How close was the Soviet Union to collapsing during WW2?

Question: Are there any sources or reports which explain how close the country was to collapsing under the Nazi assault? By 'collapse' I mean 'completely lacking either the willpower (as seen by France in 1940 after the fall of Paris and the collapse of the line on the Somme) or ability (as seen by Poland as they ran out of territory to defend) such that they would not be able to amount any effective defense and need to sue for peace as soon as possible'?
Comment: Everyone was running out of men in 1945, it's what happens when you're fighting for 4+ years.  The 'same intensity' would not have been needed since the Germans would have been that much closer to defeat.
Comment: @PieterGeerkens Hitler and Hitler loyalists had the Russians "running out of men" and on the verge of collapse for most of the period 1941 to 1944
Comment: How do you measure "closeness"? On what scale?
Comment: It is very difficult to speculate about December '41, but I remember reading a comment that by late spring '45 the Soviets had run out of men, and could not have maintained the same intensity of fighting if the war had stretched into '46.
Comment: 1) request for reference (2) subjective
Comment: @TeaDrinker: Speculation by an enemy is always susceptible to optimism. The report I read was compiled in the early or mid 90's by an historian with access to declassified Soviet documents. Unfortunately I didn't note the source beyond that it appeared credible, which leaves it in the *anecdotal* zone.
Comment: @FelixGoldberg: I provided that definition.
Comment: @MarkC.Wallace I have clarified my question, is it better now?
Answer: In the "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," historian William Shirer contended that the Soviet Union was close to collapse at the end of 1942, because it was on the verge of losing either the Caucasus oil, or at least access to it, via the Caspian Sea and Volga. Only the failure of the German offensives at Stalingrad and the Caucasus prevented this result.
The collapse might not have been total, but Russia would have been forced into a purely defensive war for local "strongpoints," Leningrad, Moscow, and the oil between the latter and the Urals.
I would challenge this on two grounds. First, Lend Lease could have given the Soviet Union enough oil to resume the offensive. And two, even if the Soviet Union fought a defensive war until 1945, that would have been "good enough" for Anglo-American victories in North Africa, Italy, and Normandy to win the war, with the Anglo-Americans linking up with the Soviet army well east of where they actually did, possibly on Soviet soil.
Comment: @jwenting The 3rd Reich tried that in 1940, *before ever invading USSR*, and failed. That was when it was a one-front war. (So naturally, Hitler opened a second front.) BTW, even if USSR fell, that doesn't free up everything. You have to occupy the region to hold it, and it was a pretty big region. Yes maybe the entire luftwaffe would be freed up, but like I said, they already tried that in 1940 when they could use the entire luftwaffe, and failed.
Comment: @DrZ214 The Germans never really tried to invade the UK. The battle of Britain was NOT taking control of Britain, but coerce the Brits into a peace plan ... "On the German side, no plans had been made for an invasion of Britain before the Germans launched their offensive against France, nor were any made even when the collapse of France was assured. German leader Adolf Hitler evidently counted on the British government's agreeing to a compromise peace on the favourable terms he was prepared to offer, and so he had no desire to press the conflict to a decisive conclusion." Britannica
Comment: @jwenting: "The English Channel is the world's largest anti-tank ditch."
Comment: agreed, it's always been my understanding Germany needed the Caucasus oil more than the Russians did ...
Comment: OTOH, and that's going into different what-if scenarios than you do, had the Soviet Union collapsed in 1942/3 that would have freed up a lot of German forces for operation Sea Lion, the UK would likely have collapsed, and the US never entered the war in Europe in strength. They'd likely have made a separate peace with Germany after whipping Japan in the Pacific.
Comment: @DevSolar: Overlord was never in the cards in 1943, and barely so in 1944 (it was then considered a 50-50 proposition). Husky was different; the Allies could at least attack the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, if not the mainland. There were alternatives of landing in the Balkans,or South France to link up with local guerrillas. But probably the best plan would have been an overland strike across Iran to secure/rescue Baku and the Caspian supply line.
Comment: @Tea Drinker:In a sense, the Caucausus oil was almost a non-issue for Germany, because the Russians destroyed the oil wells before capture. By the time they could get back up and running, it would be about 1945. And that's if the Allies didn't bomb them from Iran.
Comment: @TomAu yes, but there's things that can float on water, and fly over it... Not saying it would have happened, but without the Luftwaffe being tied up for 75% in the USSR it'd be available for a far more extensive campaign against the UK. We're talking what-if scenarios anyway, no saying what'd happen if the USSR were to fall in late '41 or early '42.
Comment: Let's note that, by the end of 1942, *the western Allies had no bridgehead in Europe*. With the USSR forced into purely defensive fighting by late 1942, and the resulting resources freed up, I would think twice about Operation Husky / Overlord...
Comment: The Soviet Union was on the verge of Collapse sept 1941  with the German Army about to sack Moscow.   Which would have happened if not for the coldest winter of the 20th century hitting the Germans causing them to pause their offensive for  a month.   Without that pause Moscow would have fallen and the Soviet Union would have lost their domestic rail hub.   The primary way they transported all their troops and supplies throughout the war.
Answer: A lot of history books give the impression that Germany could have defeated Russia if they had just captured Moscow or Leningrad, or done some other thing. These books feature cliff hanger-like statements like, "The Wehrmacht came within so-and-so many kilometers of Moscow" and so forth.
In reality, the Germans were fighting a losing battle and had no chance of defeating the Soviet Union. This can be ascertained by a close reading of military analyses of the subject. One of the most detailed accounts is Alan Clark's book "Barbarossa", however, Clark was more of a historian, not a soldier. I have found accounts such as Von Manstein's "Lost Victories" to be much more useful, although be forwarned it is very dry reading. Earl Ziemke's "Stalingrad to Berlin" is another good source. Among more modern authors, Albert Seaton's "Battle of Moscow" is useful and Eastern Front specialist John Erickson's books such as "The Road to Stalingrad". Once again, Erickson is a highly technical scholar, so do not expect adventure stories. Like Manstein, it is mostly about unit movements and interactions.
Comment: the Germans could indeed have won "if" they'd done a lot of things they didn't. IF everything fell together in their favour, IF the winter of 41/42 and the one 42/43 hadn't been as bad, IF Stalin hadn't pulled forces from the Chinese border to shore up those in Stalingrad and elsewhere, IF the Kriegsmarine had been more successful in interdicting the Murmansk convoys, etc. etc. In the end, what happened happened and everything else is tainted.
Comment: Well done. For a change.
Comment: @TylerDurden,  Moscow was the most strategic city in the Soviet Union.   It was the primary supply depo for the Soviet Army,  the primary transportation (rail and road) hub of the entire country.   If the Germans had taken Moscow in Oct-Dec of 1941  The Soviet Union's logistically would have faced a significantly harder war.   Their ability to absorb and distribute western lend lease aid would also have been under threat.   And it was the timely appearance of the  Russian Winter which made the assault on Moscow pause long enough for soviet re-enforcements to arrive.
Answer: Updated answer, based on research found on Russian site "Military history" (in English) regarding attack on Moscow in August 1941:

Logistics of Barbarossa - Germans very aggressively build railroads to supply attack, regauging 20 km of rails per day from Russian (wide) to German gauge in summer 41 (on multiple railroad lines)
Consequences of attack on Moscow on August 41 - taking over Moscow would isolate northern Red army in Leningrad,  which would disintegrate and allow German armies continue East, destroying remains of Red army by summer 42.
Hitler's mistake - most important military decision of 20th century.

Please note that above analysis is Russian military research.
Above link suggest that Germany lost the war because of a single strategic mistake: As panzer armies were closing to Moscow in August 41, Hitler redirected his panzer armies south to Kiev, then moved them back, losing time and operational tempo. Also, because they moved on own tracks (and not on trains), tanks needed track replacement after return (and were not operational - repairing them in the field was logistical nightmare).
In August, defense of Moscow has only 26 new untrained divisions (facing 60 veteran German divisions). Continuing on Moscow (which was most important transportation and communication (telephones) hub), Germany would split railroad transportation and communication, and Kiev defenses would collapse anyway. Even now, all trains from north to south go through Moscow.
It is entirely possible that if Germans would take over Moscow in August 41,  Japan could attacked USSR during battle for Moscow (or possibly Stalingrad), opening second front from Manchuria, instead of attacking USA in Pearl Harbor (or delaying that attack for few months).
When Soviet spy Richard Sorge find out in mid-september 41 about no imminent plans of attack of USSR, it allowed Stalin to move divisions from Siberia (used and trained to winter warfare) to (soviet) western front, defend Moscow. This was real case when a spy changed history (and paid for it with his life).
Especially close to collapse (best time for attack) was first war winter, when industry just moved to Ural (production was not restarted), and German submarines ruled North Atlantic, sinking much of the supplies to Murmansk.
There were 3 routes for supplies from Allies to reach USSR:

via Murmansk (could be blocked by submarines and ships from Norway), and untenable if Lenigrad fell
via Vladivostok (would be cut if Japanese cut trans-Siberian railway), and
southern route via Iran. Cut 2/3rds of the supply routes, and you prevent building army reserves which led to winter victory in Stalingrad (first defeat of Germany).

