In Malaysia, Hong Kong and southern China, the number 4 is commonly associated with bad luck, because the pronounciation of "4" and "die" is very close in the Cantonese dialect. Many Malaysians, particularly those of Chinese descent, will avoid staying in houses with street numbers that contain 4, or phone numbers or car registration plates having that fatal number. Of course there are some exceptions: my car number plate is 848. 8 is considered lucky because it sounds like the word for rich in Cantonese. So literally translated, my car plate 848 is "rich die rich", or prosperity in life and the after-life. Sounds pretty good to me!

In PHP, 4 is also a lucky number. PHP's recent growth was because of the power of PHP 4. Last week, I downloaded PHP 5.0.4. I've not been sufficiently impressed with previous versions of PHP5 to actually recommend its use. PHP 5.0.4 is the first version of PHP 5 that I would consider sufficiently stable for production use; PHP 5.0.4 finally passes most of the same Q&A tests I run against PHP4. Good job, guys!