The solution to the first problem is to run the site on server using PHP5, not PHP4.
We may try to replace this function with alternative code to maintain PHP4 compatibility, but we do not plan to keep support for PHP4 indefinatelly (neither Joomla core plans that).
Therefore I would strongly recommend you to migrate your site to environment using PHP5. (if you are with some mass-hosting service, they may have this option, so you just need to ask them to move the site to other server or setup a different configuration for it - check with your server administrator)