Fortunately, Ribentrop-Molotov secret pact allowed Stalin (and Zhukov) to move enough resources to Far East, sufficiently trounce Japanese Army in Khalkin-Gol in 1939, which decreased Japanese Army's standing, prevented that attack, and instead allowed Japanese Navy to prevail on focusing on navy-related war, resulting in attacking USA in Pearl Harbor. Without Pearl Harbor attack, it could take another year to start mobilization of US manufacturing (or it would be much slower), so Germany (and Axis) would have better chance to win in this war of attrition.
Comment: The links from the Russian website are actually chapters from the book 'Hitler's Panzers East: World War II Reinterpreted', by R.H.S. Stolfi, which appears to be fully available on the site. I'm not sure whether this counts as "Russian military research" or not... :)
Comment: There would be no need to keep from sending troops to Moscow even if the Japanese invaded, and weren't routed as they had been in 1939 at Nomonhan.  There's nothing near the Manchurian border that was valuable and ground could always be retaken.
Comment: If Japanese took over Trans-Sibirian railroad (which goes close to south border of Russia), whole Siberia would be lost. And those Siberian divisions, trained and equipped to fight in cold, were the key to both winter counter-offensives (Moscow and Stalingrad).
Comment: This is all Soviet propaganda. 100 thousands of well-trained German troops vs. a few untrained Russian ones. Lol
Answer:
Are there any sources or reports which explain how close the country was to collapsing under the Nazi assault? By 'collapse' I mean 'completely lacking either the willpower (as seen by France in 1940 after the fall of Paris and the collapse of the line on the Somme) or ability (as seen by Poland as they ran out of territory to defend) such that they would not be able to amount any effective defense and need to sue for peace as soon as possible'?

No.  Knowing how 'close' they were would mean knowing what variables would be needed to bring them over into collapsing.  Only conjecture exists in the form of taking Moscow in 1941 or the Caucasus in 1942.  Comparable is the idea that the Germans were defeated before the war even began due to their lack of planning and foresight, as well as their failure of securing the encirclement at Smolensk spelled their eventual defeat.
Answer: Stalin himself officially declared for the whole nation that very close, in the famous Order No 227 ("Not one step back!"). This unlikely to be a very good propaganda so probably true.
Comment: IMO it was good propaganda, in the sense of helping achieve the desired result, to impress the life-and-death situation upon the citizenry.
Answer: Acknowledging the other answers which have indicated that there is no way of really knowing how close the Soviet Union came to collapsing during the Second World War, mainly because there is no way of knowing what might have been the key or critical variables that would have brought about a collapse with any certainty. Nevertheless, both the Axis and Allied leadership were necessarily vitally interested in the question at the time and there are some measures which can be speculated upon based on the planning and policies of the time which were inevitably directed towards causing or preventing just such a regime collapse.
There are two broad ways to look at the question which mirror the planning options considered by the German High Command, and which perhaps coincidentally, also address the two kinds of Soviet collapse mentioned in the original question.

The first is the possibility of a political collapse resulting in the
Soviet state ceasing to function and thereby losing its ability to
organize further effective resistance.
The second is the possibility of the Soviet state losing access to
essential resources needed to maintain stability and offer a viable defense.

Which of these two approaches offered the surest path to success was a point of contention among the German leadership at the time, and has continued to remain a subject of vigorous discussion since. The key strategic question of whether the objective of Operation Barbarossa itself should have been directed towards political targets such as Moscow and Leningrad, or towards more economically critical objectives to the south rests upon which of the above approaches is given priority, and the wavering of German strategic direction during the 1941 campaign can be directly attributed to their changing assessment of the utility of each approach.
How close was the Soviet state to political collapse in WWII?
This is the most difficult part of the question to address. There is no real evidence of imminent political collapse of the Soviet state in the Second World War, and a collapse of this kind is very likely to occur very rapidly and in a non-linear and chaotic fashion. So it is difficult to even speculate just how close things might have been at various times - a dramatic event at a key moment could have made all the difference. The Fuhrer Directive for Operation Barbarossa(1) stipulated that the campaign in the East was to be won by destroying the Red Army decisively in the first weeks of operations. Hitler's declaration to his generals that they had "only  to  kick  in  the  front  door  and  the  whole  rotten  Russian  edifice  will  come  tumbling  down"(2) indicated his belief that a political collapse would follow directly from the Red Army's rapid demise. However despite the dramatic early German successes driving their armies deep into Soviet territory and destroying the Soviet border armies and Red Air Force, the Soviet regime held firm. Reports that Stalin suffered a mental collapse in those first disastrous days are exaggerated(3), and by the time the United States President's special envoy Harry Hopkins visited the Soviet Union in August 1941 to investigate the situation he was convinced that the Soviet leadership were resolute and had matters under control. Hopkins was granted full access to the Soviet leadership and was persuaded by Stalin's personal conviction that the German Army would be unable to sustain it's blitzkreig style of warfare in the trackless wildernesses of the Soviet Union(4). Stalin appears to have had a rational appreciation of the German limitations and was fully aware of the scale of military mobilization underway in the Soviet interior working to replace the massive losses already sustained, so even in the darkest days it does not appear that the Soviet leadership lost faith in their ability to withstand the German invasion. Coupled with the growing understanding of the Soviet people of what defeat at the hands of the Nazi invaders implied, the Soviet regime was able to maintain control and authorize whatever means were required to meet the German threat.
German planners, such as Chief of the Army's General Staff, General Franz Halder, who continued to favor the effort to engineer a direct political collapse of the Soviet Union, urged an immediate attack towards Moscow as the best means to quickly draw the Red Army into battle and defeat the relentless waves of Soviet reserves which were appearing in unexpected numbers despite the spectacular early German successes. However by this stage, the attrition of the German spearheads and the onset of poor weather, caused the German leadership to begin directing their attention towards economic objectives in the south, which were gaining greater significance as the prospect of a more drawn-out campaign loomed.
How close was the Soviet state to economic collapse in WWII?

The question of economic collapse has a more empirical aspect which lends itself to a more scientific approach. In the preparation of plans for the German invasion of the Soviet Union the chief German economic strategists produced a study of the Soviet economy which resulted in the determination of an objective line for the operation, known as the A-A Line, extending from Archangel in the Arctic, to Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea, which if attained by the German invasion would deny any surviving Soviet state to the east an economic base deemed capable of threatening the German occupation west of the line for the foreseeable future. As a simplistic first answer, it might be assumed that if the German intelligence was sound, and the historical German invasion fell far short of attaining anything near the A-A Line, then the Soviet state historically should have retained access to the resources it needed to both maintain itself and continue to present a military challenge to the invaders.
A more nuanced study of the mechanisms and possibilities of a collapse of the Soviet economy in the Second World War can be found in Mark Harrison's The USSR and Total War: Why didn't the Soviet economy collapse in 1942? His thesis describes how the Soviet economy might have collapsed due to human failure, even where access to resources had not been completely denied. In short it reflects a trade-off between the willingness of the participants in the economy to continue to support the war effort versus the temptations and pressures they may have felt to abandon their efforts. Harrison claims that this process is non-linear with an accelerating potential for collapse as the rewards for loyalty become less dependable, and the possible rewards for defection become greater and more realistically attainable. Historically, according to Harrison, the Soviet state was able to only barely meet the basic needs of its population, but the potential payoff of allowing the Soviet state to fail, with the horrific prospect of Nazi subjugation, was never an attractive option to the Soviet people despite their hardships. His analysis also demonstrates the importance of the Lend-Lease support provided by the Western powers and how its significance extended well beyond the relatively few tanks and planes sent, with food, fuel and transportation shipments having a key role, as outlined in Food and other strategic deliveries to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease Act, 1941-45.
Conclusion.
The available evidence does not seem to support the idea that the Soviet Union was ever facing an imminent prospect of either political or economic collapse during the Second World War. German assessments made in the planning of the operation appear to have been unrealistic, due in part to inadequate intelligence, and more significantly, due to a complete failure to understand the implications of their policy of fighting a War of Annihilation in the east which gave the Soviet people little option but to support their regime and redouble their efforts on the battlefields, farms and factory floors, despite all the hardships they faced.
Comment: They say that generals always fight the last war.  In WWI, Germany won on the Eastern front due to Tsarist Russia's political collapse.
Answer:
How close was the Soviet Union to collapsing during WW2?

