smaug

Wouldn't a massive increase in money supply of the amount Smaug guarded just lead to Hyper Inflation?

Seeing Janssons rendering of Smaug made me remember it was this version she read for me.

Those stocks and bonds, those rent seeking post capitalism entities, they don't just sit on piles of USD like smaug.

Unless they're just hoarding it like Smaug and not investing it back into the economy, in which case the problem isn't capital but business culture.

Somebody worked out that Smaug would be the 14th wealthiest American.

Desolation of Smaug has this issue as well.

Back then they've at least made attempts to use some open standards, and allowed 3rd parties to fill gaps in the OS, instead of acting like a Smaug of APIs.

It's very possible they would, but the brand has been built around premium, luxury products rather than smaller margins and it's doing well for them (see the cash pile that Smaug guards).

I've been thinking about that illustration of Smaug for nearly 40 years and I never knew where it came from (I didn't recall it was from a Tolkien-related thing, but I remember it vividly otherwise)!

The few wider shots that followed reeked of bad CGI compositing (especially when Bilbo falls off the platform with the lever when Smaug knocks it down) I chalked it up to the cinematography just not meshing well with the way the film was shot.

Do you or anyone else really think your "960+ connections" are some kind of treasure hoard that needs to be guarded by Smaug and kept safe from the undeserving?

And they're not called "Smaug" and "Alduin" and "Parthonaax"?

Go have a ball." But, they'll never do this because corporations are like Smaug, as another poster put it--they hoard for hoarding's sake and will never voluntarily give up value, even if it's a fractional share of potential value, and even if that value is not materially helping them.

As for "dark and ugly", there are plenty of evils throughout Tolkein that contradict one or both of those: Saruman, Denethor, Grima, Lotho, Smaug, Gollum, the Balrog, to some extent the Wood Elves, the Nazgul.

Losing the evidence means the hole in Smaug's armor is temporarily patched for when it flies in to Laketown.

How does this jive with all of the big tech cos sitting on a Smaug's cave level of dollars?

The point of The Hobbit wasn't defeating Smaug, it was the adventure along the way...