’s purchase of T-Mobile from Germany’s Deutsche Telekom would have made it the nation’s largest cellphone company. AT&T is now the country’s second-largest wireless carrier; T-Mobile is the fourth-largest. But it’s not going to happen because critics said the deal was anti-competitive.

Sprint shares jumped 6%, or 13 cents, to $2.29 because investors bet the company would be better able to compete against AT&T and Verizon Wireless, the joint venture of Verizon Communications and British telecom giant Vodaphone.

In his book Beauty Pays, published by Princeton University Press, he claims good looking people enjoyed perks beyond their pay – such as party invites, business travel and office privileges – while less attractive workers are overlooked and can often be victims of discrimination.

Attractive people are more likely to be happier, earn more money, get a bank loan (with a lower interest rate) and marry equally good looking partners.

As a result, attractive employees are more productive, leading to higher sales and potentially higher profit for themselves or the company they work for.

Less cut and dried is what constitutes attractiveness. Far from being merely in the eye of the beholder, Professor Hamermesh points to a few subconscious factors - such as the symmetry of the face, facial expression and popularity factors (if the person looks like someone popular or famous).

The corporate tax rate is 35%. But an examination of 280 of the nation’s largest corporations suggests that many aren’t paying anything close to that.

The real tax rate paid by a slew of major corporations averages closer to 18.5%, according to a study released Thursday by two liberal tax research groups.

The report issued by Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy paints the corporate tax code as wildly inefficient, filled with loopholes and subject to the influence of lobbyists who carve out special provisions for the companies they represent.

The study looked at 280 companies in the Fortune 500 that were profitable for all three years between 2008 and 2010.

The results: 111 companies paid effective tax rates of less than 17.5% over the three-year period; 98 paid a rate between 17.5% and 30%; and 71 paid more than 30%.

The average rate? 18.5%.

Some companies paid zero. And 30 actually owed less than nothing in income taxes over the three years.

Lower the tax rate and close the loopholes. Problem solved.

Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak reveals a lot in this interview, but his discomfort with Steve Jobs’ profit plan in the beginning days are specially interesting. Not only because it confirms the price hiking profit plan but because it shows that that was the whole idea from day 1.

“Steve had a background working in computer stores buying stuff cheap and selling it for a lot more. I was shocked when he told me how you could buy something for 6 cents knowing he could sell it for 60 bucks. He felt that was normal and right, and I sort of didn’t. How could you do that? I was not for ripping people off. But then we started Apple and I went with the best advice which is that you should make good profit in order to grow.”

It really illustrates how wealth can be created from thin air. Just like that. There’s nothing, and then some sharp mind comes along and turns it into something. and then a bigger something. and then a billion somethings. Pretty awesome.

Woz talks more about his non-profit state of mind vs Jobs’ profit-centric mindset, which is particularly interesting considering Woz was the one with the tech employment and Jobs’ was the one working with plants in a commune.

I never wanted to run a business. I had a perfect job for life at HP. I went to club meetings every week and I passed out my schematics for the Apple I, no copyright, nothing, just “Hey all you guys here is a cheap way to build a computer.” I would demo it on a TV set.

Then Steve Jobs came in from Oregon, and he saw what the club was about, and he saw the interest in my design. I had the only one that was really affordable. Our first idea was just to make printed circuit boards. We could make them for 20 dollars and sell them for 40 or something like that. I had given the schematics away. But Steve thought it could be a company.

This was actually our fifth product together. We always were 50-50 partners. We were best friends. We first did the blue boxes. The next one I did was I saw Pong at a bowling alley so I built my own Pong with 28 chips. I was at HP designing calculators. Steve saw Pong and ran down to Atari and showed it to them and they hired him. Whether thought he had participated in the design, I don’t know and I could not care less. They offered him a job and put him on the night shift. They said he doesn’t get along with people very well, he’s very independent minded. It rubbed against people. So they put him on the night shift alone.

