If the article is accurate, then no, this is not about examination.

The point of this initiative is to get information about innovations that exist in the wild and document it ("publish" it for statutory purposes) -- and make it easy for examiners to locate it if they want to.

This is about creating prior art that will serve as a bar under 35 USC 102(a). Examiners may find it, or they may not, but if nothing else, the publication will be sitting there for someone to assert in litigation / reexamination -- and quite possibly able to invalidate a bad patent.

The short answer (from http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Con ceptual/ObjectiveC/Articles/chapter_4_section_3.ht ml)
"A crucial difference between function calls and messages is that a function and its arguments are joined together in the compiled code, but a message and a receiving object aren't united until the program is running and the message is sent. Therefore, the exact method that's invoked to respond to a message can only be determined at runtime, not when the code is compiled."

It's this difference between functions and messaging that allows for all of the obj-c runtime dynamism. Categories (methods added to existing classes that you don't have the source to) and DO (essentially forwarding said messages to a separate entity - where entity can be anything from thread, to process, to computer) are two of the more interesting examples.

For more info, I suggest taking a look at http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Con ceptual/ObjectiveC/Introduction/chapter_1_section_ 1.html

Yeah, but that's why God invented GPIB. If you've already got LabVIEW, it's a snap! Ditch the floppies.

If any real women read Slashdot, I think its safe to say I'm going to hell now.

Yeah, that's a pretty safe assumption, though I think it would happen whether or not us women were reading. Just holding a attitude like that dooms you regardless of how or if you express it. Also you might want to consider that if you didn't have that attitude you might actually get laid once in a while. I mean whenever you crawl out of your parents basement.

I imagine is it very difficult to navigate a waterway between two dams (as he mentioned)...