installing 'ack' and terminal help

hey everyone, i'm not totally sure this question fits here but i'm not sure where else to go at the moment. i'm trying to install ack: http://petdance.com/ack/ but the instructions on the site aren't working:

Code:

curl http://ack.googlecode.com/svn/tags/latest/ack-standalone > ~/bin/ack && chmod 0755 !$ 

at work today i asked a linux guy for help to install it on my work machine, but i'm not totally sure how he did it and i can't recreate what he did at home now. i get the gist of what is supposed to be happening but no matter what directory i put as the target path it says either "No such file or directory" or "Permission denied." i've tried /bin, /usr/local/bin, /usr/bin, and created a directory /usr/local/ack but it still won't DL. i'm sure i'm missing something simple about terminal/unix but i've been trying to figure this out for hours (including last night) and google is no help. i appreciate any help, even if it's a pointer to material to read.
thanks,
joe