Short Answer
If not for heroic action by the Soviet Army at Moscow, the coldest European winter of the 20th Century, a poor German logistics line, and massive western aid the Soviet Union might have collapsed.   We know this because Stalin made peace overtures to Hitler through Sweden and gave orders to evacuate his Capital Oct 15, 1941.   If Moscow had fallen the Soviet war effort would have been exponentially more difficult.

Detailed Answer
Stalin had made an alliance with Hitler in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact Aug 23, 1939.   Hitler broke that agreement June 22, 1941 when he invaded the Soviet Union Operation Barbarossa.
Operation Barbarossa was code name for the German invasion of the Soviet Union which was the largest military offensive in the history of warfare.  From June to Dec of 1941 it claimed the lives of 5 million Soviet Soldiers or about 10 times as many lives as America lost in the WWII, European and Pacific theatres.  The Soviet Union was pretty close to collapse after that onslaught.  On Oct 15, Stalin ordered the Communist Party, the Army Leadership, and the Civilian Government to evacuate Moscow.
Hitler invaded in June, by Sept they were at the outskirts of Moscow.  In the opening action in the Battle of Moscow Sept 1941, the Germans shattered the Soviet's first line of defense and took 500,000 soviet soldiers prisoners.  Leaving only 90,000 Soviet soldiers and 150 tanks with no reserves to defend the Soviet Capital.  Then the Russian Winter hit along with the German supply problems caused the Germans to halt their advance on the city for a month.   By the Time the Germans continued their assault they were facing 30 new divisions and a greatly inforced Soviet defense.  The Germans were turned away from Moscow, and then their advance was shattered in their defeat at Stalingrad, the turning point in the war in Europe.
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Joseph Stalin
  Stalin was convinced of Hitler's integrity and ignored warnings from his military commanders that Germany was mobilizing armies on its eastern front. When the Nazi blitzkrieg struck in June 1941, the Soviet Army was completely unprepared and immediately suffered massive losses.
Stalin was so distraught at Hitler's treachery that he hid in his office for several days. By the time Stalin regained his resolve, German armies occupied all of the Ukraine and Belarus, and its artillery surrounded Leningrad.  To make matters worse, the purges of the 1930s had depleted the Soviet Army and government leadership to the point where both were nearly dysfunctional.

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battle of Moscow
  The first blow took the Soviets completely by surprise when the 2nd Panzer Group, returning from the south, took Oryol, just 121 km (75 mi) south of the Soviet first main defense line.[248] Three days later, the Panzers pushed on to Bryansk, while the 2nd Army attacked from the west.[276] The Soviet 3rd and 13th Armies were now encircled. To the north, the 3rd and 4th Panzer Armies attacked Vyazma, trapping the 19th, 20th, 24th and 32nd Armies.[248] Moscow's first line of defense had been shattered. The pocket eventually yielded over 500,000 Soviet prisoners, bringing the tally since the start of the invasion to three million. The Soviets now had only 90,000 men and 150 tanks left for the defense of Moscow.[277]
The German government now publicly predicted the imminent capture of Moscow and convinced foreign correspondents of a pending Soviet collapse.[278] On 13 October, the 3rd Panzer Group penetrated to within 140 km (87 mi) of the capital.[248] Martial law was declared in Moscow. Almost from the beginning of Operation Typhoon, however, the weather worsened. Temperatures fell while there was continued rainfall. This turned the unpaved road network into mud and slowed the German advance on Moscow.[279] Additional snows fell which were followed by more rain, creating a glutinous mud that German tanks had difficulty traversing, whereas the Soviet T-34, with its wider tread, was better suited to negotiate.[280] At the same time, the supply situation for the Germans rapidly deteriorated.[281] On 31 October, the German Army High Command ordered a halt to Operation Typhoon while the armies were reorganized. The pause gave the Soviets, far better supplied, time to consolidate their positions and organize formations of newly activated reservists.[282][283] In little over a month, the Soviets organized eleven new armies that included 30 divisions of Siberian troops. These had been freed from the Soviet Far East after Soviet intelligence assured Stalin that there was no longer a threat from the Japanese.[284] During October and November 1941, over 1,000 tanks and 1,000 aircraft arrived along with the Siberian forces to assist in defending the city.

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Turning Point of World War II in Europe
  More than four million combatants fought in the gargantuan struggle at Stalingrad between the Nazi and Soviet armies. Over 1.8 million became casualties. More Soviet soldiers died in the five-month battle than Americans in the entire war. But by February 2, 1943, when the Germans trapped in the city surrendered, it was clear that the momentum on the Eastern Front had shifted. The Germans would never fully recover.

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Stalingrad at 75, the Turning Point of World War II in Europe
  Hitler and the German High Command (Oberkommando des Heeres, or OKH), were confident that the Soviet Union would fall within six weeks. At first, their prediction seemed correct: the attack in June 1941 caught Stalin unawares, and the Red Army unprepared. By December, the Red Army had suffered nearly five million casualties.
But despite enduring staggering losses, the Red Army continued to resist. In August 1941, senior members of the Wehrmacht began growing increasingly uneasy. The Chief of the OKH staff, General Franz Halder, noted in his diary that ""It is becoming ever more apparent that the Russian colossus…. Has been underestimated by us…. At the start of the war we reckoned with about 200 enemy divisions. Now we have already counted 360… When a dozen have been smashed, then the Russian puts up another dozen."
In October, the Wehrmacht launched Operation Typhoon, the effort to take Moscow and end the war by Christmas. But as the weather grew bitterly cold, the German offensive ground to a halt, and was then pushed back by a Soviet counteroffensive. The front line froze in place some two hundred kilometers west of Moscow – and 1400 kilometers east of Berlin.

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Lend-Lease: How American supplies aided the USSR in its darkest hour
  "Now they say that the allies never helped us, but it can't be denied that the Americans gave us so many goods without which we wouldn't have been able to form our reserves and continue the war," Soviet General Georgy Zhukov said after the end of WWII.
"We didn't have explosives, gunpowder. We didn't have anything to charge our rifle cartridges with. The Americans really saved us with their gunpowder and explosives. And how much sheet steel they gave us! How could we have produced our tanks without American steel? But now they make it seem as if we had an abundance of all that. Without American trucks we wouldn't have had anything to pull our artillery with."
Hitler vs. Stalin: How Russia Defeated Nazi Germany at the Gates of Moscow
  Would the capture of Moscow have altered the outcome of World War II? Losing their capital has often led nations to seek peace. Moscow was more than the administrative capital of the Soviet Union: it was also a vital rail hub and production center. There was also the symbolic value: totalitarian dictators, like Hitler and Stalin, crafted images of themselves as all-knowing leaders of their nations. Losing Moscow would certainly have dented popular confidence in Stalin. In fact, Stalin apparently did put out discreet peace feelers to Germany through Sweden, which Hitler ignored.  In October 1941, the Second World War teetered on a knife edge.

 From Comments

from  Agent Orange The essence of your argument seems to be that the Soviet Union was close to collapse because German propaganda convinced some journalists that it was so.

