So how does it relate to IT consultants - would you say that it is completely different with lawyers? Maybe all IT consultants are ethical, too, but many are still clueless. Still, they manage to find their customers, and they are in high demand, too. Are lawyers in general less clueless?

I must admit that it often freaks me out to consider that other professions are just as messed up as the software world. For example, in medicine there is in all likelihood an equivalent to LISP and an equivalent to Java. Many hospitals might have invested in useless expensive machinery (Bea Weblogic, Oracle...), and now use it on their patients, even though better treatments are already available.

If not, I wonder how medicine has solved the problem that the IT world can't seem to get a grip on.