To someone that just reads the Fellowship, or the whole series for that matter, because they've heard about how great it is without knowing why is set up for this kind of impression.
The first time I attempted Fellowship I just couldn't get through it. It has a lot to do with the setting of the story, the development of the characters and their quirks, mindset, etc. The Character development done in the series is some of the best I've ever read. Unfortunately, that means that there are some places that aren't going to be as fast-paced as most of us in this generation would like.
When I think back over the main plot and storyline of the series it's actually fairly simple, but all of the subplots, character development and history really provide a depth that's not present in many other works of literature. Once you see it as a whole it really shows all of the effort Tolkien put into his works.
If you want something boring read "The Simarillion" (sp?) That stuff is pretty dry, but shows the lengths Tolkien went to in creating an entire world with history, etc.
I decided to go with norse gods. I have Thor and Odin of course, then Baldur, Vali, Fenris (the wolf, not exactly a god.) We had Freya at one time also. The problem with this -- Not very many people are familiar or can even spell or pronounce some of the lesser known (Baldur, Vali, etc.) Also had the NT domain here called Valhalla. Had lots of trouble with people misspelling that one too.
While I agree that computers could be improved upon, I have a problem with the whole analogy of the "can of soda" and why we shouldn't have to name things.
We do name everything in life. Call it what you want, but the object used for your analogy was named, labeled or referred-to as "can of soda", "can",etc.
The point here is that YOU may not need a label, name, or designation to know what to do with the can, but in communicating with some other entity (the Slashdot readers in this case) you do.
Why should naming things to communicate your desires to the computer be any different? When you wish someone else to know what you are talking about, you give the names of objects, you describe actions, locations, properties of the objects to get someone else to understand. The english language have nouns for this purpose. "Please hand me the soda can I just set on the desk" gives me information regarding a designation --"soda can", a location -- "on the desk", and a time reference -- "just."
I don't see anything wrong with giving files or whatever some sort of designation so we can communicate to the computer or any other "entity" (I use the term loosely) what we are referencing. Maybe we could improve the computer by enhancing the way we reference a file to give location (maybe 3D), time references, object type, ? All of these things are stored now, of course, but we usually don't have the computer find the file with all of these attributes at once.
The bottom line -- until thought-reading is done by computers, we will always have to reference objects somehow.
Slashdot Mirror
To someone that just reads the Fellowship, or the whole series for that matter, because they've heard about how great it is without knowing why is set up for this kind of impression.
The first time I attempted Fellowship I just couldn't get through it. It has a lot to do with the setting of the story, the development of the characters and their quirks, mindset, etc. The Character development done in the series is some of the best I've ever read. Unfortunately, that means that there are some places that aren't going to be as fast-paced as most of us in this generation would like.
When I think back over the main plot and storyline of the series it's actually fairly simple, but all of the subplots, character development and history really provide a depth that's not present in many other works of literature. Once you see it as a whole it really shows all of the effort Tolkien put into his works.
If you want something boring read "The Simarillion" (sp?) That stuff is pretty dry, but shows the lengths Tolkien went to in creating an entire world with history, etc.
I decided to go with norse gods. I have Thor and Odin of course, then Baldur, Vali, Fenris (the wolf, not exactly a god.) We had Freya at one time also. The problem with this -- Not very many people are familiar or can even spell or pronounce some of the lesser known (Baldur, Vali, etc.) Also had the NT domain here called Valhalla. Had lots of trouble with people misspelling that one too.
While I agree that computers could be improved upon, I have a problem with the whole analogy of the "can of soda" and why we shouldn't have to name things.
We do name everything in life. Call it what you want, but the object used for your analogy was named, labeled or referred-to as "can of soda", "can" ,etc.
The point here is that YOU may not need a label, name, or designation to know what to do with the can, but in communicating with some other entity (the Slashdot readers in this case) you do.
Why should naming things to communicate your desires to the computer be any different? When you wish someone else to know what you are talking about, you give the names of objects, you describe actions, locations, properties of the objects to get someone else to understand. The english language have nouns for this purpose. "Please hand me the soda can I just set on the desk" gives me information regarding a designation --"soda can", a location -- "on the desk", and a time reference -- "just."
I don't see anything wrong with giving files or whatever some sort of designation so we can communicate to the computer or any other "entity" (I use the term loosely) what we are referencing. Maybe we could improve the computer by enhancing the way we reference a file to give location (maybe 3D), time references, object type, ? All of these things are stored now, of course, but we usually don't have the computer find the file with all of these attributes at once.
The bottom line -- until thought-reading is done by computers, we will always have to reference objects somehow.