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So Moscow is about 800 miles from Warsaw the kicking off point for the German Invasion.  It took three months for the Nazi's to drive through the meat of the Soviet Defenses.   And as I said,  the front line of the Soviet defenses of Moscow collapsed Oct 1941 with 500,000 soviet soldiers surrendering,  leaving only 90,000 soviet defenders with no reserves and 150 tanks left to face off against the Germans.
Also Stalin did order the evacuation of the Communist Party, the General Staff and civil government offices from Moscow Oct 15 1941.  Which caused panic among Muscovites.  As told in "When Titans Clashed" by David M. Glantz chapter 6, pg 74

from Agent Orange #2
  We know that the Wehrmacht was depleted and exhausted at the gates of Moscow, and we know that fresh Soviet troops were arriving in waves. You need to demonstrate that these historical facts are compatible with your thesis that Soviet collapse was in fact imminent (or nearly so).   Why would the Soviet leadership be broken when they had clearly weathered the 1941 storm and had the situation under control around Moscow? –

It is true that the Battle of Moscow was the single largest battle of WWII.  A Battle in which the Soviet's lost 4x the number of troops (killed, missing, captured) than the Germans.  To put it in perspective the Soviet's lost more troops during the Battle of Moscow than the United States, Britain, and France combined in all of WWII.  It was frankly the most important battle of the entire war.
What you left out is that the Germans had to stop their advance for a month due to weather and their own logistics problem.   Without that pause the German force which had just taken 500,000 Soviet defenders of Moscow prisoners and killed 5 million soviet soldiers (total soviet losses in Battle of Moscow) would have only had to deal with the remaining 90,000 defenders with almost no remaining Soviet armor support.   It's true the Soviets were re-enforced,  but it was the weather which turned the roads into impassible gelatinous mud and then froze the Germans and finally buried them in snow which gave the Soviet's the time to transfer 30 divisions of Siberian Troops along with armor and logistics via rail to buttress Moscow.
By the time the Germans renewed their attack they were facing an entirely different Soviet defense.
Also I think it's important to note that Moscow was of vital strategic importance to the Soviet Union.  It's not like in Napoleon's days when Moscow was lost and the Russians were able to come back.  In Napoleon's days there weren't any railroads. Moscow was not only the Soviet's most populous city, but was also it's manufacturing, communications and transportation center.  One of the few advantages the Soviet's had over Germans was the ability to use railroads to move troops and logistics efficiently, while the Germans had to rely on undependable roads.  If moscow fell the Soviet's ability to use it's railroads would have been dramatically effected because Moscow was the central railroad hub of the entire country.  Logistics, reinforcements, and western aid three important assets which allowed the Soviets to recover and eventually turn the table on the Nazi's would have been impacted.
I will preface all my comments on the heroism of the Soviet soldiers, that cannot be overstated.
Comment: The essence of your argument seems to be that the Soviet Union was close to collapse because German propaganda convinced some journalists that it was so. We know that the Wehrmacht was depleted and exhausted at the gates of Moscow, and we know that fresh Soviet troops were arriving in waves. You need to demonstrate that these historical facts are compatible with your thesis that Soviet collapse was in fact imminent (or nearly so). Why would the Soviet leadership be broken when they had clearly weathered the 1941 storm and had the situation under control around Moscow?
Comment: Much of what you say is true, but I think what you are describing are perceptions. There is little doubt that there were many people at different times who THOUGHT the USSR was (or might be) close to collapse, but I think the questioner is asking whether this WAS in fact the case. Now obviously we can't really know, but we can look at some facts and try to make a case. I'm not convinced that any of the facts you mention indicate that the Soviet government HAD lost control of the situation (or were even close to doing so) around Moscow in 1941. The Germans were spent - that is also a fact.
Comment: @AgentOrange   The facts are that Stalin faced the largest military offensive in the history of warfare,  that this offensive shattered his army and left him hiding in his bedroom for days.  That the fall of Moscow was an existential crisis and from Stalins actions we know he thought Moscow would fall.   We also have a source which claims Stalin was looking for terms from Hitler via Sweden.  Given all this you offer no source to support your claim that Stalin had the Germans right where he wanted them 10 miles from the kremlin prior to the all important German pause.
Comment: It will be interesting to see Kotkin's new volume on Stalin when it comes out later this year (hopefully). It should shed some new light on some of these issues. The story of Stalin hiding is exaggerated, and many of the alleged peace negotiations are extremely dubious, at best. Stalin's actions at Moscow in 1941 show he thought the city could be attacked and might even fall, but nothing more. The alleged "existential crisis" is your own assumption, although it was wishfully believed by some others at the time too. The Soviet counterattack was planned and coordinated, not a desperate last act.
Comment: @AgentOrange Again, I hear what you are saying, but if the Germans hadn't been hit with the weather and hadn't had to pause their offensive; It does seem to me they would have taken Moscow. The several week pause beginning end of Oct 1941 is what permitted Stalin to improvise the counteroffensive.  Transferring  over 18 divisions, 1,700 tanks, and over 1,500 aircraft from Siberia and the Far East . Claiming Stalin predicted his defenses would collapse with 5 million casualties and  500,000 Russian prisoners taken Oct 7 1941 (Vyazma and Bryansk pockets), seems unrealistic.
Comment: I don't think Stalin anticipated the extent of the Soviet initial collapse. His own behavior in those first few days, as both of us have mentioned in our answers, indicates he was shocked by the situation. David Glantz in his multi-volume 'Barbarossa Derailed: The Battle for Smolensk' makes a good argument that the German offensive was failing by that point. The Soviets were already counterattacking, the German logistics were failing, and the consequent delays were accumulating. It was the failure of the German plan which lead both to the pause you mention and the problems with the weather.
Comment: Just some further points to the above. From David Glantz's 'Stumbling Colossus' we know that the Soviets had planned for a defense in depth, and had war gamed their response to deep penetrations into the country. From Stalin's conversation with Harry Hopkins in August 1941 we know that he was aware that the German's logistics were likely to be problematic and that they would struggle to support their mobile operations deep in the country. The Soviet response to the invasion was clearly not ill-conceived, irrational or random, even if it proved to be obscenely costly.
Answer: Germany would have won the war against the Soviet Union, if they had more oil to feed the war machine. Barbarossa would have succeeded, if instead of only 22 motorized divisions, they would have used 420 motorized divisions and would have made it to Moscow before the winter. But Germany had after the Blitzkrieg with France & England only 3 month more oil, So Hitler's Plan Blue was, to go straight to Baku, Azerbaijan, to get to the oil and cut the Russians off, by cutting the Volga supply in Stalingrad to Moscow.
When they arrived in Grozny, they found tanks full of diesel oil, but to no use, because German trucks and tanks ran on gas engines. The Russians had also found a way, to ship the oil around the Caspian sea. When German forces lost control of their Ukrainian airport, that was close enough to Baku for German bombers, their Plan Blue was compromised.
Summarized, because the British blocked the Atlantic with their Navy, to get to American oil, Hitler had to go and break the Molotov Ribbentrop pact, but ran out of oil and supply, which stalled the Blitzkrieg into the Winter. If Hitler had succeeded, the Russians would have been pushed over the Ural mountains and out of Europe. From that position, it would have been to hard for the Soviet Union to return.
Comment: Did Germany have the men and materiel to create 420 motorized divisions at that time?
Comment: Sure, and if Hitler's aunt had testicles, she'd be his uncle. Germany simply did not have enough men and resources to defeat the USSR if the latter had kept fighting (as they did). There have to be too many "if this or that had happened"s for a German win to be not plausibly historical.
Answer: When the Soviet Union collapsed it was revealed that the Stavka had ordered a general retreat after the failed Red Army Spring Offensive of 1942 so my personal view is not only could the Wehrmacht have defeated the Red Army in the summer of 1942 but in fact they SHOULD have defeated the Red Army with Case Blue.
There are a multitude of reasons why this didn't happen...not least being Hitler was in charge. Stalingrad was not even a primary objective ironically....so the Red Army truly made the German military pay for a series of truly incredible blunders not the least being their complete contempt for the "Ostlanders" and ignorance of "Ost Politik."
Militarily speaking "taking Crimea as a Christmas Gift", wiping Sevatstapol off the map, dividing Army Group South into two, failing to heed the lessons of the Battle of Vorehnez, then bombing Stalingrad into a defenders paradise..?against Hitler's express orders actually...all just added up to a bunch of losses from which Germany has never recovered from...even today.
Comment: Only the first paragraph even tangentially addresses the question. Then it drifts off into German strategic blunders.
Comment: @Schwern In fact, German blunders happening meant that a better leading of war could have occured and thus that the Soviet could have collapsed
Comment: Germany has not recovered from WW2 even today!? What examples of this are there, or were there even in 1980? They had the economic miracle after the war while the USSR stagnated and collapsed. If they had somehow defeated the USSR, there would have been permanent hostilities with the West, with continuing hostilities driven by Hitler's megalomania until he croaked, at least, followed by a cold war. And it would have been a lot harder to recover in any human & moral sense from a more complete holocaust + non-Jewish deaths, the extermination of Poles, enslavement of most of Europe.


How can I capture packets belonging to a certain process

Question: I need to capture packets belonging to a program or process. I know Winshark, but it just displays network traffic in a mess (in my view).
If one wants to get the packets of a given process, you must find the PID first, then set a filter and so on.
Is there any way to gather the connection information and transmission of data packets by process or process tree with a more friendly interface?
Answer:
Is there any software gather the connection information and transmission of data packets by process or process tree with friendly interface?

Microsoft Network Monitor?


How to differentiate Cellulose acetate vs ABS LEGO bricks?

