The paper said, "Sony is spending $1.67 billion to develop a 'cell' chip capable of teraflop speeds." This was a totally unknown term to me, and I had to look it up to find that it is "a measure of computing speed equal to one trillion floating-point operations per second."

The thought struck that a theme of "computer terms" might be of interest to our word-a-day readers, but I am hopelessly ignorant of the subject. Can you folks perhaps toss out some other terms that might be suitable for a theme?

Here's the prefixes:

kilo- :- 10^3, thousand
mega- :- 10^6, million (Gk big)
giga- :- 10^9, billion (Gk giant)
tera- :- 10^12, trillion (Gk monster)
peta- :- 10^15, quadrillion (Gk five < penta)
exa- :- 10^18, quintillion
zetta- :- 10^21, sextillion
yotta- :- 10^24, septillion

Not these prefixes can go the other way to: cf. Wikipedia entry on prefixes.

Flop means FLoating point OPerations per second, so 1 teraflop is one trillion floating point operations per second, or really fast.

"Can you folks perhaps toss out some other terms that might be suitable for a theme?"

I think it might be interesting to see official definitions for words like this that have come about simply because of the internet . . .
chat - how it has evolved as a word
cyber - when did that become a verb?
surf the net
cyberspace
and isn't there a term for those folks (like Dilbert) who work in cubicles now? Cubicle Monkeys or something like that?



or maybe see if you can find definitions of the abbreviations . .

DH (dear hubby), LOL, LMAO, IMHO, etc

cyber - when did that become a verb?

I've not heard it used as a verb. I've seen it used as a prefix.

Cubicle Monkeys or something like that?

Dilbert (actually Scott Adams) talks about cubicle farms (sort of a take-off on server farms.

The Jargon File / Hacker's Dictionary would be the first place to start. See surf and bogon flux.

Jheem - that's a great link! Thanks! I'm going to have to take some time and really explore it.

Cyber - an abbrev. of the longer phrase "cybersex", used as a verb . . .

"He was trying to cyber me, but I'm not that kind of woman."

"He was trying to cyber me, but I'm not that kind of woman."

Never heard it, but then I don't get out much anymore, what with being a disembodied brain stored in a jar somewhere ...

In a workshop I attended today, the speaker actually spoke of teraflops - and I was proud to let the people around me know what it meant! Thanks, guys!