That bug has been opened on https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/evince/+bug/47201

"I've tried to open a PDF file located on an FTP server and Evince stalls when opening the file. I can see that the file is never downloaded from the server.

I found a file to test with at ftp://www.tug.org//tex-archive/dviware/dvipdfm/dvipdfm.pdf

In my tests on Dapper, evince downloaded the file nearly every time out of the 20 - 30 I tried, but in about 3 cases it failed. It crashed once with a BadAtom message, another it just hung and needed to force quit and another time it never displayed a login dialog and ethereal showed me it never got past ACKing the 220 server message.

john@seiza:~$ evince ftp://www.tug.org//tex-archive/dviware/dvipdfm/dvipdfm.pdf
Xlib: unexpected async reply (sequence 0x114)!
The program 'evince' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadAtom (invalid Atom parameter)'.
  (Details: serial 2408 error_code 5 request_code 20 minor_code 0)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

I wouldn't consider this a confirmation myself. More people should test this.

just run: evince ftp://www.tug.org//tex-archive/dviware/dvipdfm/dvipdfm.pdf"