As long as you equate a DVR to a VCR you'll overlook the SCORES of other options out there to advertisers.
For example...
What if, when I was FF'ing in my Tivo, what if 2 copies of every commercial were coded into the broadcast? What if it plays a commercial designed for high-speed viewing that gets displayed when I FF? It would probably look more like a banner ad on your screen than a commercial as we know it, but it's still advertising.
What if the Tivo takes product-placement to the next level, giving you the option of buying things you see on the screen right from your remote control. I imagine that at any given moment you can press a button and numbers 0-9 will appear next to purchasable products and you press the button and it will somehow connect you to that website--whether thru the Tivo itself, sending it to your TivoToGo Computer, your cell phone, whatever.
Something similar to this already exists in certain commercials where you can press a button for more info, the only difference here would be applying that technology in the shows themselves. And this can be anything from a bottle of hand lotion to a car.
What if you get an incentive for NOT skipping commercials? What if your Tivo service fee is reduced for every one you watch? Or the opposite? What if your fee is INCREASED (albeit slightly--maybe a couple cents per slot) for every commercial you skip?
What if they block you from skipping ads for the first time you watch the show? That would be similar to the DVD technology you mentioned, but would create less of a backlash among users.
What if they do more to open up their TivoToGo option but, in exchange, made ads unskippable on non-tv mediums? I'm thinking maybe even text-based ads running in a Letterbox area on your monitor or your hand-held.... These are just the things I thought of while sitting here. This is digital content. A Tivo is literally nothing more than a PC with a shiny case and a remote control. The sky is the limit, here. Advertisers have "smart" machines in peoples hands--whether they're watching on the Tivo itself, their PSP, a cell phone, an iPod, Zune, whatever. The days of being limited by a dumb television are over.
The share is the only number you can use for a comparison like this, not the rating. A show with 5 million viewers on Thursday night might have a 4 or 5 share. A show on Saturday afternoon with 1 million viewers might also have that same 4-5 share. If you compare the ratings, the Thr night show appears to just blow-out the Saturday show. No contest, really. But the share is excellent and the show a hit.
I'm just as awed by the beauty of the iPhone as the next guy, but I do agree that this is a little bit of a problem.
Right now I can text without looking at my phone. Maybe, after many many hours of texting one will develop enough muscle memory based on the placement of the virtual buttons on the device itself, but best case scenario you'll have your phone for a while before that's possible.
I'm not saying that this isn't a worthy trade-off. But part of me thinks it's just aesthetics, like the lack of battery access on an iPod. And that means I'm sacrificing function for form and I'm paying a premium to do so.
Apple has gotten where it is not by creating beautiful products. ANYONE can hire some designers, give them complete autonomy, and create a beautiful product. No, Apple has gotten where it is by creating products that are incredibly easy to use and uncompromisingly good at what they do that just so happen to be stylish and beautiful.
Maybe Apple has a vision of what texting SHOULD BE that departs from its reality. Maybe this will turn out to be a genius innovation. But right now a part of me things they lost their way a bit with this one.
"Nevermind the fact that Thompson has spent more time in elected office than Clinton or Obama"
Ignoring that you're just a flaming troll, it's important to consider THAT YOU'RE WRONG.
Thompson spent 8 years as a Senator. 1994 to 2002. Obama was elected in Illinois in 1996, and has held elected office contiguously since then. That's 8 years for Thompson, 11 for Obama. And, for what it's worth, 7 for Clinton.
1. In 1812 America was 36 years old. Need I say more?
2. We have 700,000,000 barrels of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It's called <i>Strategic</i> for a reason. <br> 3. We don't need to <b>hold</b> your massive country. <b>Every One</b> of your major cities is within 200 miles of the US border, with the exception of Edmonton which is only 150 miles further north. Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Windsor, Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver are practically a stones-throw from the United States. 4. You don't have very many people, really. There are ten times more Americans on this continent than Canadians.
Well, to be pedantic, ancient machines were running Trans-Cave Protocol / Abacus Protocol. TCP/AP proved wildly successful. It's affects on the economy were downright chiseling.
That's like saying the cell phone isn't novel because radios were being used for 50 years. Or it's like saying that the iPhone isn't novel because it also uses multi-touch.
Especially since Microsofts implementation of multi-touch is MUCH DIFFERENT than Hans. Microsofts uses infrared cameras to detect the touch. Hans doesn't AFAIK.
