It has become a fulltime jobs of some morons to reverse hype Java for several years now. First it was "Java is slow" myth which was perpetuated. It has since been debunked several times over.

Then it was "applets are slow" myth which unfortunately and erroneously got some hold with "marketing" types.

At the same time we had C# / J# / .NET (Microsoft make up your mind already) which was touted as the next best thing which never happened.

And now they are touting PHP against Java! PHP and Java are complementary in many ways. They are competing only in the minds of retarded few.

BTW: I am overlooking the mini hype about Ruby by Java failures. Ruby-on-Rails has automated CRUD operations which has made some going ga-ga. Look there is a shiny object behind you!

For the last time everybody - PHP is a server-side language for web which competes with JSP or ASP; not Java. PHP excels in having rich set of functions. It has a poor object model and is definitely not well suited for OO development. I don't use PHP when I am looking to develop reusable components.
I have discussed the differences in detail in my earlier articles on this blog (see below).

To understand the value of language you have to understand the fundamental philosophy and structure of a language which enables and encourages (not force) certain set of development actions which in turn leads to better / worse software. In the end languages don't matter as much as people do.