I wonder why somebody would code that part the way they did it. As far as I understand it, they are trying to validate code by blacklisting instead of whitelisting:

(from http://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/11798)
$key = preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9]/i', '', $key);
if ( empty( $key ) )
    die();

If you expect a hash you generated yourself, why don't you test if it preg_matches the spec you used to generate it in the first place? (/^[a-zA-Z0-9]{20}$/ in this case)

Well that and being naive enough to expect $_GET["key"] to always return a string....

Well, Germany does. Schufa Holding AG being the biggest one.

I don't understand that anti-google "hype", which probably was started by Ballmer :-)

There are many hosted mail solutions, every ISP has their own mail service, blackberry does have one too. There's a load of hosted Exchange solutions. Etc, etc, and businesses USE it. If a google employee can read email, why an ISP employee can't? Because it's in their terms of service? ha!

Rolling your own solution is damn expensive and you need a guy who actually knows something about it, that's why most companies are more than happy to outsource it.

whoops :)

Don't know in which country you live, but in "socialist" Germany the highest unemployment rate is among the uneducated. I have yet to meet a long-term unemployed academic who is willing to work and has difficulties to find a job.

Besides that, nobody is going to hire an academic for a car technician position, simply because they would horribly suck at it and were too expensive.

I always sha those stupid questions with a related answer and some number: echo -n MyPet01|shasum -