With ncftp-3.1.1-1 and earlier versions as well:

> ncftpls -F -1 ftp://208.179.59.17/pub/linux/kernel/people/hedrick/ide-2.2.20/
ncftpls: directory listing error: could not start data transfer.
> 

The problem goes away if you omit the "-1" flag.

The problem is that some FTP server implementors have decided that NLST should
return an error if a directory is empty, rather than returning a success code
and sending no data on the data socket.  This is stupid, because it makes it
impossible for a client to distinguish reliably between a real error retrieving
a directory listing and merely an empty directory listing.

In any case, I will attach a patch to work around this stupid server behavior.