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November 1

Text limit in 4000 bytes

So my friend asks me to fill out her university application form for a university in South Korea, and one of the requirements in the application is to fill some sort of personal statement with a maximum size of 4000 bytes.Now I find it really weird, because usually people define the limit as in word limit in essay, or character limit as in SMS or Twitter. But bytes? Is this having something to do with UTF-8 and Korean language? How do you even count it? Fëanor Engineering (talk) 07:53, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

SMS are actually limited to 140 bytes each. The number of characters depends on the code set used. Nil Einne (talk) 08:03, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Should also mention that Concatenated SMS also requires a few bytes for the header to allow recomposition hence have fewer characters per SMS than a single SMS. Nil Einne (talk) 13:00, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In UTF-8 there would be 2 bytes per character. So that would be about 2000 Korean characters. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:31, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Actually a 2-byte UTF-8 sequence can only encode Unicode characters between U+0080 and U+07FF. All Hangul glyphs have values larger than U+07FF, so it takes three bytes to encode one Hangul glyph. So 4000 bytes would only allow 1333 Hangul glyphs encoded in UTF-8. Encoding in UTF-16 or UCS-2 would allow 2000 Hangul glyphs, if such an encoding is allowed by the university. CodeTalker (talk) 13:56, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a chance you could contact the university admissions office and ask what coding they use, or ask for additional technical details regarding the size requirement? And if you're concerned about it affecting her application, just contact them in your own name and don't mention whom you're helping. I doubt that it's something that is of relevance to the application itself (it's not like the word limit that you mention, which might be imposed so that the admissions folks don't have to read ten-page essays), so they probably wouldn't mind explaining how they calculate the total size. Might as well throw in something extra, like "I'd like to know beforehand, so I don't write up something that's a little too long and have to weaken it by cutting parts after I've finished". Nyttend (talk) 18:05, 3 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

LG-639 Widgets

A webpage listing all the widgets available along with a guidance on how to install each widgets please? 103.230.106.4 (talk) 18:33, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Since no one answered this, what I will say is that there appears to be no centralised list of all of them. Instead they come and go with apps. If you install an app, it may come with a widget. On the web you can find some lists of what others think are good widgets, but it is not exhaustive. Our Android widget page is not up to scratch. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:14, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

November 2

human

[Question moved to WP:RD/S by Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi.] Tevildo (talk) 21:05, 2 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Угьш ъькяея шгся сяякеБ redux

On 24 October I left a hasty note asking "Угьш ъькяея шгся сяякеБ", which was reverted as "gibberish". I repeat the question - in a more readable form: "What makes this happen?" "This" as astute readers will have realised, is a keyboard suddenly switching to Cyrillic. Platform is one of the the library's Windows 7 machines.

Supplementary, of course, is "How do I get it back to normal if it happens again?"

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:43, 2 November 2016 (UTC).[reply]

This is the relevant page from Microsoft. This is a more advanced troubleshooting procedure if the obvious steps don't work. See also Language bar. Tevildo (talk) 00:04, 3 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm curious about how you typed that. When I switch to Russian (on MacOS) and try to type "What makes this happen?", I get "Црфе ьфлуы ершы рфззут?". How many wildly different Cyrillic layouts exist? —Tamfang (talk) 20:21, 3 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Tamfang I too am curious. I did not do any of the steps Tevildo mentions (and no admin access I think), useful though they may be in future to fix such an issue. At most I may have pressed CtrlAlt\ or some such. Code pages such as Windows-1251 and Macintosh Cyrillic encoding might be relevant. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:52, 3 November 2016 (UTC).[reply]

I, too, wondered; the second word has six letters versus five in "makes", and the "happen" word has the second letter doubled, as if it were "haapen". Of course, if you made a couple of typos, that would resolve both issues. Nyttend (talk) 22:53, 3 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Угьш ъькяея шгся сяякеБ
What makses this issken

Assuming that the unique letters and some critical ones (H, S, etc.) are correct, I get this transcription. An odd set of typos, but when the computer isn't putting out what you meant to put in, it's not surprising that you'd not catch some mistakes. Nyttend (talk) 22:58, 3 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And then it occurred to me to try working backward: pretend I'm accustomed to the MacOS Cyrillic keyboard and try to type “Угьш ъькяея шгся сяякеБ” on the Latin keyboard; I get “Eumi ]mrztz iucz czzrt<”. —Tamfang (talk) 20:12, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

November 3

Adobe products for students

Which non-free adobe softwares are meant for students. If I am looking for time pass, not professional or business works. 1.39.39.187 (talk) 14:06, 3 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Many schools use site licenses with Adobe to provide students access to non-free products. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:06, 3 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Transparent cell copying in Excel

In Windows Paint, it's possible to copy/paste blank space: if you check "Transparent Selection" in the "Select" dropdown, all pixels that are precisely the same color as the secondary color (i.e. the one that's created when you use erase) will get ignored when you copy/paste part of the screen. If your background color is white, you can copy