Look at it this way. If there were a million Zunes in the wild, and you see 200-300 people per day, the odds approach certainty you will see one before a few days are out.
Huh?
First, you don't see 300 people each day for very long. So you first need to calculate the liklihood that someone will actually use their MP3 player during the small window where they're in your sight.
Second, you have to distribute the Zunes fairly evenly across at least 1.5 billion "first worlders" in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
One would either have to make a lot of assumptions or do a lot of research to do the actual math, but I have no problem saying publicly that it's nowhere near a "certainty" that you'd see a Zune "before a few days are out."
A bug exposing credit card numbers is language agnostic. Even experienced programmers can create security bugs. Even EXPERT programmers can create security bugs. Your notion that there's a correlation between a langauge and a propensity for bugs is outrageously wrong. if that were the case, you'd never have a rich client app written in C or C++ crash on you.
And your idea that "the ones smart enough to write proper code are generally smart enough to avoid scripting language" shows such an abject lack of understanding of the software development industry that I'm just stunned. The ones smart enough to write proper code are the ones smart enough to use the RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOB. PERIOD.
I'm sorry for being so harsh, but I'm not sure if you're trolling or if you actually believe that crap. Frankly, I'm not sure which would be worse.
Personally, I've never heard of any economists disagreeing that a production based economy is better than a service based economy. (Note: production in this case meaning producing ANYTHING, software, cars, houses, etc).
If I pay you $100k to build me a house, you get $100k and I get a house that's worth $100k. Wealth is created by converting human energy into value. If I pay you $100 to clean my toilets, you get $100, but my clean toilets hold no value to anybody but myself.
This is econ 101. Many economists acknowledge the inevitability of developed economies becoming more service-based in todays world, but that doesn't mean they like it.
Oh come on. The same thing (shooting yourself in the foot) could be said, nay, SCREAMED, about C. But nobody here is blaming bad programming on the language in that case. Anybody learning "proper prgramming practices" can do so with PHP just as well as she could with any other language.
1. Wow, every spell checker on my PC (Word, FireFox, Google, and Act!) has no problem recognizing "libel" as an English word. But that is a nice excuse. What kind of person just lies like that to avoid conceding a point? You've got some moral bankruptcy on your hands, bro. You should talk to a professional about why that might be..
2. It's not slander (or libel [see that, l-i-b-e-l]) if it's true. How can you not comprehend that fact? If Microsoft was lying, why not say 1000 patents? Why 235? For it to be slander, MSFT must be KNOWINGLY WRONG. That means that if they think it's 235, even if it isn't, it's not slander. It's just a mistake.
3. You said <i>"Share holders can sue the company for losing money when the CEOs are doing something illegal, unethical or dishonest that causes them to lose money. This is what I have been saying."<i>... This is the most annoying part of talking with people as dumb as you. THAT IS NOT WHAT YOU'VE BEEN SAYING. Every time I reply I point out how, in the details, your argument HOLDS NO WATER. So in your next reply, you plug the holes I pointed out, and then act as if that's what you've been saying all along. My argument has been sentry. Yours is ALL OVER THE MAP. Go read your post. I'll quote from it here, but go read it yourself:
<i>"That is the thing about publicly traded companies. Everything is fine as long as they are making money. But when the shareholders start losing money because a monkey boy is chasing a smelly hippy who could be a stunt double for a bum around a room tossing chairs back and forth, they get angry. Then the FEC gets involved and evaluates and the shareholders end up suing which could attach to Microsoft's funding very quickly. A judge, as a course in settling a lawsuit could stop a company form pursuing certain actions or force them to pay certain amounts to share holders which could damage Microsoft pretty hard."</i>
Aside from how inane and immature most of this paragraph is, you're suggesting here and in subsequent posts that defending their IP--which, in your uninformed opinion would cause it to start "burning thru its reserves"--is grounds for a shareholder lawsuit. This is so far removed from reality that it makes me think you must be talking about the legal system in SOME OTHER COUNTRY.
You said: <i>"Your lucky your getting the spell check."</i> I guess it doesn't check grammar, eh?
You said: <i>"Saying my opensource product violate you IP and will open my customers up to liabilities when it isn't true is slander"</i> No, it's only slander if I KNOWINGLY SAY FALSE THINGS. So if MSFT is either correct that their IP is being violated, or unknowingly incorrect, it's not slander, nor L-I-B-E-L for that matter.
