Die, Scribd. Die.
wdr1.com
wdr1.com
The author's argument is ff scribd is a service to host files then do it - host the files, don't convert them to an inferior format. Heck instead of iPaper why not just convert them to PDF to begin with and save the intermediary.
See how ridiculous that sounds?
Also, Scribd doesn't just host pdf files, they host others too. If you had to write software to translate multiple source languages to one language, would you compile down to a language you control every aspect of (ipaper) or one you do not control (pdf)?
Awesome you waited all this time to comment on a post, just to not argue the authors point? I read the article it never seemed to argue the point of the service its whole point was about the necessity of changing file formats. Nice Red Herring, you're even getting points for it.
It compliments the files... not replacing the format or w/e the argument here was.
I like to post videos to youtube, as do millions of other people do, to share with other people in a quick and easy way. If it was meant to be downloaded I would of hosted the file and done both. They both serve different purposes.
At the same time the proprietary nature of the formats are expect if these companies are ever going to make money. Apparently that's been a problem for these companies.
Anyway, lets not take an angry rant too seriously.
That's the problem. The original author/publisher DID mean to have the PDF downloadable, and people posting to HN DID mean to link to that PDF.
HN/Scribd throw themselves into the middle of that. They redirect you to their online version, and ask you to register before you can download. It's annoying and not what people want.
Scribd is pretty nice, I like it. But the autolinking at HN is a bum idea.
http://notes-from-a-sticky-wicket.blogspot.com/2007/12/scrib...
Perhaps your users should get a browser that supports plugins to allow in-browser viewing of PDF. Then again, since _all_ browsers support these plugins and even ie/windows users can get a good pdf handler like foxit I really don't see why you would want to use scribd.
Its a business application. All my users still use IE6. Nothing like enterprise IT.
I've managed to convince 5 of them to FF3 at a meeting yesterday.
I'll try to counter the rant with one of my top reasons Scribd should not die:
Have you ever been to a corporate site that has loads of links to Microsoft Office documents? (Ex: http://www.humanrights.coe.int/equality/Eng/WordDocs/Documen... ) I have, and it's such a pain to have to download and open the documents manually. Then I also have the documents that I downloaded cluttering up my hard drive - when all I wanted to do was take a quick look at it. So I find myself not even bothering with the Office documents - which I'm sure is not what the company trying to promote themselves wants. If you look at http://www.scribd.com/platform/documentation - you'll see Scribd has provided a solution to this problem with their QuickSwitch service. Once this is used, all of those proprietary format documents on the site are 'magically' converted into standard formats you can view easily: pdf and flash. Nice.
No, the author wants a service that converts from open and easily readable formats like HTML, Office and PDF into hard-to-use junk format of Flash, partly because it doesn't do select/copy/paste via browser and re-implements the wheel in process and he wants it to die because it's a fucking pain whenever someone sends you a link to THAT as opposed to a normal HTML page or a more consumable PDF/doc/etc.
They should have written a high-quality converter of "everything-to-HTML". I haven't seen a single Scribd "document" that couldn't benefit from being a normal HTML.
I don't touch Scribd links. Reading text in Flash it's not convenient, it's slow and plain moronic: it's like filming a video of a page and uploading it to youtube (analogy not mine).
Yes, I want them to die too, because I see Flash as a proprietary and badly implemented anchor that's pulling us back, into "platform" days, when instead of developing software for people you had to "target a platform". I want no freaking "platforms" from nobody.
I am happy Apple doesn't put this plague on their phone.
There are startups that change the world, make it better. Then there are those that simply make money without doing anything impressive, just helping people out here and there. But then there are companies that try to profit at someone else's expense, and Scribd is one of them - Scribd is clearly in Adobe's army of flash developers, and they're looking to ruin the web for all of us, because they're imposing "Adobe tax" on everything web-connected: crawlers need to understand that junk, new hardware needs to have a "player" for it, new browsers, new OS'es, etc.
Fuck Scribd.
You can't do that with acrobar reader.
Personally, the only problem I have with scribd is the use of Flash. I think I would actually use the site if it presented pdfs using javascript and images, much like Google books. You could still search the book, just as Google books does, because it searches the text on the server side and returns images of the pages with highlighted text. I think this does add something new to PDF in that it makes it possible to share a book online without allowing easy download if there is interest in doing that.