1 1

into

1 1

and get

That's all very convenient, but I'm trying to work with Excel. In this program, it seems that empty cells are always treated as "actively" empty, i.e. comparable to being treated as white pixels in Paint instead of being totally ignored, as in my example. Is there a possibility of copy/pasting "blank" or "transparent" cells in this manner, so that when I paste an empty cell onto a cell with contents, the target cell remains unchanged? Basically, I'm in a situation with the following cells:

1 1 1 1 1 1
 1 1 1 1 1 1

I'd like to end up with a single row of 111111111111 without retyping everything or copy/pasting individual cells (this is a highly simplified version of my real situation), but I've not been able to figure it out with Google or by talking with my library reference desk. It's always been easy to do this with vertical stuff, e.g. taking

and putting it into a single column (just move it to Notepad; empty cells become tabs, and use find/replace to delete the tabs), but Notepad doesn't have a way to get rid of line breaks as it does column breaks. Nyttend (talk) 18:14, 3 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Try this. Select the column or row you want to paste into. Right click and select "Paste special". Select the checkbox that says "Skip Blanks". Select "OK." This seems to work in Excel 2013. --Jayron 32 18:26, 3 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Works, all right. It totally avoids the risk of transcription errors while saving a ton of time. Thanks a lot! Nyttend (talk) 18:36, 3 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A more spreadsheety solution would be to create a new row, enter "=Concatenate(A1,B1)" in C1 and drag across. If they are really "1", then "=A1+B1" or just pressing the Sigma button will do.

If you want to get rid of line-breaks in text, consider using Notepad++ which has regex search and replace.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:58, 3 November 2016 (UTC).[reply]

Thanks for those, too. The situation actually wasn't just ones, and I've encountered other situations in which I didn't want an empty cell to get pasted on top of a cell with contents, so this route the thing I needed best in the long run. Nyttend (talk) 22:51, 3 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

November 4

Is there any current manufacturer of Canadian multilingual keyboards?

I would like to know whether keyboards compliant with CAN/CSA Z243.200.92 and approved by the Office québécois de la langue française still exist. I wasn’t able to find a recently produced keyboard in e-commerce websites (eBay, Amazon) which can be shipped to Europe. I would like to test it. Thanks in advance.--Carnby (talk) 16:18, 4 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Getting the most out of a laptop battery, when all you want is a typewriter

How can I obtain the longest running time when I only want to type a text on my laptop? Is any OS (maybe some Linux dist) optimized for this? I don't need any fancy graphics, indeed, I don't need any at all. If necessary I can work in a command-line type of environment, no matter how ugly it looks like. If emacs is available, that would make me happy, but it's not a must.--Hofhof (talk) 18:11, 4 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Use a Linux distro and boot to command-line, I guess. emacs is available on every general-purpose distro, and it works just fine in a terminal (unsurprisingly, as emacs is older than modern personal computers). I'm not sure you'll see much of a difference with modern hardware though. But I could be wrong, and obviously you can experiment and compare battery life with a full GUI environment versus CLI. If you really want to maximize battery life, you'll likely want to do some fiddling with system settings, including possibly the kernel. PowerTOP will likely be useful for figuring out what's using power, and you can find tons more advice with Web searches for things like "linux laptop power saving". (If you settle on a distro, try adding your distro name to the search as well.) --47.138.165.200 (talk) 23:10, 4 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Building on this, some distributions, such as Ubuntu, offer server or minimal versions that install without a graphical user interface. Otherwise, many will install a GUI by default, which you can uninstall or disable on startup ([1]). In addition to PowerTOP, this page lists a few ways of getting battery statistics from the command line. Graphics aren't the only thing to worry about, however. Any process running in the background can put a drain on the battery, however slight. With that in mind, you could look at lightweight Linux distributions that run only essential services to save on space and resources. clpo13_(talk) 23:27, 4 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I largely agree with 47. An issue with "however slight" is dimishing returns. Modern computers and OSes are quite effective already at saving power during periods of low usage, so while you will likely get some savings from turning of non essential services, the level often won't be that high. You're quickly going to reach a level where you're talking about minutes or even seconds of savings on hours of usage. Especially if you avoid installing (including preinstalled by the computer manufacturer) unnecessary junk. I'm assuming of course the OP wants to be able to see what's on the display so there's a big chunk of power usage you can't actually affect much, and what you can do is mostly dependent on brightness and what you see on the bulk of the screen. Also since these power saving modes are generally reliant on interaction between the OS/drivers and hardware, you need to make sure your OS is sufficiently advanced to use them, otherwise you could increase power usage. Nil Einne (talk) 13:19, 5 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A couple suggestions:

1) Use light colored text, maybe green or red, on a black background. Most of the pixels are in the background, and keeping that black may limit power usage by the display. You can change the color once done typing.

2) Write up and edit your text on paper first. Then, once it is perfected, type it in. This avoids having the laptop on during the thinking and editing processes. StuRat (talk) 15:44, 5 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say 1) is outright wrong. And a bad idea too, if you care about the strain placed on your eyes.

