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EG8 Publishes Report In Noninteractive, Nonquotable Format
pbahra writes "You could not come up with a better illustration of the clash of cultures that was the eG8 than the post-forum report. Was the output of the two-day gathering in Paris published on a website so people could link to it? Or perhaps a blog so that people could comment on it? Or even a wiki, so the people who attended could contribute and correct mistakes? No it wasn't. The report is a book. Or rather it is an eBook. Except it isn't even an eBook, in the sense of something that you can read on your Kindle or other eBook reader. It's actually a Flash-based page turner, the sort of thing that was all the rage five years ago. It is a digital facsimile of a book. It is the triumph of design over access. Being Flash, you can't even cut and paste what is in the file. And being Flash it gives complete and total control to the authors. As a user all you get to do is to read it, in exactly the way the authors want you to. It looks good, but you can't do anything with it, except what the authors tell you to do. Metaphor anyone?"
You could always click on the 'Download' button and save as a PDF document - then you can do as you want with it.
Admittedly a blog or wiki would, perhaps, be nicer to use.
If they had comments, they'd have to hire fifty people just to moderate the Obama Kenyan Birth Certificate posts, anti-NWO posts, anti-ZOG posts, anti-TACMAR posts, Black Helicopters posts, anti-globalization posts, anti-Bilderberger posts, anti-Zeta Reticulan reptoid posts, anti Trilateral Commission posts...
It should still be quotable, though. Then again, did this organization produce anything worthy of quotation?
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
The first person to boast that they can read the report on their Xoom will Win The Thread, but probably lose the war.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Google tells me it is some sort of governmental meeting about the internet.
http://www.eg8forum.com/en/
Could the summary not have expended a sentence about this?
Actually, on top of the flash, there is a picture of a floppy disk (who remembers those?). Clicking that lets you save the contents as a pdf, but you still need the flash plugin to "download" it.
If you turn off JavaScript and load the page, you get a big Adobe ad for Flash, followed by a long bullet list of links to HTML pages of plain text. The plain text is all there, but the links to the pictures and video are not.
I can only smile a little. There was a time when if a journalist wish to use a quote from a speech or a report, he or she would copy it out by hand, on notepads or (as a later terrific innovation) using a typewriter. Now, all the bloggers complain "I can't sweep my mouse/trackpad cursor over it and just copy and paste it - what shall I do, what shall I do!"
-- Perhaps I see less than some, but more than many.
According to the webpage of the vendor "all text is available in both flash and HTML formats" so that search engines can find it. Spoofing your browser ID to the googlebot might get you something of greater use.
Also, according to the sourcecode of the page, it does a check for mobile browsers and just drops the PDF directly on them, without trying flash(because, after all, dubiously-reflowable PDFs are far superior to HTML on tiny little screens. Spoofing a mobile browser ID should net you the PDF without the flash, in any case.
So I downloaded it, and then ran pdftotext on it. http://pastebin.com/gXqKceEZ No story here. Just a rant from Ben Rooney. He'll feel like an idiot when he realizes its just a PDF.
He probably already realises that it's a PDF, because he even states that iPad users see a 76-page PDF if they go to the site, as if that's somehow a bad thing. Oh no! The bad people published it in a DRM-free, ISO-specified, format with multiple independently implemented readers!
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I have worked on page turner style flash projects before. They were requested and I built them. The recipients loved them.
And the reason they loved them is very simple. They didn't get computers and they couldn't figure out how to make other people get computers. They would never trust someone with experience in the field because these were PR people that know everything they need to know about everything.
The page turner looked like a magazine or newspaper to them. That meant they could understand it. They didn't think about things like linking or accessing them from a plethora of devices because they didn't have to do that with the printed materials they will hold onto til their last breath. It fit their limited notion of how information could be presented to audiences.
I am not saying that is what happened here. But, if there was a PR firm involved, my first guess would be they are the main reason this happened.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
Disregard my rant. I didn't RTFA. The report is available in searchable, highlightable PDF right on the page. PDF isn't the perfect option but on my comp it is only one command away from plaintext.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg