Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s Weasels Ripped My Flesh is one of rock’s all-time great album covers. Zappa ripped off the idea from this Man’s Life 1956 pulp-mag cover. Here is the story behind its conception (keep scrolling down) and an analysis of the cover. (Yes, dear, I was on FilePile again)
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I had a nice pig-in-shit moment reading the recent Metafilter thread on ASCII text. Want a primer on ASCII text? Check out these links:
Men’s fashion basics, from the excellent The Morning News:
And via the Morning News, for future reference: classic tie knots.
Fun with Google over yonder on Metafilter. (Thanks, Ron)
BusinessWeek: The Battle of the Online Content Models. Good summary of the NYT and WSJ revenue models.
At Fred’s at Barney’s, a restaurant in a department store at 61st and Madison in New York City, on Saturday afternoon, over lunch, gawking along with the rest of the tables in the northern half of the restaurant:
At Fred’s at Barney’s, a restaurant in a department store at 61st and Madison in New York City, on Saturday afternoon, over lunch, gawking along with the rest of the tables in the northern half of the restaurant: Renee Zellweger, seated with friends at a table for eight, looking cute and scarily thin; soon joined by Matthew Perry and Matt LeBlanc, tan and goateed, respectively, and both handsome and friendly; and, shortly following LeBlanc’s departure, Courteney Cox Arquette, followed by Jennifer Aniston, which finally made me crane my neck with the rest of the crowd, because they are indeed as beautiful in person as most Americans imagine they would be, Jennifer in particular, as befits her status as one of the country’s cherished faces, even when she’s a little puffy-eyed and casual, like she was at that moment.
We left without seeing whether Brad Pitt showed up.
ReplayTV has been ordered to spy on its customers. I’m all for maintaining copyright and allowing the entertainment industry to preserve its product, but using
“Newspapers cannot be defined by the second word—paper. They’ve got to be defined by the first—news. All of us have to become agnostic as to the method of distribution. We’ve got to be as powerful online, as powerful in TV and broadcasting, as
Question: Why do I have such little faith in the average Web site that I need to rely on Google to find simple search results?
Just installed BBEdit 6.5.2 on my Macintosh at work. On first run, I received a warning message that I needed CarbonLib 1.4 or later to run the latest BBEdit. (Why this is so, and what CarbonLib is, are issues I am unable to answer, but I digress.)
So I went to Google. Not Apple’s Web site, but Google. And it was a cinch.
Question: Why do I have such little faith in the average Web site that I need to rely on Google to find simple search results?
Google makes it so easy. In order:
1. On google.com, search for “carbonlib 1.4.” The top search result was for Apple’s CarbonLib 1.5 update.
2. Click through to Apple’s site, download, and done.
I hadn’t even tried Apple’s site when I Googled my query, because I figured Google would do it right. Indeed, they did, and Apple made a mess of things. Here is how apple.com handled the same scenario:
1. “Carbonlib 1.4” search results page shows listings for Age of Empires II, DeBabelizer Pro 5, Black White, Championship Manager, CronniX, Liquid Ledger 1.0.1, Sockho Stock Watcher, Loan Calc X, QuickMovie 1.4, Photo to Web.
2. Fresh search for “carbonlib 1.4 update.” Similar results.
3. Fresh search for “carbonlib 1.4 system,” playing off the Mac’s system folder requirements. (Remember, I don’t know what CarbonLib is.) Nothing.
4. Click on Support tab.
5. Click on Downloads tab within Support. This was a lucky discovery; I was ready to search support for CarbonLib, which I suspect wouldn’t have given me the right leads.
6. Search for “carbonlib 1.4” in Apple’s “search for downloads” box. Results: No documents were found.
7. Change “search type” on the dead results page from “software downloads” to “smart search” and try again. First result is an AppleWorks troubleshooting document that mentions installing CarbonLib 1.4, so I click on its link.
8. On that page is a link to “install CarbonLib 1.4 or later.” Clicked on that link.
9. Busted link. Search interrupted.
10. I give up.
Let’s review. A third-party search engine outperforms the site offering the download to the extent that I would sooner go to the third party than the source, even though I know exactly what I need and from where I have to get it. Why is this so?
This is a terrible state of affairs for the user. Google is revered because it does such a good job, which is great. But how come Google can find me a Web page on Apple’s site easier and more smoothly than Apple can? How often does this have to occur before Apple, and similar consumer sites, begin to suffer as a result?
Observed outside Pick-a-Bagel on 57th and 6th, Manhattan, 9:01 a.m.
The players: A middle-aged woman, nicely dressed and in good spirits, and her companion (probably her husband), talking to two uniformed policemen.
The woman seemed pleased with herself and the cops, which was striking, considering most people talking to the police are in a state of distress.
One of the policemen spoke into his two-way radio:
“Request location: N-B-C Studios.”