Test file: 1.csv
strlen($ins[1]); // 9
strlen(trim($ins[1])); // 7
$w = preg_replace(‘/[^0-9\.]/Uis’, ”, trim($ins[1]));
strlen($w); // 4
echo $w; // 1.02
echo is_numeric($w); // TRUE
floatval($w); // 1.02

For more information: http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/

For more information: http://americancensorship.org/

• H.R.3261 – Stop Online Piracy Act
• S.968 – PROTECT IP Act of 2011

“The right to petition your government is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Throughout our history, Americans have used petitions to organize around issues they care about from ending slavery, to guaranteeing women’s right to vote, to the civil rights movement.”

So why not sign this one:

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/revisit-its-decision-retired-space-shuttle-enterprise-and-award-it-national-museum-usaf-oh/gm68DlS3

Interested in having a more Web 2.0 interface to your elected representatives? I just recently found out about the Visible Vote application and have since loaded it on my phone: http://visiblevote.us/

It is a great application that gives you news about your national representatives (House and Senate) as well as the ability to vote on specific legislation and polls that Visible Vote then sends tallies to each of the politicians you have loaded. There is even a way to quickly send all of them a message. With all of this being straight from your phone (and Visible Vote has applications for several different handhelds), it’s easy to send a quick message, or get in a few votes from anywhere!

And just for fun, a few internet related bills before Congress. Your thoughts?

Do you ever access facebook from a public Wi-Fi location? You should probably treat Facebook and other social networking sites like you do a bank website, ie. don’t browse insecurely. Public Wi-Fi networks aren’t very safe.

To enable secure connections in Facebook, just hit “Account” in the upper-right hand corner of any Facebook window and go to “Account Settings“.

Remember that picture of my dog that supposedly only my friends can see?

Now imagine that private (but not really) image had all kinds of information in it, like what could be shown in the picture below. Or imagine if it was taken with a new smartphone camera that stores personal information like my location in the photos…

Windows Vista & Windows 7 have a link on the detail tab of every picture property labeled “Remove Properties and Personal Information”. You can select one, or several images at a time. If you are posting a picture online, that you want to keep some form of privacy with, I would suggest using this built in Windows feature.

And for all you Micro$oft haters out there MAC OSX and Linux both require third party software to remove this personal data.

I read this sentence about unsolicited credit card offers and laughed “Opting In: Most consumers prefer to continue to receive offers that may interest them.” (source: http://www.experian.com/credit-education/opting-out.html)

Do people really sign up for credit cards offers they receive unsolicited? Either way, an effective way to control what direct mail you receive (as best as you can, nothing will ever stop it) for five year periods is to register with DMA Choice.org: https://www.dmachoice.org/dma/member/home.action

They have a pretty good tutorial on the hows and whys of direct mailing as well which I found interesting: https://www.dmachoice.org/dma/static/learn_more.jsp

How standards compliant is the browser you use? I was interested in finding the acid test: http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid3/

And as a web developer, I love their mission statement: “Founded in 1998, The Web Standards Project (WaSP) fights for standards that reduce the cost and complexity of development while increasing the accessibility and long-term viability of any site published on the Web. We work with browser companies,authoring tool makers, and our peers to deliver the true power of standards to this medium.”

As making websites cross browser compliant is very much a time consuming endeavor!

To see how they all compared, I took the following tests with Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla FireFox, and Google Chrome. http://acid3.acidtests.org/

6%: Internet Explorer Version8.0.6001.18975 (Compatibility Mode)

20%: Internet Explorer Version 8.0.6001.18975

94%: FireFox Version 3.6.6

100%: Google Chrome Version 7.0.517.44

As the document states “Social networking will always be a tradeoff between safeguarding your privacy and enjoying the benefits of socializing online”… so why not make safeguarding your privacy as secure as the the US Military recommends for it’s service members?