I personally think this new 1500 hour rule is a total waste of time. As the article writer quite rightly points out the Coglan pilots both had in excess of this minimum. The cause of that crash was p*ss poor contracts that forced these pilots to have to live thousands of miles away from base as their pay was so crap they couldn't afford to live near their base. Add to that airline rosterers who are now treating Flight and Duty time limitations as a target as opposed to an absolute limit and you get a volatile mix.
I would have thought the was to sort out these problems would have been a new law to say that the minimum award for a Captain of an aircraft with more than 19 seats should be $100,000 per year with a co-pilot regardless of experience being on 66% of that. It might of bought some realism back to the industry. These franchise airlines would no longer win routes according to being the lowest bidder who has cut pilot / crew / engineer terms and conditions to offer services for that price. In turn that might mean that airlines start hiring more experienced individuals because that might as well hire the experienced guy if they can't 'sell' seats on the flight deck for 'pay to fly schemes'.
No that the 1500 hr rule in in we might aswell accept it because it is an attempt to address some serious issues. It just targets the wrong problem.