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Comment by axod | Hacker News Reader

Nice article. But did it really need to be delivered to me via flash? :/

Maybe a youtube video of a camera panning over a printed out copy next? Or perhaps a Doom level file where the pages are texture mapped onto the walls.

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To be perfectly honest, either of those options would work better (for me) than Scribd. I use GNU Gnash instead of Adobe's Flash. YouTube works fine, but Scribd doesn't work at all. Doom is also pretty easy to get working, so that would honestly be better.

All in all, I can't read this article, because it's locked up in some proprietary crapware. -1.

you should start a competitor to scribd called doomd that does just that

Does make you wonder - why port PDFs to be cross platform when they already are?

Makes me wonder, why put stuff on the web as PDF's at all. Cross-platform or not, browsers handle HTML much better than they handle Flash or PDF. IMO, PDF only makes sense for e-books, and then only if the book-like formatting is important enough and wouldn't work as a web page.

Because flash is faster, less bloated, and integrates with browsers better than most PDF viewers.

Interesting perspective. As a mostly non-Windows user, I would much rather spawn a lightweight XPDF process than have to deal with the flash plugin not working properly cross-platform.

I guess I'm saying, with PDF I get a choice; with flash, you have to use the official flash player to get most things to work.

No, flash is slower and more bloated. Both of my PDF readers (on mac and ubuntu) work much faster than flash plugins.

But much more importantly, Flash completely ignores every single visual setting I have set up on my PC: from font rendering options to colours and default zooming.

But what's even more important, is WHY THE F... do I need an animation plugin to read goddamn text on the internet?

Also, Websense at work blocks Sribd saying: "ACCESS RESTRICTED - Website categorized as Personal Network Storage"

Can anyone please host the pdf in your server and post a link?

http://indistinct.org/marketing.pdf

Thanks!

I had the same problem, but that url isn't working for me - guess I will have to wait until I get home to read it!!

It should be working now, I had some problems this afternoon while trying to upgrade my gems, turns out that gem tries to load the entire tree into memory before operating. On a slice with only 256MB of ram, it sort of demolished everything. Sorry about that.

Wow, I didn't know anyone was so paranoid about their own employees that they went out of their way to block network storage. Do you work for the DoD or something?

I think websense blocks pretty much anything that looks remotely like you could use it for personal purposes instead of business. They seem pretty harsh.

It's common in places like banks where they need to present at least the illusion that they're doing whatever they can to prevent the flow of confidential information out of the company.

> "ACCESS RESTRICTED - Website categorized as Personal Network Storage"

Translation: "Find a new company to work for."

They should be restricting you from viewing News.YC too ;)

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