2) is not within the OP's question. He clearly asked about how to use a computer efficiently. Llaanngg (talk) 18:18, 5 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

1 is sometimes true, depending on the technology, which is why I said "may" instead of "will".

2 is within the range of the Q. To use a laptop most efficiently, you will only use it for what is necessary. Staring at the screen, wasting power, while trying to think of what else to say, is not efficient use of laptop power. StuRat (talk) 03:58, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

To be pedantic. Black pixel power-saving depends on the the technology that the screen uses. Do black interfaces really save power on AMOLED displays?. Total agree with installing a min linux distro though. Puppy Linux is very small without having lots of things running in the background and it runs emacs. Working (or typing) in a dark corner of the room obviously helps to keep the screen brighness down but from your question I guess your asking about using it places where there are no sockets. In which case, consider a multi purpose Power Bank. How to Charge a Laptop With a Power Bank--Aspro (talk) 18:23, 5 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Buy a AlphaSmart Neo2, made by by Renaissance Learning. Less than $30 used, and it is so durable that the used ones look like new ones. Great keyboard. Runs for over 700 hours on three AA batteries.

I bought one and after a month I still use it daily, so I bought two more in case one or two of them ever breaks. One of the best decisions I have ever made, IMO. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:51, 5 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

November 5

A Step Back

I had an IED hard-disk with Windows XP doing fine. Then due to some unavoidable fault both the motherboard and processor (AMD Sempron) had to be changed to their a bit more modern avatars. RAM was also upgraded. Fortunately this new motherboard (which was not exactly brand-new), was able to get along with old IED hard-disk. But the shopkeeper who was hired to take all this task suggested that let's change system from XP to Windows 7 (perhaps he was right because inspite of all his fitting and unfitting and refitting and booting and rebooting and again, the PC wasn't working). And I agreed. He installed Windows 7 on the old 260 gb disk, ensuring me that only partition C: where XP is, will be overwritten by 7 and all other partitions will remain as they are. But after 7 was installed well and proper, I lost all my most useful things that are too old to be bought but fitted like glove-in-hand with my current projects. Can someone please suggest some way with which I can get rid of this new OS and get back my old disk.124.253.147.93 (talk) 21:36, 5 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Did you ever take a backup? The disk sounds as if it was reformatted. If you really want XP and old software you may have to install it again from the installation media (CDs). With so much new hardware Microsoft may consider this to be a totally new install and not issue a key. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:11, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It may very well be that the other partitions were preserved. But what's on them? By default Windows pretty much stores everything on the system partition and has since well before XP. Unless someone made a backup anything that was on the system partition (the one you called C) including any personal document etc will be long gone. In future, you should backup befoe making major changes. You should also have backuped anyway. Nil Einne (talk) 13:06, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What this user meant is that they lost installed programs, not data (which were probably on a different partition). Whether it is possible to return WinXP depends on how Win7 was installed. For instance, was partition C formatted or not. Ruslik_Zero 20:05, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What is the name of this sorting algorithm?

What is the name of the sorting algorithm that works like this?
If the list has just one number, the list is already sorted and nothing is done.
If the list has two number those 2 numbers are sorted by selection sort
If the list has more than 2 numbers it works like this:
1-First you sort of the first two numbers of the list by selecting sort.
2-Then you pick the third number and compare with the first one of the list, if the number is smaller or equal to the first one, you put it BEFORE the first, if not you compare with the second, if its smaller or equal to the second you put it before the second, if he is higher than the second number, nothing need to be done (since he is already in the correct place, after the second number)
3-Now you do the same with fourth number, comparing it up to the third number, when checking where fifth number should go you compare the fifith number with all numbers up to the fourth one, and this goes on until the last number of the list is compared and you discover where you should put him.
4-Remember that when you discover where a number should be, you don't need to continue.
I can give an example if needed.201.79.57.169 (talk) 22:21, 5 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like you're describing insertion sort. CodeTalker (talk) 23:03, 5 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

November 6

Spread test

what is spread test in mobile set? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sandesh.Gautam sg (talk • contribs) 03:58, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

See Spread spectrum and Chip (CDMA). This forum thread may also be useful. Tevildo (talk) 09:58, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Command line email clients

Hi all, I am looking for a way to do the following with a command line program on a GNU/Linux system:

Check a certain email address every 10 minutes.
If there are new messages, bounce (i. e. forward without changes) them (as "blind copies") to all email addresses listed in some text file.

(The idea is to turn an ordinary email address into a "mailing list" in the dumbest possible way.) Which program would you suggest and can you point me to a tutorial that covers the necessary information? -- 77.22.215.46 (talk) 17:31, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

getmail or fetchmail (on a cron job) to get the mail (that's an MTA). Then as (the MDA) procmail, maildrop, or sieve to process and act on the received mail. Personally I use getmail and then an MDA I wrote myself ('cos I thought procmail's rules were naff, and I have a weakness for reinventing wheels). -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 18:36, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why not just use actual mailing list software? GNU Mailman can be managed entirely from the command line. --47.138.165.200 (talk) 22:00, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]