I kind of feel like expressions such as the one in the other thread don't really matter..... order of operations isn't really THAT important, worst comes to worst you use unnecessary parenthenses. You never really see silly expressions such as 7 - 4 + 3 x 0 + 1, and in general expressions represent something. e.i., the value of the expression is something else in the word problem your doing, or some real life application. If you knew how to translate the problem into an expression, you know what order it is supposed to be evaluated in. And in general, it is more clear because multiplication isn't usually represented by an 'x', it is quite often just nothing. Division isn't usually a line with dots above and below it, it's often just a horizontal line. In cases like this it is clear what order it is meant to be done in, because if the division line has something with operators in it on either the top or the bottom, obviously those are supposed to be evaluated first, and if it's something like x + y/z (except the line is horizontal), you aren't going to be adding x and y before dividing by z. For multiplication, if it's something like x + yz it is clear you are supposed to multiply first, and if it's z(x + y) it is clear you are supposed to add first.
So the point is that in practice, it doesn't matter a whole lot if you know the order of operations. Just don't write things ambiguously.
PPE: e pretty much nailed it. Heh, I would hope so, with a name like e.