Helly: Honey! What's a flop?

Alan: (puzzled) It's like when you fall or bounce down suddenly on something. [pause] Are you feeling alright?

Helly: No, not when you flop - a flop. It's for computers, but is it like speeds or storage or programs or other stuff?

Alan: Well, it's...wait, where did you hear a thing like that anyway?

Helly: It's written on that Linux Journal you left on the table: "One teraflop in a cool fast reliable platform!" I think we should get some! What is it?

Alan: A tera is bigger than a giga which is bigger than a mega which is bigger than a kilo. With me so far?

Helly: Yes!

Alan: A teraflop means one trillion floating point operations per second.

Helly: We should get some! Two or three at least!

Alan: And why do you think this exactly?

Helly: They sound big! And cool! I want some!

Alan: Do you understand what they're for?

Helly: No! But I want some!

Alan: Why?!? You don't even know what they're FOR.

Helly: Look, I don't understand what liquid crystal display plasma high-def projection flat-screen high-rez blu-ray does either, but I know a big bitchin' flat-screen TV when I see it. So let's get some teraflops! We'll need at least three.

Alan: It's so hard to argue with you when you talk sexy like that. Say it again.

Helly: Teraflops! We needs them! Lots of teraflops! And a "write-back" setting in the RAID controller! And for authentication, a combo of MIT Kerberos and OpenSSH public keys!

Alan: I'll be in my bunk.