Question: If one had a large tub of old LEGO brick, with some pieces going back to the 1950s, but all mixed together, are there any distinguishing features or appearance to the 1950s cellulose acetate bricks compared to the newer ABS plastic? Do the plastics look different somehow? Or would you just have to look for other features like lack of studs, flat bottoms on 1x1 round pieces, etc?
Comment: yes, they are from the US. many of the pieces came from a collection at a thrift store. Some may have come from relatives as well
Comment: You don't mention if you know the source of the pieces in question, but I see you are in the US. If these are bricks purchased in North America, they probably date from the 1960s, when LEGO sets were first sold in the US and Canada.
Answer: LEGO switched from cellulose acetate (CA) plastic to ABS plastic in 1963. They continued to distribute CA pieces in sets until their existing supply was exhausted, so during the transition beginning in 1963 both types of pieces were sold in sets. In North America, LEGO pieces were manufactured beginning in 1961 under license by Samsonite, which continued to distribute CA pieces mixed in sets until about 1970.
Distinguishing CA from ABS pieces based on intrinsic criteria is something of an art.
The first thing to look for is warping. CA plastic is much more prone to warp than ABS, which is perhaps the main reason the switch was made. If you find an old piece that is warped, odds are it is CA. You can check for warping by placing a piece on a flat surface and checking for any "wobble." Another good method is to build a simple brick wall with the pieces and look for gaps or poor connections.
Generally CA plastic is much shinier than ABS plastic when it is in good condition. CA pieces will lose the shine with wear, so this is not always possible to see.
There are also some tell-tale clues in the colors.

Red CA pieces have more orange than the ABS version.
Yellow CA pieces are not as bright as ABS pieces.
Blue CA pieces are a brighter shade than the ABS version.
Black, white, gray and clear CA pieces are harder to differentiate. Transparent CA bricks can be somewhat brownish, while later transparent bricks, made from polycarbonate, can have a bluish cast.
Green CA bricks are very scarce, but some green plates are CA.
Comment: Yes, you're right - Edited that to make it more, uh, clear.
Comment: Just noticed this - "clear" bricks would never be made in ABS because it can't be made transparent ;)
Answer: As 62Bricks has said, this can be an art.
Based on my experience (in the UK):

CA bricks tend to have less clutch (stickiness to other bricks) than ABS bricks. I'm not sure if this is because they are more prone to wear, because they tend to warp or just because they're old and worn out. Nevertheless, some of my CA bricks are so non-grippy that they're all but useless.
Due to their age, CA bricks have older logos and are made using older moulds. For this reason, they typically have an older LEGO font on the studs, for example.
CA bricks are more translucent than old ABS bricks. (Although recent ABS bricks can be somewhat translucent, too).
Many parts have only been produced in the post-CA era, so will only exist in ABS. Similarly, some older parts have never been produced in ABS, so will only exist in CA.
Answer: To sort ABS bricks from CA bricks can sometimes be difficult. What helps is they SOUND differently. An ABS brick emits a higher pitched sound when dropped than a CA brick which sounds more like a "thud". So if you are not sure, drop the brick and the sound will tell you what it is.
Answer: The blue looks dull, other ways to sort are:
No pips & don't hold together well are old so CA.
End pips & flowrib & 'pat. pend.' maybe CA or ABS.
Stud pips instead & no flowrib again are ABS, now made with cross support on 2×3 & 2×4 as well as on the bigger bricks.
As for ×1's, no pillars old, then pillars, then full depth cross support, then back to as before but now on all pillars.
So sort into 4 types; no pip (little mark on end where mould filled, or middle 2 letters on 1 stud of 'LEGO' faulty), with end pips, with stud pips, & stud pips + cross support for 2×3 & 2×4.
Looks like a hypocritical question, so not matter where you are. Before 1958 no tubes.
Comment: This answer would benefit from some photos demonstrating the differences you're trying to describe.


Sharepoint Lists vs. Sharepoint Libraries

Question: Fundamentally, what is the difference between the two? I'm in the really early stages of working out what's what with sharepoint and I can't seem to tell the difference between the two.
Comment: A library stores your data; a list IS your data
Comment: Hardcode in mind : **A Library is a List, but all lists are not libraries.**
Comment: The answer doesn't really help to understand the difference. Maybe you can improve the answer by providing links to MSDN that explain the difference between document libraries and lists.
Answer: Although in most of the UI and API they can be manipulated the same way, there are some significant differences between Lists and Libraries. The latter is a specialized type of the former.
Lists:

Can have attachments
Have major versions only
Do not have Check-in/Check-out features

Libraries:

Cannot have attachments (files are directly in the library)
Have both minor (draft) and major (published) versioning
Have Check-in/Check-Out
Publishing Libraries can use Page Layouts
Have Unique Document Ids out of the box

In code, you can always obtain an SPList from a SPDocumentLibrary but not the other way around.
Comment: The *Have major versions only* point is incorrect. If you enable content approval on a list, then you can have minor versions, aka drafts.
Answer: A library is "just" a special type of list where the focus is on the File linked to the listitem
Anything you can do with a list you can do with a library and then some
Note:
Search acts very differently with documents in a library than it does with documents stored as attachments in a list.
In A library, search indexes 'reads' every word of the document and utilizes that information in search.  Attachments in a List are not indexed.
Answer: Great Info! In an attempt to make a more exhaustive comparison (because none exist!) here are a couple of things left out:
List

list attachments are not indexed. This has a lot of implications. When searching, you cannot use the refiners to narrow down the doc type
List attachments will not work with the eDiscovery feature
No location based default column value settings
Cannot have a document set
No "Send to" functionality. Similarly, transfer to another location does not seem to work with a list content type, but I have not actually tried it
No Open with explorer (which is obvious)

Library

Does not have the "Read Access" setting (list settings-advanced
settings)

Really they are quite a bit different. Libraries are for documents. It is a good idea to disable adding attachments on your list so that your lists are purely for tabular data, otherwise you may come across ECM features that do not work.
Please add more if you find them
Comment: In ref to `1. list attachments are not indexed`, it looks like list attachments actually *are* indexed in SharePoint search, but the search results point to the list items they're attached to instead of the attachments themselves (a bit confusing for items with multiple attachments).
Answer: A SharePoint List is essentially a web part that holds/stores content in SharePoint and is represented via table format (rows and columns). A SharePoint Document Library is a "special list" for documents. While it is also represented as a table list (rows for documents, columns for metadata), a SharePoint library has very specific document management features lists do not have like:

Check in/Check Out
Document Preview
Ability to share
Document version history
Ability to open/edit in browser (SharePoint Online only)

The list goes on and on. As others eluded to already - you should not use lists to store documents as attachments. Attachments in SharePoint lists shall be used as secondary type information. For example, you might use SharePoint list (Issue Tracking) to track Help Desk tickets in SharePoint. The primary purpose of the list is to store ticket info and you might use attachments for screenshots, etc. That's fine.
On another hand, if you want to store company policies or project documentation, document library is the way to go. You can still "dress up" your library with metadata, but documents will serve as the primary objective/source of information. And of course, you will get all the wonderful document management features outlined above and by others in the thread. Here is also a quick blog post on the same topic. http://sharepointmaven.com/sharepoint-lists-vs-libraries/
Hope this helps.
Answer: Here in this article we have discussed in details about what is the difference between list and document library.
http://www.sharepointdotnet.com/2011/12/what-are-basic-difference-between-list_06.html
follow the article it will help you.

SharePoint List:
1- SharePoint lists are web based editable tables.It gives us the
  ability to work with structured data.
2- List is going to store the same sorts of data that you would
  normally place into a spreadsheet.
3- A list contains items that are collections of
  fields/properties/columns.optionally can have one or more attachment.
4- SharePoint list doesnot support check in and check out options.
5- When the user searches for a keyword in a document , if the
  document is in a list then search returns the list item as the result.
6- Example of SharePoint lists are Contact lists,Task lists etc.
SharePoint Document Library:
1- SharePoint libraries are a list of files.
2- Library is used to store documents.
3- A library is a list ,but have one and exactly one file associated
  with each item .A library item also has fields/properties/columns.
4- SharePoint Library supports check in and check out options.
5- When the user searches for a keyword in a document , if the
  document is in a library then they find the document listed in the
  search results.
6- Examples of DocumentLibraries are PictureLibrary, FormLibrary etc.
Comment: While link may answer the question but its still necessary to include some essential part of the link into the answer. Once the link is broken or unreachable then the answer becomes unuseful. Thanks :-)
Comment: Added summary from the website
Answer: Lists can have a document attachment AND the benefit of many associated preset and/or unique metadata fields.
Libraries have a document but only a limited number of only preset metadata fields.
Answer: At the simplest level:
A library stores documents.
A list is like on online spreadsheet or database, rows and columns of data.


