Hiring PHP5 Programmers

My company has placed an ad looking for more PHP5 programmers to work mostly in the social networking area.  We have a coding test that we give to everyone whose resume passes muster.  It's a basic test, includes some CRUD database functions as well as creating a basic Facebook app.  We specify PHP5 all over the place.

But no one who takes the test ever uses any of PHP5's attributes.  Not one test app has come back using classes of any kind other then the Facebook reference.

Am I being too hard on people for this?  Maybe we need to specify that creating classes is recommended if not mandatory?  I don't  know what the answer is, but I know that upon receiving several recent test apps in "PHP5" that have include files that contain only functions, I'm a little depressed.  And yes, I used the quotes around php5 on purpose.

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Is Microsoft buying Facebook a good thing for PHP?

Microsoft is buying a piece of Facebook. What do we all think this means for PHP since Facebook is one of the "web 2.0" leaders built on PHP? The way I see it, here are the options:

1. Facebook continues on its merry path, taking only funding from Microsoft
2. Facebook continues on its merry path, taking funding from Microsoft in addition to some development "resources." Resources here could be people, equipment, and technology. The free people, equipment, and technology probably won't fit very well in a LAMP environment. Pressure to move infrastructure to MS-friendly environment mounts.
3. Microsoft rewrites the whole thing in C#
4. Microsoft learns how simple and scalable PHP is and freaks out, unleashing a FUD campaign the likes of which we've never even dreamed of.
5. Microsoft learns from the open source environment, partially embraces it, and creates PHP.net, a half functioning version of PHP for .net framework.
6. Microsoft learns from the open source environment, fully embraces it, and abandons Windows by creating their own GUI for the next version of Linux.

In reality, I can really only see #1 or #2 happening. Your thoughts?

Facebook.com opens up facebook platform similar to ning.com

Read about the new developer environment for Facebook.com on cnn.com. I can't tell yet if this is Facebook.com adopting some of the Ning.com philosophy of "create your own social network" or if it's just a giant widget factory on steroids.

No longer will Facebook consider itself merely another social network. Instead it is becoming a technology platform on which anyone can build applications for social computing... Outsiders can now develop Internet services on Facebook's infrastructure, he explains, that will have full access to all its members.

developer.facebook.com has more info on the facebook platform. And of course, you have to love that it's built on PHP.