I only lived in LA for about a year, when I worked for a small film compositing software company that was later acquired by apple (like a genius, I left for gra

I only lived in LA for about a year, when I worked for a small film compositing software company that was later acquired by apple (like a genius, I left for grad school before that happened). We were located in hollywood, right in the middle of it all. It was kind of fun to be in LA. It has a different vibe from SF. But all in all, the hacker culture seemed pretty similar to me. Very friendly folks - a dude who had an academy award (the science achievement kind) was willing to sit down with me to explain how to use a plugin for a couple of hours. This was back in the late 90s, before things truly exploded. Maybe it's different now... I also didn't get around all that much, so I can't say if my experience was typical of hollywood high tech. BTW, Kathy Sierra had an interesting post on the "hollywood model"