os that rather uses the gpu?

[Christofer C. Bell]

On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 10:56 PM, Robert Myers <rbmyersusa at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> This is a technical forum, not a debating society.  Science is awash
> already in useless flops.
>

You're showing your ignorance, Robert.  FLOPS is a very useful measure and
more is always good, but I don't think you know what it means.  It means
FLoating Point Operations Per Second.  It's nothing more than a measure of
computational speed and says nothing about the accuracy of the models being
computed.


> In one of these long-running public debates, I pointed out to a national
> decision-maker how relatively meaningless and frequently wrong NOAA's
> hurricane season predictions have been.  Guess what?  The most recent
> forecast was wrapped in all kinds of weasel words.  That won't stop them
> from drawing their paychecks and burning megawatts producing useless
> pictures.
>

If the forecast is wrong, the either the model was inaccurate or the input
data was wrong.  It says absolutely nothing about the value of computing the
answer fast (what FLOPS provides).  While I totally get you're going to
somehow try to refute the idea that "having a fast computer is good" and
thus, I can only imagine, make the case that "a slow computer is even
better," you're not going to convince anyone.

Anyway, technical forum or not, it's a forum made up of people and that
makes it a community.  To get along in a community, it helps to not be an
asshole.  While you may not care about being an asshole, do note that
"getting along in a community" does influence if anyone takes you
seriously.  And you seem very much to want to be taken seriously.

Just a friendly FYI.

-- 
Chris
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