Usage of Float Numbers in Smart contract

Question: I am not able to store and retrieve some values of Float types from smart contract. I am about to store the values of IP Address, Geo-location, Mac address etc.. which all are of float types. I know float types are not currently supported in solidity, is there any work around for the same !
Comment: You are storing IP addresses as floating points? That's a unique approach.
Answer: Yes, float is currently not supported in solidity. But you can decimals for that.
And honestly for storing IP address, geolaoctaion in conventional techs like Java, Node, float doesn't seem to a good choice. Float , int is suited when you need to perform some mathematical operations. Else you should store them as string.
You can choose String or bytes32 depending on your choice. See User string or bytes 32?
Comment: I tried to store  with String or bytes32 but the errr is :                                             _Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'length' of undefined
    at Object.ip.toString _
Comment: Where do you exactly get this error? Need to see the cod, hard to tell the issue without that. Be sure to use quoutes while dealing with strings.
Answer: As others mentioned, a Float is not possible in solidity, or more precise, the EVM.
The obvious reason is that floats are, by nature, unpredictable, which would make the outcome of operations different over nodes. Which would lead to forks.
However, all examples you state have nothing to do with Floats:

IP-addresses are 32 (IPV4) or 128 (IPV6) bit numbers. They are just formatted weirdly. 127.0.0.1 is just 2130706433
Geo- Locations, or pairs of LAT/LON, are decimals, really. Sometimes presented in base60 or base 12 (10"23'0 etc). LAT and LON may look like floats, but geo-locations have a precision built in by their standards: the more decimails you give, the more precise the point is. Depending on your implementation, you might need this precision up to centimeters or kilometers.
MAC-addresses are 48-bit numbers, similar to how IP-addresses work. They are, however, often presented in hexadecimal formats.

This is an often-made mistake. We hardly ever need to store floats. We hardly ever need to pass floats along. But we might have floats in a program when operating internally, but even this is not often necessary. In other words: when you think you need to deal with floats: think again: you quite probably don't want floats.
Answer: I assume that by float types you mean types that are able to store fraction numbers, such as 3.14.  Floating point is quite common representation for such numbers, but for Ethereum/Solidity fixed point is considered more promising.  Fixed point number of basically a simple fraction with fixed denominator, i.e. fraction x/N where N is a constant and x may vary.
Currently most common value for N is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, i.e. 10^18, so fraction numbers are represented as integers, like this:
1.0 -> 1000000000000000000
0.5 -> 500000000000000000
3.14 -> 3140000000000000000

and so on.  While Solidity still lacks native support for such numbers, libraries exists for them, such as DS Math.
Though, such representation is convenient for humans who are familiar with decimal numbers, but not for computers that use binary numbers.
You should probably take as look at ADBK Math 64.64 library.  It operates with binary fixed point number having 64 binary digits after dot, i.e. denominator is 2^64 rather than 10^18.
Answer: you could multiply your float numbers by a factor that always converts them to integers. e.g if your float only has 2 decimal places, factor could be 100.
This factor should be applied in your fronted before sending it to your smart contract. So if your user enters 14.32, you pass 1432 to your contract and store it, so when invoking this value from your contract it should be converted before displaying it or using it.
This factor should also be stored on your contract to avoid mistakes.
Comment: But here for example: IP Address is 22.214.171.124 for that how can i use the conversion as said ? @Roberto C.
Comment: For IP addresses I believe storing as bytes or string makes more sense, depending if you want to pass them between contracts.
Comment: For IP address, maybe a uint8[4] would do the trick? It might be a little cheaper to store than bytes.
Answer: Not all the data you cited are floating point data: IP and MAC ADDRESS are't by definition, neither they are geolocation data if you fix the precision. One example of floating number is 3.25E+10, one example of fixed precision data is 12.34, IP number are four bytes long like 127.0.01 and the dot is simply a trick to read them easy, Macaddress is a truly address codified.
Anyway what you need is to represent your number as integer number, as you probably saw in tokens representation.
10.22000001 can easily represented as 1022000001 and so on


Does mAh measure how long a battery would last?

Question: I know mAh tells how much milliamperes a battery can deliver in an hour. But does that also tell how many hours the battery would last? Sorry but I don't really get it. If we're talking about a water tank, to my impression, mAh is like how big the faucet is and not how much water there is in the tank. I'm really confused as to why we measure battery capacity in mAh if my understanding about it is correct.
Comment: No - it's how much water is in the tank, not how big the faucet is. mA (or Amps) is already a "per second" unit e.g. using your water analogy: gallons per hour. So mAh is equivalent to (gal / h) * h = gallons of water.
Comment: The mAh of a battery, IS a "general" indicator of how long a battery will last. a 3000 mAh battery will last 3 times more that a 1000 mAh battery (in the same circuit/application).  However, neither will last the total "current-time" specified by the manufacturer, due to losses and the minimum requirements of the circuit/application.
Answer: mAh (or mA·h) is not how many milliamperes a battery can deliver in an hour. That would be mA/h. Current, measured in amperes, is already a rate of stuff. Specially, one ampere is one coulomb per second. So, if current is like speed, then mA/h is like acceleration, and mAh is like distance.
Rather, mAh it is a unit of charge. It is what you get when you multiply current by time. By multiplying by time, the "per time" part of the ampere is cancelled, and you get back to charge.
If an ampere is a coulomb per second, then:
$$ \require{cancel} 1~\mathrm{mAh} = 1\cdot10^{-3}~\mathrm{\frac{C}{s}h} $$
and by dimensional analysis:
$$ \require{cancel}
\frac{1\cdot10^{-3}~\mathrm{C\cancel{h}}}{\cancel{\mathrm{s}}}
\frac{60\cancel{\mathrm{s}}}{1\cancel{\mathrm{min}}}
\frac{60\cancel{\mathrm{min}}}{1\cancel{\mathrm{h}}}
= 3.6~\mathrm{C}$$
For example, if you draw 1 mA for 1 hour from a battery, you have used 1 mA · 1 h = 1 mAh of charge. If you draw 2 mA for 5 hours, you have used 2 mA · 5 h = 10 mAh.
You can approximate how long a battery will last by dividing its total charge (in mAh) by your nominal load current (in mA). Say you have a 1800 mAh battery, and you connect it to a 20 mA load:
$$ \require{cancel}
\frac{1800~\mathrm{mA\cdot h}}{20~\mathrm{mA}} =
\frac{1800\cancel{\mathrm{mA}}\cdot\mathrm{h}}{20\cancel{\mathrm{mA}}} =
90~\mathrm{h}
$$
This is an approximation because:

The charge capacity (the number measured in mAh) is determined by measuring how much charge can be removed from the battery before voltage drops to some arbitrarily selected level where the battery is considered "discharged". This may or may not be the threshold at which your circuit no longer functions. Battery manufacturers, wanting to make their batteries seem as good as possible, typically select a very low threshold voltage.
Assuming you are considering charge available only down to some voltage threshold, the actual charge available from the battery depends on temperature, and the rate at which you discharge it. Lower temperatures slow the chemical reaction in the battery, making it harder to extract charge. Higher rates of discharge increase losses in the battery, decreasing the voltage, thus hitting the "discharged" voltage threshold limit sooner.
The electric potential difference provided by the chemicals in the battery is actually constant; what makes the voltage decrease is the depletion of the chemicals around the electrodes and degradation of the electrodes and electrolyte. This is why battery voltage can recover after a period without use. So, the point at which the threshold voltage is reached can actually be quite complex to determine.

