From: Bryce Webster (tmproductions@mail.com)
To: staff@attrition.org
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 01:11:05 +0800
Subject: chiba city
what's up. just a quick question, i know chiba city is the
password for the VCL zip file, but i was curious as to whether
you know what it means? also, do you know where I can get a
copy of VCL? thanks.
ZerO
tmproductions@mail.com
Whoa, an interesting question!
Chiba City has three commonly accepted meanings that I am aware of. In
no particular order...
- Chiba City is a scalability testbed
for the High Performance Computing and Computer Science communities. The project is run
out of Argonne National Labs and seeks to answer neat questions about the short and long
term future of information and networks.
- Chiba City is a city that sits 40km east of Tokyo, with about 870,000 people.
- The third commonly accepted meaning, and the likely source for the use of
the name in VCL comes from William Gibson's book Neuromancer (ISBN:
0441569595).
In it, Gibson describes the city as "a magnet for the Sprawl's techno-criminal subcultures."
