Try loading any Meteor-based site (such as the linked story, or http://www.meteor.com/ itself) with cookies disabled on Chrome or Firefox and watch them break.
(Meteor doesn't appear to trap exceptions when using localStorage/sessionStorage, and even something as simple as "if (window.sessionStorage) ..." may throw an exception.)
Mentioning CDs reminds me that the price of physical CDs on Amazon in some cases has dipped below $0. For some CDs, Amazon throws in the MP3 download (with the usual cloud storage) for "free". The funny thing is, the price of the CD+MP3 is sometimes less than the MP3 alone, even with shipping. Check the Velvet Underground's back catalog for some examples.
I remember reading that longboxes were a way to prop up the LP jacket manufacturers, since the materials and process were similar, but... "citation needed".
This made me smile, but I think Perl is more like Robert Pollard/Guided by Voices. Both seem like kind of a mess to the uninitiated (and even the initiated). Both hit their stride in the mid-90s. And both are still around, remain influential, and are just as productive today, even if they have a lower profile.
That's the thing. Once you have "fixed" PHP, you're left with a brand new language that few people know, won't run your existing code, isn't included in Linux distributions or hosting packages, have no books about it and no answers on StackOverflow.
Of course these things will all happen in time if the fixed version takes hold. But if you're willing to throw out PHP and start anew, you can have all of the above right now by learning Node, Rails, Django, etc.
I think the comment above about needing a Jeremy Ashkenas (that is, a CoffeeScript for PHP) is the only realistic way for a "fixed" PHP to succeed. There needs to be a smooth transition, and a FixedPHP-to-PHP5 compiler could provide it.
I think some organizations see this kind of implementation leakage as a feature, not a bug.
I remember when http://microsoft.com/ began doing external redirects to "default.asp" circa 1997. If you were a "webmaster" (do these exist anymore?), this was a dog whistle. They were not using static .html (or .htm) but not any of the common dynamic methods like .cgi or .shtml either. And using "default" rather than "index" indicated a break from NCSA/Apache convention. They were using a different web server. Those 11 extra characters said a lot.
<a href="/x/"> will work, but will break when someone decides to move "/x" to "/y".
<a href="."> will work from the server, which does an internal redirect, but not on the static version on my local drive I'm going to demo to my boss. (I also have a hunch a significant number of developers aren't aware of "." and don't know this is an option.)
So we end up with <a href="index.html"> for better or worse.
How did we end up with OK/Cancel in the first place?
When I run into an OK/Cancel box (usually on a web page using the generic built-in confirm()), it often feels to me like the meaning would be far more clear if the options were "yes" or "no", no matter which order they're displayed.
Is there a UI 'best practice' reason OK/cancel "won" over yes/no?
I just went through the iTunes "forgot my password" process and had a different experience. According to that box to the side, my new password passed all their requirements, yet on submit it kept rejecting it. I finally got it to accept a password when I stopped trying to use spaces. Are there other characters their back end rejects that the front end allows?
They do solo projects, but I don't think that's analogous. Would Radiohead have been allowed to self-release albums while they were under their major label contract?
This is good for sanity checking the right side of the '@' but detectable things go wrong on the left side sometimes, too. One phenomenon I've been seeing for years is the erroneous "www." prefix, often tacked on to @aol.com and @yahoo.com addresses. I don't think I've seen one of these that hasn't bounced.
I think you're underestimating child-related expenses. Since we're talking about both parents working full-time, just take the cost of child care: http://www.naccrra.org/randd/data/docs/CA.pdf says this California family with 2 kids could be spending over $2000/mo on this alone, depending on how young they are.
I'm not saying they won't necessarily have anything left, but $12k/mo still may not leave them much.
(Meteor doesn't appear to trap exceptions when using localStorage/sessionStorage, and even something as simple as "if (window.sessionStorage) ..." may throw an exception.)