If you can find a good datasheet for your battery, it may give some insight into the parameters under which these calculations were made.
Comment: @supertonsky yes. Except, I would say [charge isn't generated](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_conservation); it's just moved around. A battery is essentially a pump for charge (but not a [charge pump](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_pump); that's a different thing).
Comment: Very well explained. So mAh is like the total distance traveled when the speed is multiplied by time. Same goes for ampere when multiplied by time, we get the total charge generated.
Comment: You can also say: '/' = 'per',   while '.', or 'x', or often '' = 'for an'. So 2000mAh is 2000mA for an hour.
Answer: Milliamp-hours is a measure of current capacity over time. It is a representation of how much total charge a battery has. If you use the battery to operate something that doesn't require much current, it will last a long time.
Be aware that batteries (cells, really) have a nonlinear depletion characteristic. Even though milliamp-hours is a finite amount of charge, you must realize that not all of it will be usable by a given load at a given voltage, and that the value given by the manufacturer is generally for the case where the cell is powering something with low current demands. In that situation, you get almost all of the available energy. However when you power something that requires more current, you won't actually get the full capacity.
Technical edit, per Phil's comments: By saying "...you won't actually get the full capacity." I mean "You won't actually get the full capacity given the same load which requires a certain voltage to operate." The cell's voltage will drop and become insufficient for the load, at which point the charge is still in the cell, but it's not necessarily usable.
Consider the datasheet for Energizer AA cells. A chart is provided which shows you the various milliamp-hour capacities at various loads:

If you continually power a device with 25 mA, the cell will have approximately 2750 mAh. If you divide this current into the capacity, 2750/25, you get the number of hours that the battery can sustain it: 110. If the load is 500mA, the cell's usable capacity actually drops to approximately 1500 mAh, and 1500/500 is only 3 hours.
Devices like remote controls do not use continuous power. They spend most of their time in an idle or "sleep" state, and consume power only when you press a button. In those cases, cells will continue to be viable and power the device for a very long time. The milliamp-hour capacity chart is based on usage, not on idle time.
Environmental effects and physics will erode the chemistry in a cell even when it isn't being used. The datasheet assumes you are working with fresh cells and within certain environmental conditions.
Comment: "Even though milliamp-hours is often treated like a finite amount of energy" suggests that maybe \$mAh\$ is a unit of energy, but it's not. Also, at higher rates of discharge, you *do* get the full capacity, but you get it at a lower voltage. Note that the graph says "discharge *to 0.8 volts*".
Comment: I should probably change "energy" to "charge" for accuracy. I'm not sure I understand/agree that the full mAh charge is available at higher discharge rates. The cell discharges and its voltage lowers at any discharge rate, but it's a matter of how soon that occurs. Isn't it true that a higher discharge rate decreases the *efficiency* of the cell and therefore total mAh capacity is reduced?
Comment: Not really. There is so much charge separation in the battery, defined by the chemicals in it and the quantity of those chemicals, and the charge can't go anywhere else. At a higher discharge rate, the voltage at the terminals decreases, and can drive the charges less quickly, but they are still separated. You just might have to wait longer for them to un-separate, and you will have less voltage available at the terminals, and thus less electrical energy.
Comment: Relevant to that point: [Why are deep cycle batteries rated in amp hours instead of watts hours?](http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/23601/why-are-deep-cycle-batteries-rated-in-amp-hours-instead-of-watts-hours)
Comment: Also: [Charge conservation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_conservation). If you also consider that the battery has no self-discharge (valid only for some battery types, I suppose) this is how you conclude all the charge must go through the load. If these is self-discharge, then there's a point at which lower discharge rates are less efficient, because most of the energy is lost to self-discharge. For alkaline batteries however, self-discharge is very low.
Comment: @Phil Thanks for the clarifications. I've added some more to my answer per your comments.
Comment: @PhilFrost Your August 2013 comments here state that you still get "full capacity " from a battery at increasing discharge rates. This is not the case for essentially all practical battery chemistries and batteries. The gross amp-hour capacity decreases with increasing current and the Watt-hour capacity also decreases. eg a battery rated at say 10Ah at C/10 rate will give progressively lower Ah capacities at higher currents **AND** the same applies for gross delivered Watt-hours whether at constant or variable Watts - higher rates give lower capacities. ....
Comment: .... While this is slightly complicated by eg constant current loads or constant power loads or constant resistance of whatever, the result is consistent - a load which increases rate of depletion also decreases available resources. | Mechanisms vary and interact. Internal resistance causes higher % internal losses at increasing I and may also increase more rapidly due to chemical-mechanical effects. Secondary reactions may occur at greater rates. | A 'confounding' effect is that at very low rates "self discharge" will use increasing amounts of available energy, but this is a secondary factor.
Answer: As a very rough guide it will give you a ball park figure for current/timing. So a 100mAh capacity battery would be expected to give 10hr @ 10mA or 1Hr at 100mA. In reality you get less. This will depend on the battery type, its age, condition, temperature etc.
Answer: Current is a vector of charge over time across a load, ie. It is the rate of coulombs per second. So to get a measurement of charge, then we multiply the rate by the time. For example, we got a one hour marathon sprint.. if i could sprint at 10 km/h for a whole hour then I'd have run 10 KMs. Speed in km/h is already referenced as a rate over time so its more straight forward to work out. If we had a specific unit for measuring speed, lets say if:
1 Gonzales = 1 km/hr
Then my rating for being able to sustain a speed of 10km/hr for one hour would be 10GH (Gonzales Hours).


Can someone explain what NETFLOW. and IPFLOW are?

Question: I hear these terms used a lot but haven't found a decent explanation of what they are, how they are used, and what the data looks like (e.g. can you view this data in wireshark?)?
Answer: Netflow is a protocol used by Cisco Routers/Switches that summarizes "seen" traffic and sends these summaries to a so-called Netflow Collector. IPFlow is a derivate which is independent of Cisco.
A Netflow Collector or Reporter (software) can then generate reports for this seen traffic.
Common answers given by this data are:
- Which are the top protocols in my network (http, ftp,...)
- Which hosts are talking the most to each other
- Which are the overall top sending hosts
- ...
See:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Flow_Information_Export
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflow
Also popular: sFlow. A technology by Juniper which has the same goal/motivation as Netflow but working slightly different (Forwarding samples to a collector).
Regarding Wireshark: Yes. You can see this traffic in Wireshark. Like any other traffic if it "passes" your capturing host.
Answer: Netflow is a protocol by Cisco to gather IP traffic information.
IPFlow is a netflow collector.
RFC for netflow 9 can be found at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3954.txt.
Wireshark has filter for Cisco NetFlow/IPFIX.
Answer: Netflow is the name CISCO gave to the broader class of network traffic reporting formats, generally known as 'flow reporting'.  It is the equivalent of a 'pen register' for Internet traffic.
Flow analysis (reporting) allows one to see who communicated with whom, without digging into the content of the communication. This is helpful in many ways, as it helps pinpoint network bottlenecks, find the cause of slowdowns, and see the source of attacks or information leaks, all without doing extensive in-depth analysis.
It is also helpful to get a more macro-view of your network.  Wireshark (and full packet capture) can be too much to handle on busy networks.
Answer: I would read wikipedia on NetFlow as outlined above.
By IPFLOW do you mean IPFIX?  Here is a blog on NetFlow Vs. IPFIX.
http://www.plixer.com/blog/netflow/what-is-ipfix-vs-netflow-v9/
Jake


Is there a tool to match zip codes to cities?

Question: I have a data set with zipcodes and would like to do a bulk upload to a tool that will give me the cities each zip is in (US only.)
Comment: Related: [getting the city or zip codes that make up metropolitan statistical areas?](https://opendata.stackexchange.com/q/11950/3082)
Answer: There is no simple answer to this question, because ZIP codes do not represent geographical areas. They represent postal delivery routes, which are sometimes simply a bank of PO boxes in a specific post office, and are sometimes an organization like a University which has its own internal mail processing services.
Therefore, not all ZIP Codes can truly be located in a city, and even those for which a geography can be reasonably defined, they are not necessarily located within a single city.
Probably the closest approximation you could get would be to start with the Census Bureau's ZIP code tabulation area (ZCTA) gazetteer file, which can be downloaded here. Then, using as many of the state-based "place" shape files as you need, load those into a GIS tool. Personally, I'd use PostGIS, but you might also be able to use QGIS, or if you can get your hands on a copy, ArcGIS (commercial software).
You could then:

look up the ZCTA for a given ZIP code
extract the INTPTLAT and INTPTLONG values, which are the lat/long for the "centroid" of the
ZCTA
use the GIS tool to identify the place geography which contains
the ZCTA's centroid

You will probably have some ZIP codes which aren't in the ZCTA dataset, and it's not really precise, but it's probably good enough for a lot of cases.
Comment: Here is a useful blog post giving more detailed information about why matching zips to geographic area boundaries can be problematic. The post is about electoral districts, but issues are similar for city boundaries: http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/01/19/dont-use-zipcodes/
Comment: is right but perhaps more technically accurate than is necessary (though not at all erroneous).  Just seems like a little more than the original poster was looking for.
Comment: Also keep in mind that the city names you see in the postal data do not correspond with municipal borders. Some municipalities within the zip code do not show up at all in the post office city names, and some of the city names in the postal records don't correspond at all with a municipality.Here's a lookup tool provided by the USPS. https://tools.usps.com/go/ZipLookupAction_input
Answer: There has been some mention about this being a complex problem.  It's not hard at all.  In fact, matching a zipcode to the corresponding cities is super simple.  Granted, trying to find an accurate shapefile that corresponds to a given zipcode, that is a more challenging issue.  But simply matching zipcode to city/cities... very easy.  The USPS data has a Preferred city for each zipcode (which means the city where the delivering post office is located) and then a list of acceptable city names as well as a list of unacceptable city names.  This list is readily available and updated monthly from the US Postal Service.  So, even someone with Excel skills (including JOIN or HLOOKUP) could do the matching on a list of zipcodes.
SmartyStreets has an API that you can use anytime. Try out the demo here.  If you've got a list you need to process, send it to me (email@example.com) and I'm happy to do it for you.
[I work at SmartyStreets, that's why I have inside information about it and can offer our services.]
Comment: Thanks for the answer @Jeffrey and make sure that you put in a disclaimer when pointing to services or sites in which you are involved (e.g. "I work for company XYZ").
Comment: Your answer is great. I have a list of 30k US city/state/zip codes in excel. My problem is that I have another list of zip codes (about 2000) and I need to sort the city/states according to that list. I need to only send out to the smaller zip list. Is that something SmartySheets can do? Can it do it in bulk? All the tools I have seen only allow one zip code at a time. Thanks
Comment: @tess Give me a call at SmartyStreets and I can help you.  877.216.8883
Comment: As far as I can tell, the USPS data doesn't qualify as "open data," however. As best I can tell, one must purchase the data from the Postal Service. Feel free to correct me if that's wrong.