You said: <i>"You can't understand a simple line of thought or follow the progression of a conversation and I am stupid?"</i> Yes, you are. Besides, i can follow the "progression of a conversation" just fine. But don't think i won't call you when you change your argument and then act as if you've been saying the same thing since the very first post. It just makes you look stupid because anyone of us can scroll up and see what you REALLY said.
You're full of shit, bro. In your very first post you suggested the crazy notion that Microsoft's _CASH_ reserves were "paper value." While money is, technically, paper, you clearly suggested that it was not liquid. About a dozen people replied, pointing out how stupid you must be to think that CASH ON HAND means anything other than CASH and yet you still tried to keep defending your indefensible position.
I've made an air-tight case that you are, in fact, a complete dumb ass. At least you're a big supporter of truth in advertising.
It has been fun bitch-slapping you, though. I mean it. It's been a f'in blast. The stupidity of your comments contrasted against my, you know, FACTS, has been just brilliant. BRILLIANT.
1. Explain to me how PHP didn't allow libraries to be written? I don't understand that whatsoever. In PHP4 I'd write (and have written) a data abstraction layer that wrapped the inbuilt mysql functions, incorporating, among other things, string cleansing. The mysql library is procedural in PHP4 and below (and is both proc and oo in 5). So even if you're using <4 you can just write your own wrappers for all the functions and throw them in a file that gets auto_prepend()'ed to every page. (auto_prepend acts sorta like a generic front-controller)
2. I never developed from scratch in PHP3 (just upgraded a few applications) or below but if, for some who-knows reason why people couldn't write such function wrappers, forget not that PHP is open source. Anyone could've written an extension in C and compiled it into PHP.
3. There is nothing about PHP5 that makes injection any less likely than in PHP4 if the developer is still using the mysqli library the same as he used the mysql library in php4. And if the developer is enlightened enough to use the improvements afforded by mysqli library properly, he'd probably also be enlightened enough to realize you can use the mysqli library in PHP4 as well.
4. Nobody is developing in PHP6 yet. It just made (EARLY) beta.
5. In summary, you don't seem to know all that much about PHP. You certainly know more than most, but I don't know why you posted information that's just not true. Is it just more PHP FUD or were you just sincerely misinformed? I only even point this out because PHP gets a pretty bad rap on here even though version 5 compares favorably to any other modern web dev language. It's not in the league of ASP.Net or J2EE, but it certainly is a better language than the avg/.'er gives it credit for.
I used to avoid PHP like the plague. I was comfortable using Java and C# for web development and even an occasional line of {shudder} VBScript. What I found when I began using it was a language that was very capable when used properly.
People here give PHP a bad rap because of the PHP Developers using it. It's a great entry level language. It gives you what I call complexity on demand. It's a language thats useful for your first-time developer, he doesn't need to learn or concern himself with procedures or classes or design patterns, and also useful for an experienced developer, capable of OOD, reflection, etc.
1. You can easily run both PHP4 and PHP5 on the same server. When it's done, it's usually determined by a.php5 extension or <?php5 ?> braces. 2. The upgrade from 4 to 5 CAN be quite painful if you've done a lot of OOP coding in PHP4. Nearly all of the upgrade was focused on increasing and improving OO support. Some of the changes made (like, for example, constructor naming) are backwards compatible, but most aren't. 3. This is all moot because you don't HAVE to use the Circa-php4 mysql extension, anyway. MySQLi (the Improved mysql extension) can be used with PHP4 just as well as it can be used with PHP5.
Actually, it was 1981, not 1987, but that's beside the point.
If you want my opinion, this is the best argument yet against the nuts that say that the way to stop gun crime is to arm the civilians.
Ronald Reagan was surrounded by a dozen of the most highly trained armed bodyguards in the history of the world. Still, a man proved that if you're willing to risk your own life to take somebody else's, there's very little that can be done to effectively stop you. It makes the notion that less gun crime would occur because civilians could defend themselves sound just a little silly.
Slashdot Mirror
As long as you equate a DVR to a VCR you'll overlook the SCORES of other options out there to advertisers.
... These are just the things I thought of while sitting here. This is digital content. A Tivo is literally nothing more than a PC with a shiny case and a remote control. The sky is the limit, here. Advertisers have "smart" machines in peoples hands--whether they're watching on the Tivo itself, their PSP, a cell phone, an iPod, Zune, whatever. The days of being limited by a dumb television are over.
For example...
