There were a lot of who went through college in the early-mid 90s where Hungarian notation was considered proper software development and scores were marked down in various programming classes if you didn't adhere to it. It was the late-90s/early-2000s when people apparently discovered that it was a very, very bad idea especially as we refactored 5-10 year old code. Now it seems we're happy if you just use camel-case.

Lived in Oregon and raised in TN, now in Los Angeles. It was 80 degrees yesterday and while the summers get mighty warm, it rarely ever rains. Sure, we might have a water acquisition problem, but I'll take it, the higher cost of living, 360 motorcycling days a year (365 if you wear rain gear), and all the beautiful women in skimpy clothes in the world over a bunch of hairy Portland girls who think deodorant is a form of patriarchal oppression or the 10 foot snow drifts in March of MN.

(just kidding, I love and miss Portland and if I could get a job with an equivalent, cost-of-living adjusted wage, I'd probably move back tomorrow. I miss tall bikes, clowns, cheap beer, and the smell of vintage stores).

Half the cost? Isn't there some sort of contractor rule that if it's designed to cost less, they have to figure out a way to double the budget by the end of the project and walk home with twice the profits hidden away as cost overruns?

Read the book and realize that the author is taking Green/Sustainable culture to a dystopian end...

True, but you probably dont' realize just how quickly a shop can turn racist/discriminatory without even realizing it. "Yeah, we tried a few guys from _____ and they just didn't work out, so we don't hire anyone like that anymore" which can go from a school, a town, to a race or gender and the broad brush begins. Then those guys who don't hire ________ as a matter of policy due to a few _______ not "working out" (for whatever reason of "working out") moving to other shops, keeping their internalized prejudices from previous experiences, moving into management positions, it spreads like a cancer. It feels like humans are hard-wired to EXCLUDE people, and we try to rationalize it, reason it out, but in the end, it ends up hurting a lot of folks who are perfectly fine for the job, but just because a "couple guys didn't work out" a couple decades ago....

If you don't think those "profit margins" can't be hidden away through operating costs and executive salaries, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in.

Not really. Having worked in the digital music industry for the past 6 years, I can assure you "500,00" artists are not making $100,000 each. Even with the giganticness of the digital library with artists from every genre, etc, the sales of tracks still follow closely with the Billboard top 100, with very, very few rare exceptions. So it's more like 1-2% of artists make 90% of the revenues (and profits), and the other 98% scrabble for the last 10%. The only company that seems to be doing something different, genuinely, is beatport and the majority of their sales, while diffrent from the mainstream, still concentrate amongst a "handful" of artists/producers and the great majority go generally ignored.

Hrm, in my effort to remain productive today at work:
http://www.eyeonthesky.com/astrocruises/index.html

Apparently, they exist!

Hrm. I bet if there were enough interest, a cruise line might be willing to make a "stargazers" cruise and set-up with some telescopes/binoculars and some good astronomy teachers to show you how and where to look and use the equipment, etc... And, of course, alcohol. That's a cruise I might be interested in...

One of the most amazing demonstrations of this was the one time I flew down to Florida to visit with friends and we headed to keywest at night. A couple hours of driving, we pulled over out in the middle of nowhere and instructed everyone out. Not that that's creepy at all, no sir. But once we got out, he turned out the lights on the car and said "Look up." Magnificent. Then he killed us while we were staring up.

True story.