The King Of Guys left me a note to wonder why I hadn’t gone to my traditional set of “Red Wings” CSS definitions to celebrate the start of the playoffs and to cheer the Wings on as far as they will go.

Good question. Consider the matter addressed as of right now.

So I’m now told that some people see Tootle as a covert attack on individualism and an attempt to stifle free thought in little children.

I’m shocked. SHOCKED.

King Turd dropped me a line to point out a news story about The Stupidest Woman On Earth.

There have been “complaints” about my descriptions of the upcoming Microsoft-esque array of Creative Suite versions. I still think that distilling it down to nothing more than prices has a certain spartan cachet about it, but the masses appear to be reluctant to share my vision. So – in the spirit of public service (and don’t be expecting this very often) here is a quick look at what the different versions do and what you get for your hard-earned dough:

CS3 Web Standard Edition ($1000): This is pretty much Photoshop CS3 and Acrobat Pro. Photoshop comes out of the box tweaked for web and video – don’t go looking for Pantone swatches or CMYK modes here.

CS3 Web Premium ($1600): The same as web standard with the addition of the web workflow suite and library tools that come with Adobe Bridge. Also adds Camera RAW support for about 140 different digital cameras.

CS3 Design Standard ($1200): Photoshop Extended, InDesign, Acrobat, and Bridge. Heartwarming familiarity for old-school print geeks like me.

CS3 Design Premium ($1800): Adds Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks to the “design standard” package. I have a feeling a lot of shops will buy this just to get Illustrator and end up paying six extra bills for flash and web shit that they don’t want, which is probably Adobe’s whole plan here.

CS3 Production Premium ($1700): This is where the shift in Adobe’s philosiphy starts to hit home – “production” no longer means pre-press, it means video production. This package adds the classic Adobe video tools – Premiere and AfterEffects – to their new Soundbooth audio suite, and tosses in Photoshop and Illustrator. Interestingly, there is no web development stuff in here so if you are doing video for the web, why, step right up and buy two versions. Sneaky bastards.

CS3 Master Collection ($2500): This is pretty much everything. All the print, design, web, and video tools mentioned above in one gigantic release of doom. There is a rumour that it might even include a resurrection of Streamline – something that would make me insanely happy except for the part where it costs a stupid amount of money.

The first thing that you realize here is that InDesign is no longer the star of the show. And yes, I bolded that on purpose – this a huge shift in thinking for Adobe. They obviously feel that electronic media will stomp print media flat during the lifespan of this product and is centering everything around Photoshop Extended, the spiffy new web-n-video-centric version of everyone’s favourite image editing behemoth. InDesign and page layout is now an afterthought – an interesting choice, but perhaps one I wouldn’t have made yet. The last thing Adobe really wants to do is let Quark up off the mat, and if the digital revolution in visual media takes longer than they think … well, that might be the breath of life that the jerks in Denver need.

Stay tuned.

I don’t usually address comments with a new post – it has always been my belief that those sorts of threads should remain anchored to their origin, if for no other reason that to give them some context. Once in a great while, however, a comment provides an insanely awesome launch point for a full post that it would be criminal not to take advantage of the opportunity. For obvious reasons the comment in question must necessarily be insightful, and written by a thoughtful and intelligent reader.

It also helps when they are completely and tragically wrong.

Last week I mentioned Steve Jobs’ “open letter” on music, and applauded his stance that crippling electronic music sales with DRM does nothing to curb piracy and in fact accomplishes nothing beyond creating hassles for the legal music buyer. My man Terry took issue with this, his feeling being that the letter actually said nothing at all because he feels that Jobs knows (and secretly hopes) that the record labels will never agree to give up on DRM. Terry’s main points to support this belief are a supposition that the iTunes DRM gives the iTunes Music Store a captive audience, and an assumption that taking away the DRM would mean that the iTMS would lose vast swaths of market share to plucky little outfits like emusic.

Poor guy – he forgot three crucial things. One: People are stupid. Two: The average mope has simple and unimaginative taste in music. Three: People are stupid. Let’s examine how these basic facts of life pretty much shred both of Terry’s arguments.

Argument #1 – The market share of the iTunes Music Store stems from people being “locked in” via the DRM scheme. This is nonsense. iPod owners don’t stick with the iTunes store because of DRM, they stick with the iTunes store because they are complete morons. When the average mope buys an iPod he uses the iTMS because he already has the interface. Period. Finding another source of legally purchased downloads is too hard for their tiny little user brains. As far as they know, the iTMS is the only solution, because anything else would require them to be capable of actual thought. The simple fact is this: Anyone can load any song you want onto your iPod, whether it originates as a DRM-crippled file from the iTMS or as a clear MP3 / OOG / whatever file from a third party site. But 99.9% of the music buying public doesn’t have the brainpower to do so.