What if, when I was FF'ing in my Tivo, what if 2 copies of every commercial were coded into the broadcast? What if it plays a commercial designed for high-speed viewing that gets displayed when I FF? It would probably look more like a banner ad on your screen than a commercial as we know it, but it's still advertising.
What if the Tivo takes product-placement to the next level, giving you the option of buying things you see on the screen right from your remote control. I imagine that at any given moment you can press a button and numbers 0-9 will appear next to purchasable products and you press the button and it will somehow connect you to that website--whether thru the Tivo itself, sending it to your TivoToGo Computer, your cell phone, whatever.
Something similar to this already exists in certain commercials where you can press a button for more info, the only difference here would be applying that technology in the shows themselves. And this can be anything from a bottle of hand lotion to a car.
What if you get an incentive for NOT skipping commercials? What if your Tivo service fee is reduced for every one you watch? Or the opposite? What if your fee is INCREASED (albeit slightly--maybe a couple cents per slot) for every commercial you skip?
What if they block you from skipping ads for the first time you watch the show? That would be similar to the DVD technology you mentioned, but would create less of a backlash among users.
What if they do more to open up their TivoToGo option but, in exchange, made ads unskippable on non-tv mediums? I'm thinking maybe even text-based ads running in a Letterbox area on your monitor or your hand-held.
The share is the only number you can use for a comparison like this, not the rating. A show with 5 million viewers on Thursday night might have a 4 or 5 share. A show on Saturday afternoon with 1 million viewers might also have that same 4-5 share. If you compare the ratings, the Thr night show appears to just blow-out the Saturday show. No contest, really. But the share is excellent and the show a hit.
I'm just as awed by the beauty of the iPhone as the next guy, but I do agree that this is a little bit of a problem.
Right now I can text without looking at my phone. Maybe, after many many hours of texting one will develop enough muscle memory based on the placement of the virtual buttons on the device itself, but best case scenario you'll have your phone for a while before that's possible.
I'm not saying that this isn't a worthy trade-off. But part of me thinks it's just aesthetics, like the lack of battery access on an iPod. And that means I'm sacrificing function for form and I'm paying a premium to do so.
Apple has gotten where it is not by creating beautiful products. ANYONE can hire some designers, give them complete autonomy, and create a beautiful product. No, Apple has gotten where it is by creating products that are incredibly easy to use and uncompromisingly good at what they do that just so happen to be stylish and beautiful.
Maybe Apple has a vision of what texting SHOULD BE that departs from its reality. Maybe this will turn out to be a genius innovation. But right now a part of me things they lost their way a bit with this one.
"just a competitor in the smartphone space, as iPhone will be when it arrives."
I think the iPhone looks awesome, but it's hardly a smart phone, IMO...
"Nevermind the fact that Thompson has spent more time in elected office than Clinton or Obama"
Ignoring that you're just a flaming troll, it's important to consider THAT YOU'RE WRONG.
Thompson spent 8 years as a Senator. 1994 to 2002. Obama was elected in Illinois in 1996, and has held elected office contiguously since then. That's 8 years for Thompson, 11 for Obama. And, for what it's worth, 7 for Clinton.
Sorry. Try Again.
1. In 1812 America was 36 years old. Need I say more?
2. We have 700,000,000 barrels of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It's called <i>Strategic</i> for a reason. <br>
3. We don't need to <b>hold</b> your massive country. <b>Every One</b> of your major cities is within 200 miles of the US border, with the exception of Edmonton which is only 150 miles further north. Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Windsor, Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver are practically a stones-throw from the United States.
4. You don't have very many people, really. There are ten times more Americans on this continent than Canadians.
Isn't Word 2007 in an XML format? It might not be the most standards-compliant XML, but it's a long way from binary, no?
? how does this answer my question?
What's your point?
what's your point?
Well, to be pedantic, ancient machines were running Trans-Cave Protocol / Abacus Protocol. TCP/AP proved wildly successful. It's affects on the economy were downright chiseling.
keep buying the FUD, bro.... i don't mind...
for the actual touch sensitivity, maybe. But for object detection, Microsofts unit uses infrared cameras. Watch the demo. It really is impressive.
No, in summary you know shite about statistics. :)
Sorry but no.
That's like saying the cell phone isn't novel because radios were being used for 50 years. Or it's like saying that the iPhone isn't novel because it also uses multi-touch.
Especially since Microsofts implementation of multi-touch is MUCH DIFFERENT than Hans. Microsofts uses infrared cameras to detect the touch. Hans doesn't AFAIK.