Our next project was when Steve said that Nolan (Bushnell, head of Atari) wanted a one-player game with bricks that you hit out. He said we could get a lot of money if we could design it with very few chips. So we built that one and got paid by Atari.

I’m allegedly related to Nolan Bushnell, though I forget how the family tree works out in that regard since it was explained to me.

Woz was also asked about the legend that Steve Jobs cheated him out of some money in that first computer deal.

The legend is true. It didn’t matter to me. I had a job. Steve needed money to buy into the commune or something. So we made Breakout and it was a half-man-year job but we did it in four days and nights. It was a very clever design.

The next project we did together was we saw a guy using a big teletype machine that cost as much as a car hooked up to a modem dialing in to the Arpanet. You could get into 12 universities and log in as a guest and do things on a far-away computer. This was unbelievable to me. I knew you could call a local time-sharing company. But to get access to university computers was incredible. So I went home and designed one myself. I designed a video terminal that could go out over the modem to Stanford and then on to the Arpanet and bring up a list of university computers.

The far-away computers would talk in letters on my TV set. Instead of paddles and balls in Pong, I put in a character generator. The terminal was very inexpensively designed. We sold it to a company called Call Computer. They now had a cheap terminal. Steve and I split the money.

When the interviewer raised the seemingly odd partnership between the two Steve’s, Woz said they weren’t all that different in his mind.

We were very similar. We would hunt through stores in Berkeley looking for Dylan bootlegs. Steve was interested in computers, and he really wanted to find a way to build a computer out of these new devices called microprocessors. He thought that someday they could replace big computers and everyone could have their own computer relatively cheap. Steve had a background working in computer stores buying stuff cheap and selling it for a lot more. I was shocked when he told me how you could buy something for 6 cents knowing he could sell it for 60 bucks. He felt that was normal and right, and I sort of didn’t. How could you do that? I was not for ripping people off. But then we started Apple and I went with the best advice which is that you should make good profit in order to grow.

Steve was willing to jump right into that. Mike Markkula was the mentor who told Steve what his role would be in Apple, and told me mine. He was the mentor who taught us how to run a company. He’s very low-key. He stays out of the press and he’s not that well-known. But he saw the genius in Steve. The passion, the excitement, the kind of thinking that makes someone a success in the world. He saw that in Steve.

Mike Markkula had worked at Intel in engineering and marketing. He really believed in marketing. He decided that Apple would be a marketing driven company. He was introduced to us by Don Valentine. Don had come to the garage and I ran the Apple II through its paces and he said, “What is the market?” I said, “A million units.” He asked me why that was and I sad, “There’s a million ham radio operators and computers are bigger than ham radio.” We didn’t quite get the formula. Steve Jobs and I had no business experience. We had taken no business classes. We didn’t have savings accounts. We had no bank accounts. I paid cash at my apartment — I had to, because of bounced checks.

Woz left Apple in the mid 80s to start his own company but remained an Apple employee all these years and receives a salary of 200 bucks every two weeks.

It will never happen, but I would like to see him replace Tim Cook (Apple CEO) as the event host rolling out new products. Cook didn’t look like he’s into it or wanted to be there in that role in his first try while Steve Jobs was alive but recently resigned. Woz could do it and could breathe new life into it.

On the Youtube page for the video, user CtrlAltDan says:

“So let me get this straight. Now I have to manage two separate queues on two different websites, my DVD queue won’t tell me when something becomes available on instant, I get two different lines on my CC bill from two different companies, my ratings of a movie on my DVD queue won’t influence recommendations on my instant queue, have to update my CC information in two different places, and keep track of two different logins. On the plus side, I get to pay more!!”

The only part I like about this is the branding, because I have a thing about brand names reflecting their product and “Netflix” never quite fit a DVD by mail service, so I thought it was brilliant when they started the online streaming. It was as if that was the plan all along. hmmm…. But Qwikster? Wtf is that? Netflix = Internet Movies. Qwikster = fast…things. huh? Good thing no one besides me cares.