Argument #2 – On a level playing field, services like emusic would chew up the iTunes juggernaut. Er, no. Why? Because the big record labels will never ever go with a small service. Services like emusic will always be the province of interesting and creative independent labels and artists, and the mainstream music buyer wants nothing do do with interesting or creative. They want the mass-market pap that the major labels tell them they are supposed to like. The iTunes music store will never ever be in competition with emusiuc, any more than Fox Television will ever be in competition with The Louvre. I love emusic – so does Terry. But there are 200 million other music consumers that want absolutely nothing to do with it. DRM, no DRM, e-i-e-i-o, doesn’t matter … those people want the safety of major labels and mainstream dreck – the stuff they get at iTunes.

iTunes is entrenched. Period. As long as people continue to buy iPods then they will continue to buy their songs from iTunes. No DRM or lack thereof will change that as long as people are idiots. And believe me, people are idiots.

A more interesting and valid question would have been why movie studio mogul Steve Jobs called for the end of DRM on digital music but didn’t say word one about movies. It would seem that he left himself open to being called a hypocrite here … but Steve is smarter than that. In his letter he mentioned specifically that digital music is already distrubted by the record labels in non-protected form on CDs, and that applying DRM to downloaded music is akin to discriminating against some people. People who buy CDs are in the clear, but people who download get screwed. On the other paw, DVDs are encrypted, and any call for the end of DRM on digital movies would just lead Steve to shrug and say “hey, you get the same treatment if you buy them physically or electronically”. He gave himself an out without having to actually come out and say so.

Clever clever man, that Jobs.

Mean Gene was the first of about 8 people to send me the link to the Associate Press story announcing the “recall” of 3.2 million wrist straps for the Wii controller.

Hot flash the morons at Associated Press: This is not a recall. A recall is where they take the old item away. In this case, Nintendo is just offering a new one for people who happen to be complete fucking morons. You are perfectly free to keep using the old one, which works perfectly well unless you’re an idiot.

Just to make things perfectly clear, there is a link on the new strap order page to a handy on-line tutorial on how not to be one of the aforementioned idiots. Very thoughtful.

Once in a while someone comes up with a Really Good Idea. Capital R, capital G, capital I.

This is one of those times.

Like most ideas of this quality, it is a really simple concept. In one place we have a surplus – and, quite often, one with no real value at all to the current holder – and in one place we have a pressing need. The idea to try and connect the surplus to the need is exceedingly basic … but I certainly never thought of it. Neither did you.

You might have one or two of these devices, and donating them would be a Good Thing. One or two, however, is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. There are marketing and sales drones in your office that probably have a drawer that is damn near overflowing with these things – little sticks of RAM that they have collected from vendors, at conventions, wherever. They have probably never used them, and to be frank, most of them don’t even know how.

Find these people, and either convince them to give up their underused trove, or else distract them with something shiny and empty their drawer when they aren’t looking. EIther way, deserving people win. And big ups to sockmonkey for pointing this out.

Get busy.

There has been a new rash of comment spam plaguing the blogosphere this week. And frankly, it has been horrible. I don’t really know why the people who do this persist, since I have never ever ever seen a spam comment make it to a post with the links and shill content intact. Well, no, I do know why they do it – they have been sucked into “work at home” scams and this is their only hope of getting their investment back. Losers.

The upshot, however, is that many blogs are now getting hundreds of spurious comments a day. This particular blog is one of them, and the downside of it all is that some legitimate comments are being trapped out or (worse) lost in the welter of crap. So if you have commented and you don’t see your deathless prose hitting these pages, many apologies. And please, keep trying. As in all things, this too shall pass.

Eagle-eyed Adam dropped along a note to point out that These Very Pages got cited in the National Post.

Okay, I’m blushing.

JohnJohn wanted me to point out that you don’t have to wait until 2007 to get all of the features of Vista … just get a copy of OSX now. But that would be cruel, so I won’t.

A couple of readers wanted to point out that the program of widespread and systematic spying by the U.S. government on it’s own law-abiding citizens may have a profound effect on journalism down there. Interesting links here and here.

Honestly, they should just scrap the constitution now. It would be less embarrassing that way.

Time to clean out the mail back and pick through the submissions of the huddled masses …

Item 1: As the economy gets tighter and gas prices go ever higher, you may be thinking about alternative ways to increase the contents of your bank account. In that spirit, Big Otto sends along this handy calculator that will estimate the value of your body if you were thinking of, you know, putting it up for sale.

Item 2: Sockmonkey has a link for those of you who feel a need to combine Mother’s Day gifting with the National Sport of South Carolina – official NASCAR-branded slow cookers. No doubt the greens taste better when they’ve been simmered in a crock pot with Tony Stewart’s mug shot pasted on the outside. Frighteningly, I can see these things getting used as centrepieces for fancy family dinners in certain areas south of the Mason-Dixon line. Yikes.

Item 3: You may find the need to be able to tell baby toys from sex toys. OFA has this problem all the time. This quiz will help. Note that the rest of this site is not exactly suitable for surfing at the office. Just saying.

John John wrote to point out that I missed a golden opportunity for joyous sarcasm – he thinks that I should have spoofed the RIM self-gratification site that i referenced in These Very Pages last week. Build a page that looks identical, but with one small change … have Pomp and Circumstance playing in the back ground.

You know what? He’s right. Damn.