Well Said, Gareth.
First, you don't see 300 people each day for very long. So you first need to calculate the liklihood that someone will actually use their MP3 player during the small window where they're in your sight.
Second, you have to distribute the Zunes fairly evenly across at least 1.5 billion "first worlders" in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
One would either have to make a lot of assumptions or do a lot of research to do the actual math, but I have no problem saying publicly that it's nowhere near a "certainty" that you'd see a Zune "before a few days are out."
The whole notion is a bit laughable, really.
My view represents the truth of the situation.
You make wild assumptions that have no basis in fact.
You show basically no knowledge of the intent behind the tools you're talking about.
You're a joke, bro. And the moderation shows it. You should be modded +1 Funny.
The reason "so many people who claim to have some understanding" don't agree with you is simple: you're wrong.
You say you're clever. You'd think such a clever guy would've realized that there might just be a reason why you're standing by yourself here.
I sincerely hope for your sake that software development isn't your day job.
Your post is entirely useless.
A bug exposing credit card numbers is language agnostic. Even experienced programmers can create security bugs. Even EXPERT programmers can create security bugs. Your notion that there's a correlation between a langauge and a propensity for bugs is outrageously wrong. if that were the case, you'd never have a rich client app written in C or C++ crash on you.
And your idea that "the ones smart enough to write proper code are generally smart enough to avoid scripting language" shows such an abject lack of understanding of the software development industry that I'm just stunned. The ones smart enough to write proper code are the ones smart enough to use the RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOB. PERIOD.
I'm sorry for being so harsh, but I'm not sure if you're trolling or if you actually believe that crap. Frankly, I'm not sure which would be worse.
This thread illustrates the summary perfectly. It's. Still. Too. Complicated.
Personally, I've never heard of any economists disagreeing that a production based economy is better than a service based economy. (Note: production in this case meaning producing ANYTHING, software, cars, houses, etc).
If I pay you $100k to build me a house, you get $100k and I get a house that's worth $100k. Wealth is created by converting human energy into value. If I pay you $100 to clean my toilets, you get $100, but my clean toilets hold no value to anybody but myself.
This is econ 101. Many economists acknowledge the inevitability of developed economies becoming more service-based in todays world, but that doesn't mean they like it.
Oh come on. The same thing (shooting yourself in the foot) could be said, nay, SCREAMED, about C. But nobody here is blaming bad programming on the language in that case. Anybody learning "proper prgramming practices" can do so with PHP just as well as she could with any other language.
1. Wow, every spell checker on my PC (Word, FireFox, Google, and Act!) has no problem recognizing "libel" as an English word. But that is a nice excuse. What kind of person just lies like that to avoid conceding a point? You've got some moral bankruptcy on your hands, bro. You should talk to a professional about why that might be..
... This is the most annoying part of talking with people as dumb as you. THAT IS NOT WHAT YOU'VE BEEN SAYING. Every time I reply I point out how, in the details, your argument HOLDS NO WATER. So in your next reply, you plug the holes I pointed out, and then act as if that's what you've been saying all along. My argument has been sentry. Yours is ALL OVER THE MAP. Go read your post. I'll quote from it here, but go read it yourself:
2. It's not slander (or libel [see that, l-i-b-e-l]) if it's true. How can you not comprehend that fact? If Microsoft was lying, why not say 1000 patents? Why 235? For it to be slander, MSFT must be KNOWINGLY WRONG. That means that if they think it's 235, even if it isn't, it's not slander. It's just a mistake.
3. You said <i>"Share holders can sue the company for losing money when the CEOs are doing something illegal, unethical or dishonest that causes them to lose money. This is what I have been saying."<i>
<i>"That is the thing about publicly traded companies. Everything is fine as long as they are making money. But when the shareholders start losing money because a monkey boy is chasing a smelly hippy who could be a stunt double for a bum around a room tossing chairs back and forth, they get angry. Then the FEC gets involved and evaluates and the shareholders end up suing which could attach to Microsoft's funding very quickly. A judge, as a course in settling a lawsuit could stop a company form pursuing certain actions or force them to pay certain amounts to share holders which could damage Microsoft pretty hard."</i>
Aside from how inane and immature most of this paragraph is, you're suggesting here and in subsequent posts that defending their IP--which, in your uninformed opinion would cause it to start "burning thru its reserves"--is grounds for a shareholder lawsuit. This is so far removed from reality that it makes me think you must be talking about the legal system in SOME OTHER COUNTRY.