In an apology video, the founder and some-other-guy say sorry for “the way” they told everyone about the price increases. Super bizarre since no one complained about the delivery – it was the actual price hike that was the problem. This video says that if only they explained it better then it would have gone over better but they still don’t explain anything. They just use vague terms, pretty much saying “this will be a good thing because it’s good. don’t worry about it”. Not helpful.

TheOatmeal sums up the split pretty accurately, but it raises more questions than it answers. It seems obvious to me that there is more going on behind the scenes here, but I don’t know exactly what yet, though here is an interesting theory from Bill Gurley:

So here is what I think happened with Netflix’s recent price change (for the record, I have no inside data here, this is just an educated guess). Netflix has for the past several years been negotiating with Hollywood for the digital rights to stream movies and TV series as a single price subscription to users. Their first few deals were simply $X million dollars for one year of rights to stream this particular library of films. As the years passed, the deals became more elaborate, and the studios began to ask for a % of the revenues. This likely started with a “percentage-rake” type discussion, but then evolved into a simple $/user discussion (just like the cable business). Hollywood wanted a price/month/user.

This is the point where Netflix tried to argue that you should only count users that actually connect digitally and actually watch a film. While they originally offered digital streaming bundled with DVD rental, many of the rural customers likely never actually “connect” to the digital product. This argument may have worked for a while, but eventually Hollywood said, “No way. Here is how it is going to work. You will pay us a $/user/month for anyone that has the ‘right’ to connect to our content – regardless of whether they view it or not.” This was the term that changed Netflix pricing.

With this new term, Netflix could not afford to pay for digital content for someone who wasn’t watching it. This forced the separation, so that the digital business model would exist on it’s own free and clear. Could Netflix have simply paid the digital fee for all its customers (those that watched and not)? One has to believe they modeled this scenario, and it looked worse financially (implied severe gross margin erosion) than the model they chose. It is what it is.

It’s interesting…but if it’s true, why wouldn’t THIS be the content of that lame video above? Why wouldn’t Netflix explain that this is the case so everyone can get pissed off at Hollywood studios instead of porr Netflix trying to meet their demands while continue a great service? Something doesn’t add up here…

Is Blockbuster really the answer? I recieved this mailer yesterday and have been seeing similar ads to this online:

(details of price and services on the other side)

From PRNewswire:

Blockbuster L.L.C. today began rescuing upset Netflix® customers by launching a limited time, nationwide promotion for all Netflix customers who switch to Blockbuster Total Access™.

Blockbuster Total Access provides benefits Netflix doesn’t offer: availability of many new releases 28 days before Netflix; unlimited in-store exchanges; games for XBOX 360®, Playstation3™, and Nintendo Wii™, and no additional charge for Blu-ray™ movies.

As part of Blockbuster’s ongoing efforts to provide the ultimate in convenience, choice and value, Netflix customers who switch to one of Blockbuster’s two most popular Total Access plans will receive a 30-day free trial. After the free trial, customers will continue to receive Total Access for a new everyday price of only $9.99 per month for “1 Disc” at a time or $14.99 per month for “2 Discs” at a time.

“Blockbuster quickly responded to the cries of Netflix customers,” said Michael Kelly, president of Blockbuster. “Blockbuster Total Access is Netflix ‘without the wait.’ The combination of DVDs by mail and unlimited in-store exchanges provides more than 100 million people living near Blockbuster stores immediate convenience and unparalleled choice.”

Many Netflix customers have voiced their frustration about the Netflix price increase on Twitter by posting “Goodbye Netflix, Hello Blockbuster!”

“We find it shocking that anyone would raise rates as high as 60 percent,” Kelly added. “In contrast, Blockbuster has worked hard over the past few months to deliver value in entertainment to consumers in this economy and has even reduced in-store movie rentals to as low as 49 cents.”

This special offer for Netflix customers is available through Sept. 15, 2011, in participating stores and at Blockbuster’s website.