The parent is not a troll, it's is a very valid comment. LotR is a very influential book, it's very evocative and detailed, and also immensely exciting at times, but it is not a great work of literature. I've read it five or six times (every two years or so since I was 14) but never without skipping.
LotR contains a great many dull fragments, even in the first (and best) volume (book one and two). Book three and five (the non-frodo books)are the worst of the bunch in this respect - they should have been cut down to 2/3 of their size. And I have not even mentioned all the awful songs in the book.
Also, LotT has deservedly been criticized for being very conservative. Tolkien's admiration for fixed social hierachies is obvious from LotR, and the subservient attitude of Sam for instance is more than I can stomach at times. (Yes I know it's supposed to be an old-fashioned epic, but I find it hard to admire a book that propagates values that I cannot respect.)
For your reading pleasure, the worst fragment of the worst chapter (The Houses of Healing) of the worst book (Book 5, first book of The Return of the King).
Then an old wife, Ioreth, the eldest of the women who served in that house, looking on the fair face of Faramir, wept, for all the people loved him. And she said: 'Alas! if he should die. Would that there were kings in Gondor, as there were once upon a time, they say! For it is said in old lore: The hands of a king are the hands of a healer. And so the rightful king could ever be known.'
I love LotR, but not for the kind of prose as the above. And when people start calling this the best book ever written, I must correct them. It might be the best book you've ever read, but it is not by any stretch of the imagination the best book ever written.
Better books, in order of decreasing accessibility:
William Golding - Lord of the Flies
Mark Twain - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire
There are hundreds more, and you can find lists of great novels everywhere, but since somebody here wanted some titles, I provided a couple.
Um, not-so-well-informed-fellow-countryman, Tolkien is (was) English, and the movie has been produced in New Sealand. There is no special link with the US.
Also, Tolkien is still extremely popular in Holland, and not just with geeks. Since 1981, there's even a Dutch Tolkien society called Unquendor.
Why is that more impressive? It's much easier to achieve. A team of expert judges, testing an intelligent, educated person and a bot, both trying to convince the jury that they're human, that's a valid and meaningful Turing test in my book.
The problem with broadband, according to the article, is that they don't make a profit on their current users. So either they need to raise their prices, or throttle their connections (I know cable users that get only 2-3 KB/s downstream.)
In that case, they won't keep all of their existing users, making broadband commercially even more unattractive.
What's more, even in this hotbed of class A drug dealing, there are still less than 400 murders in the entire COUNTRY per YEAR. (Population 65 million.)
That's just not true. According to this article, the murder rate in 1.4 (per 100,000), that makes approx. 900 murders a year.
Slashdot Mirror
Burn AOL!!!
Boromir dies at the Gates of Gondor? Uh oh. This Does Not Bode Well.
LotR contains a great many dull fragments, even in the first (and best) volume (book one and two). Book three and five (the non-frodo books)are the worst of the bunch in this respect - they should have been cut down to 2/3 of their size. And I have not even mentioned all the awful songs in the book.
Also, LotT has deservedly been criticized for being very conservative. Tolkien's admiration for fixed social hierachies is obvious from LotR, and the subservient attitude of Sam for instance is more than I can stomach at times. (Yes I know it's supposed to be an old-fashioned epic, but I find it hard to admire a book that propagates values that I cannot respect.)
For your reading pleasure, the worst fragment of the worst chapter (The Houses of Healing) of the worst book (Book 5, first book of The Return of the King).
I love LotR, but not for the kind of prose as the above. And when people start calling this the best book ever written, I must correct them. It might be the best book you've ever read, but it is not by any stretch of the imagination the best book ever written.
Better books, in order of decreasing accessibility:
William Golding - Lord of the Flies
Mark Twain - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire
There are hundreds more, and you can find lists of great novels everywhere, but since somebody here wanted some titles, I provided a couple.
Also, Tolkien is still extremely popular in Holland, and not just with geeks. Since 1981, there's even a Dutch Tolkien society called Unquendor.
And you think Europe would not switch off their positioning system too in that case if they had one?
3.times {print "Ho "} is complex?
From http://www.celebatheists.com/
This is totally pointless of course...
Go Microsoft go!!!
You might want to run a spell-checker first.
Why is that more impressive? It's much easier to achieve. A team of expert judges, testing an intelligent, educated person and a bot, both trying to convince the jury that they're human, that's a valid and meaningful Turing test in my book.
Or you could download the source, but that doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with it.
Well, it's just as stable as Windows 98, and even less bloated than Windows XP!
In that case, they won't keep all of their existing users, making broadband commercially even more unattractive.
I think it's both...
Maybe he just doesn't think he's in a war?
Yeah, PSP is awful. They also put a PSP entry in the context menu for EVERY filetype. Open COMMAND.COM with PSP? I don't think so...
Doesn't work in win2k though...
That's just not true. According to this article, the murder rate in 1.4 (per 100,000), that makes approx. 900 murders a year.
Geeks are not unwashed. They're the Least Recently Washed.
In a halfway decent disaster movie at least 80% of the world population dies. Yesterday's attack killed 1% more people than die on a normal day.
Two of Sun's JSRs were voted down by the JCP. Kinda undermines what you're saying.
Templates are coming in 1.5 (Tiger). There's already a early release out that works with 1.3 and later.
So, to find porn, just type "link:www.disney.com"
A shorthand notation? Like, for instance, a0*10^0 + a1*10^1 + a2*10^2 + ... an*10^n ?
Sounds familiar somehow...
No. Maybe we're living in the 2^473204 randomly generated universe, the first one to be able to sustain life somewhere.