You said: <i>"Your lucky your getting the spell check."</i>
I guess it doesn't check grammar, eh?
You said: <i>"Saying my opensource product violate you IP and will open my customers up to liabilities when it isn't true is slander"</i>
No, it's only slander if I KNOWINGLY SAY FALSE THINGS. So if MSFT is either correct that their IP is being violated, or unknowingly incorrect, it's not slander, nor L-I-B-E-L for that matter.
You said: <i>"You can't understand a simple line of thought or follow the progression of a conversation and I am stupid?"</i>
Yes, you are. Besides, i can follow the "progression of a conversation" just fine. But don't think i won't call you when you change your argument and then act as if you've been saying the same thing since the very first post. It just makes you look stupid because anyone of us can scroll up and see what you REALLY said.
You're full of shit, bro. In your very first post you suggested the crazy notion that Microsoft's _CASH_ reserves were "paper value." While money is, technically, paper, you clearly suggested that it was not liquid. About a dozen people replied, pointing out how stupid you must be to think that CASH ON HAND means anything other than CASH and yet you still tried to keep defending your indefensible position.
I've made an air-tight case that you are, in fact, a complete dumb ass. At least you're a big supporter of truth in advertising.
It has been fun bitch-slapping you, though. I mean it. It's been a f'in blast. The stupidity of your comments contrasted against my, you know, FACTS, has been just brilliant. BRILLIANT.
I'm done with you. You're amusing but I
1. Explain to me how PHP didn't allow libraries to be written? I don't understand that whatsoever. In PHP4 I'd write (and have written) a data abstraction layer that wrapped the inbuilt mysql functions, incorporating, among other things, string cleansing. The mysql library is procedural in PHP4 and below (and is both proc and oo in 5). So even if you're using <4 you can just write your own wrappers for all the functions and throw them in a file that gets auto_prepend()'ed to every page. (auto_prepend acts sorta like a generic front-controller)
/.'er gives it credit for.
2. I never developed from scratch in PHP3 (just upgraded a few applications) or below but if, for some who-knows reason why people couldn't write such function wrappers, forget not that PHP is open source. Anyone could've written an extension in C and compiled it into PHP.
3. There is nothing about PHP5 that makes injection any less likely than in PHP4 if the developer is still using the mysqli library the same as he used the mysql library in php4. And if the developer is enlightened enough to use the improvements afforded by mysqli library properly, he'd probably also be enlightened enough to realize you can use the mysqli library in PHP4 as well.
4. Nobody is developing in PHP6 yet. It just made (EARLY) beta.
5. In summary, you don't seem to know all that much about PHP. You certainly know more than most, but I don't know why you posted information that's just not true. Is it just more PHP FUD or were you just sincerely misinformed? I only even point this out because PHP gets a pretty bad rap on here even though version 5 compares favorably to any other modern web dev language. It's not in the league of ASP.Net or J2EE, but it certainly is a better language than the avg
I used to avoid PHP like the plague. I was comfortable using Java and C# for web development and even an occasional line of {shudder} VBScript. What I found when I began using it was a language that was very capable when used properly.
People here give PHP a bad rap because of the PHP Developers using it. It's a great entry level language. It gives you what I call complexity on demand. It's a language thats useful for your first-time developer, he doesn't need to learn or concern himself with procedures or classes or design patterns, and also useful for an experienced developer, capable of OOD, reflection, etc.
1. You can easily run both PHP4 and PHP5 on the same server. When it's done, it's usually determined by a .php5 extension or <?php5 ?> braces.
2. The upgrade from 4 to 5 CAN be quite painful if you've done a lot of OOP coding in PHP4. Nearly all of the upgrade was focused on increasing and improving OO support. Some of the changes made (like, for example, constructor naming) are backwards compatible, but most aren't.
3. This is all moot because you don't HAVE to use the Circa-php4 mysql extension, anyway. MySQLi (the Improved mysql extension) can be used with PHP4 just as well as it can be used with PHP5.
Actually, it was 1981, not 1987, but that's beside the point.
If you want my opinion, this is the best argument yet against the nuts that say that the way to stop gun crime is to arm the civilians.
Ronald Reagan was surrounded by a dozen of the most highly trained armed bodyguards in the history of the world. Still, a man proved that if you're willing to risk your own life to take somebody else's, there's very little that can be done to effectively stop you. It makes the notion that less gun crime would occur because civilians could defend themselves sound just a little silly.