Observations on REST and Contracts

I thought I has this  RESTful web services thing figured out, but following one of the threads on the Yahoo group on Service-Oriented Architecture I came to the conclusion that maybe I don't.

Steve Jones tried to see if he understands REST by giving an example and that example was corrected by Anne Thomas Manes (a research director with the Burton Group which recently stated that the future of SOA is REST).
Here are the examples from the above mentioned thread:

POST http://example.org/customer
HTTP message body contains a representation of "anne"
server creates a subordinate resource called http://example.org/customer/anne

GET http://example.org/customer/anne
returns a representation of "anne"

GET http://example.org/customer/personByName?name=anne
returns a representation of "anne"
or perhaps returns the URI of the "anne" resource
or perhaps returns a list of URIs of all people named "anne"
might also be specified more simply as
GET http://example.org/customer?name=anne

GET http://example.org/customer/personByAge?age=27
returns a list of URIs of people whose age is 27
or perhaps returns a collection of representations of all people aged 27
might also be specified more simply as
GET http://example.org/customer?age=27

PUT http://example.org/customer/anne
HTTP message body contains a representation of "anne"
either creates a new resource called "anne" (if none exists)
or replaces the existing "anne" resource

PUT http://example.org/company/newco
HTTP message body contains a representation of "newco"
either creates a new resource called "newco" (if none exists)
or replaces the existing "newco" resource

If you prefer the server to assign the URI you would instead say

POST http://example.org/company
HTTP message body contains a representation of "newco"
server creates a subordinate resource called http://example.org/company/newco

POST http://example.org/customer/anne?addCompany=http://example.org/company/newco
this would append the newco company reference to the "anne" resource