Resource Oriented Architecture? Inconceivable!

I'm looking forward to the new RESTful Web Services book.  I recall a 'Web Services' conference session a couple of years back on where the presenter essentially declared that WS-* had 'won' the standards 'wars'.  He dismissed REST with a wave and an indulgent chuckle.  Inconceivable!

REST's most visible implementation -- the Web -- has clearly been insanely popular as a read-only space.  There are many books on how to put documents on the Web. There are very few (no?) books on how to apply the full REST style to distributed programming over HTTP (inconceivable?).  It's appropriate that RESTful Web Services starts with a manifesto:

We want to restore the World Wide Web to its rightful place as arespected architecture for distributed programming. We want to shiftthe focus of web service programming from an RPC-style architecturethat just happens to use HTTP as a transfer protocol, to a URI-basedarchitecture that uses the technologies of the web to their fullest.

Does this remind anyone else of the clifftop scene from The Princess Bride?

[Scene: At the top. Fezzik, Vizzini and Inigo are looking down at
the masked man climbing the cliff after Vizzini has cut the rope]

Fezzik:     He's got very good arms.

Vizzini:    HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE!

Inigo:      You keep using that word. I do not think it means
            what you think it means. [pause] My God! He's
            climbing!

Tags: REST, ROA, inconceivable, manifesto, i don't think it means what you think it means