Well, I think so too, but - just to play devil’s advocate - many of my former bosses would almost certainly say something like, “the cost of the web server is known. The cost of collecting the web traffic can be calculated deterministically. We’re just talking about a website here, the cost should absolutely be known.”
The prices don't change in a supermarket if you edit your shopping list, eh?
A hospital can't predict everything a patient will need (their shopping list), but they should be able to account for the cost of each procedure/drug/test/bandage/etc... eh?
Well are you asking me to setup infrastructure or to design you a website? The first is deterministic and I can certainly give you a fixed price/timeframe to set up your web servers/DNS/etc.
Designing a website on the other hand, isn't deterministic. That mandates lots of requirements gathering and suffering through iterations where the peanut gallery criticizes every CSS choice and demands minor CSS tweaks until some arbitrary "feel" is achieved.
