HN user
I wish people would stop trying to defend PHP against "the haters" - firstly because no amount of reasoned argument is going to change the views of fundamentalists, and secondly because they are a minority group whose opinions are unlikely to inhibit the rise of the PHP ecosystem.
> Maybe I'm an ignoramus, but what's wrong with storing your credit card number in a cookie, as long as it's encrypted? This is how session management is typically done, right? Your session information is stored encrypted in a cookie so that on subsequent page requests, the server still knows who you are, but the session information is encrypted and decrypted on the server, so that the client can't forge the session information.
No, that's not how session tracking works. The server uses a cookie to assign you a temporary ID, and then creates a corresponding storage area "server side" which can contain data like credit card numbers.
The TimeClass:relative() function is a bit nasty, how many times do you need to calculate date('d/m/Y', $time) ?!.
[edit] Or, time() for that matter, in fact this could be a subtle bug, as the return value of time() may vary throughout the function (unlikely, I know!)
Of course you're right, but surely there's a balance to be found between delaying the launch of this product vs. maximizing profits. If the company involved is more interested in money they'll tend to err towards delaying release, if they're more interested in the impact of their product they'll tend to release sooner. Clearly, at a societal level, we'd prefer to have this product sooner, so we have to constantly question the leverage that patents afford large corporations and question their methods and motives.
That passage leapt out at me too. In my simplistic geek mind this is totally arse-about-face, like the tail wagging the dog. Are these companies more interested in money than what they're actually doing?
But to answer your point: Patents.
The fact that "Tech companies sue each other and get import bans all the time" doesn't strike me as being "a non-issue". It's strange that your summary of said "non-issue" comes across so negatively.