

"Whale Fail" - Google Books' Error Page - hornokplease
http://books.google.com/googlebooks/error.html

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jarin
It's interesting that the whale is becoming the international symbol of
"fail". I fully expect Greenpeace to get up in arms about it.

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duck
I've seen a 25' Baleen whale dead in a river up in Alaska and I can safety say
that a dead whale is about as big of a fail as you will ever see. I might have
missed the birds carrying it there, but when I saw it they were snacking on
him.

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run4yourlives
I hate to say it, but I think hackernews has officially jumped the shark. :-(

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dschobel
You have two options-- you can submit great stories or you can complain.

Choose wisely.

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run4yourlives
...or I can find somewhere else to spend my time. :-)

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mahmud
scholar.google.com

Citations == Upvotes, Abstract == TLDR, and content is far, far more superior.

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dgallagher
SuperNews! did an awesome parody of Twitter and their Fail Whale (4:28 long):
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN2HAroA12w>

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avgarrison
that was four minutes and twenty eight seconds of pure enjoyment.

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mikecane
I am more prone to seeing that damned "I'm Sorry..." but we think you're a bot
or some dick sending automated queries and now we are killing your access for
24-72 hours.

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Raphael
Seriously. Excuse me for enjoying the service so much that I make dozens of
quirky queries.

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mikecane
See below. There's been a fix.

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Amnon
Turns out the page is a reference to a certain Fail Whale --
<http://www.whatisfailwhale.info/>.

The thing that's bothering me about the fail whale -- all the strings that
hold the whale are curved. Is this physically possible? (Assuming the birds
can hold the whale in the air). Shouldn't at least one of the strings be a
straight line?

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mansr
If the strings have any mass of their own, they will be curved.

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StavrosK
Not if their starting point is directly above their ending point and there's
no wind...

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hugh3
Their starting point obviously isn't above their ending point, though.

mansr is right, I've been looking at this all wrong because I assumed the
weight of the strings was small compared to the weight of the whale. But if
the strings are dense they will curve under their own weight. So we're not
looking at a super-light whale, we're looking a regular whale supported by
super-heavy strings.

(Where do you get strings so dense that the mass of a short stretch is
comparable to the mass of a whale? Why, the same place you get those goddamn
birds, of course.)

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aresant
Don't miss the original Fail Whale artist's page - <http://www.yiyinglu.com/>

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rflrob
You'd think for a Books fail, one might have had the whale be white. Even
better if you have Ahab attached to it with a harpoon, but that might be a
little grisly for an error page.

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ronnoch
Humorous, sure, but I wonder what percentage of Google Books users will get
the reference. If I didn't know about Twitter's fail whale, "Whale Fail" might
seem totally random.

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ComputerGuru
The rest will simply laugh at the Herman Melville reference.

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alanh
No, it doesn’t make sense, even if you are familiar with Moby Dick. How is the
whale failing? How is there _any_ “fail” associated with the whale? The
wording _only_ makes sense if you are already familiar with the Fail Whale
meme.

 _Edit:_ Thanks for pointing out the color of the whale. That does make more
sense. But still, I object to the unprofessional and derivative wording.
Having _any_ sort of whale on an error page is homage enough, without beating
anyone over the head with it or confusing people. “We’re having trouble
locating that <del>whale</del> <ins>book</ins>” would make more sense, IMO.

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hugh3
Note the colour of the whale and the dejected expression on Ahab's shoulders.

"Not another fricking black whale", he's saying. "Whale fail!"

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catshirt
fwiw, even the term "fail" alone is still pretty subcultural. i don't entirely
agree with alanh, but they are definitely right that many of those who
understand the reference are letting their understanding blind them.

this type of blindness is rabidly (albeit understandably) common among
technology companies in general. given that that Google reaches _all_ types of
users and an error page is meant to inform, i'm not sure the reference is
worth the risk.

that all said, i personally find the reference obvious, thus boring. but
that's just my opinion. :)

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hugh3
_fwiw, even the term "fail" alone is still pretty subcultural. i don't
entirely agree with alanh, but they are definitely right that many of those
who understand the reference are letting their understanding blind them._

Sure, but it's not necessary to fully understand the page in order to get the
message. An error occurred. Why is there a whale involved? Who cares?

The only people I can imagine who _might_ get confused are people who
encounter this while trying to read Moby Dick.

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catshirt
i never suggested the reference was detrimental to the page, but it is a risk.
proven even just by the fact that it's debatable. it is an error page; the
person likely got here because they are confused in the first place. this is
especially notable given the huge spectrum of Google's audience.

i don't feel strongly either way on the execution. however, i do feel strongly
that it would be negligent for the deciding party to not _at least recognize_
that it is a risk.

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protomyth
I wonder if someone will raise a fuss over the harpoon? It would actually not
surprise me.

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naithemilkman
google is so going to buy twitter.

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drivebyacct2
No.

