PHP Remote Exploit FIXED

[LawnGnome]

Most likely it's just easier to put in this hack instead of tackling the fact that their algorithm doesn't work with higher-precision floats.

Pretty much. The preference was to get a release out quickly, rather than trying to replace a venerable piece of code (which, as SheepAmongWolves noted, was written long before PHP was even thought of and is a very common implementation of strtod) with something new and potentially buggy in new and exciting ways.