What can trigger the ELT on GA aircraft?

Question: Does the Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) on smaller aircraft activate automatically in case of an accident? If so, what triggers it? Is it a certain amount of G's that triggers it or are there other parameters taken into account?
Comment: I managed to activate an ELT the first time I landed a 210.  I call it "landing with authourity."  It was the first time I had landed a single engine piston plane in years.  Flared a bit high...
Comment: Striking the ELT smartly  against one of the aircraft tires is a great way to set it off. That is one of the best ways to test the ELT for its annual ops check.
Answer: There are four different types of ELTs:

Automatic fixed ELT (ELT(AF)). An automatically activated ELT which is permanently attached to an aircraft.
Automatic portable ELT (ELT(AP)). An automatically activated ELT which is rigidly attached to an aircraft but readily removable from
the aircraft.
Automatic deployable ELT (ELT(AD)). An ELT which is rigidly attached to an aircraft and which is automatically deployed and
activated by impact, and, in some cases, also by hydrostatic sensors.
Manual deployment capability is also provided.
Survival ELT (ELT(S)). An ELT which is removable from an aircraft, stowed so as to facilitate its ready use in an emergency,
and manually activated by survivors.

All the aircraft I fly in (all two of 'em) have the third type. If the aircraft is submerged or experiences a high G-force, the ELT will be triggered. There's also a button on the panel to activate it manually.
I'm not sure what G-forces are required to set off the ELT, but they must be fairly significant—I've slammed my plane down pretty hard while misjudging my landings, and never had it go off.
According to https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/AC_91-44A.pdf:

To meet the "g" force requirements of TSO-C91, automatic fixed-type inertially activated ELT's (except overwater type) must activate at any inertial force, parallel to the longitudinal axis of the aircraft when installed in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions, of 5(+2, -0)g and greater for a time duration of 11 (+5, -0) milliseconds or longer.

So, there you have it. You need 5–7 Gs for 11–16 milliseconds—but only in the direction the plane is pointing. Misjudging your landing flare and stalling the plane 20 feet off the runway won't set it off, as that's not on the axis they're measuring.
Comment: ELTs can also be turned ON or off manually at the device.
Comment: @Aquarello The Automatic deployable ELTs that are in general aviation aircraft have a switch for ARMED and ON. ON is used for testing them at annual and after battery replacement. Many (most?) also have an OFF position so they aren't accidentally triggered during maintenance. Some of them have a switch on the panel that will turn them on.
Comment: I know some can; is it possible with all of them? Of the four types I listed here, two of them specifically mention that they can be triggered manually.
Comment: @jscarry Note that the annual testing requirements also include a requirement to test the crash sensors, etc. So while turning the switch to "ON" for testing is fine, it is not sufficient.
Comment: @JonathanWalters Never heard of that requirement, but you are correct, it is in 91.207. If I am reading the manual correctly, the listening for the sweeps when the unit is switched to ON is all you need to do. From the ACK website, "Model E-01 Emergency Locator Transmitter
The model E-01 ELT must be inspected yearly to insure continued airworthiness. The procedures as described in section 7 (Periodic Maintenance) of the installation and operation manual part number E-01-M (all revision dates) should be followed.
These tests also fulfill the requirements of FAR 91.207."
Comment: @JonathanWalters I've done around 30 annuals and we never tested the crash sensors. It turns out that there is a procedure for it. AC 43.13-1B. "A TSO-C91 ELT can be activated by using a quick rap with the palm. A TSO-C91a ELT can be activated by using a rapid forward (throwing) motion coupled by a rapid reversing action. Verify that the ELT can be activated using a watt meter, the airplane's VHF radio communications receiver tuned to 121.5 MHz, or other means (see NOTE 1). Insure that the "G" switch has been reset if applicable."
Comment: @JScarry Yes, the requirement is found in §91.207. It is not a requirement of the *aircraft* annual (§43 App D), but of the *ELT* inspection required every 12 calendar months.
Answer: There is another way that an aircraft ELT (or for that matter, any ELT) can be set off: By a mechanical or electronic failure of the unit. This is usually caused by corrosion and is more common on maritime ELTs than on ELTs designed for aviation use. Believe me ... it is more common than you might think. As a USCG pilot, I have many times located an active ELT that did not appear to be activated by any of the previously mentioned methods. If your ELT mysteriously activates (especially if that activation is intermittent), consider that possibility. We once flew over 800 miles to a large freighter where the ELT appeared to have been deliberately activated (i.e., manually turned on) only to have the surprised crew discover the ELT safely untouched in its bracket. They were impressed that we came that far to see if they were okay; we had left Shemya Island in the Aleutians in the middle of the night and just wanted to go back to sleep.
Answer: I believe that it is a requirement that the ELT transmitters have an ON switch on the transmitter housing.  I don't have a cite, but I might be able to dig it out.  There is a similar requirement for marine emergency beacons.


'99 Audi A4 seat belt warning sign

Question: I've had this seat belt warning light on my dash for a few weeks now. My dealer says the wiring to my driver seat is gone and replacing it could cost close to 800 USD. Is there a better option?
Answer: The wiring controlling the seatbelt warning lamp will be connected to the seatbelt stalk (i.e. the bit you plug the belt into). Depending on how this is fixed to the car it may indeed go through the seat. At its most simple, it is simply two contacts that are bridged by the belt buckle to close a circuit, and if that is the case then simply bridging the appropriate wires would trick it into thinking the belt was engaged, and switch off the light.
HOWEVER, many cars of that age have explosive seatbelt pre-tensioners, which are triggered in the event of a crash (by the same triggers as the airbags) to tighten the belts and stop you getting whiplash. Therefore, be very careful before messing with this wiring, as you don't want to either prematurely trigger them, or render them inoperable...
Comment: The answer isn't talking about airbags, but seat belt pre-tensioners. I think the caution is a good one, especially when it comes to potentially rendering them inoperative.
Comment: Shorting those wires wouldn't deploy the airbags. There is a lot of voodoo about people accidentally deploying airbags. The only way the airbag controller will detonate the airbag is in an impact with the vehicle on and the seatbelt locked. The only other way would be to directly give 12v power to the airbag itself which would require some very wreckless wiring habits.

'99 Audi A4 seat belt warning sign


Can I convert BTC to USD without a bank account?

Question: Just asking. Say, I want to switch BTC to USD inside Steam Wallet. Is it possible?
Comment: I once sold BTC for Duke Nuke'em Forever. Worst game I ever purchased ... I played it for about 30 minutes, then gave up.
Answer: To my knowledge, Steam does not support BTC (at least yet). Moreover, Steam does not allow one to send another user money transfers, so you can't really exchange your funds with other people. You could, however, purchase a game gift for another person and sell that gift for Bitcoins, but that would probably be against Steam's policy.
If you generally want to exchange Bitcoins for any currency without having a bank account, you could always try finding another user that also wants to trade like that and exchange money with them, either in person or through services like Western Union. This way however, is less reliable than using a Bitcoin exchange.
Answer: Bitcoin itself is detached from any other money system. Any form of "converting" BTC to other currencies is basically an agreement with another person in which you send them bitcoins, and in return they send you some other currency using a method you specify. So the answer to your question depends solely on which kinds of agreement you manage to reach with other people.
Bitcoin exchanges are basically an organized way to make such agreements, and getting your funds depends on the withdrawal methods offered by the exchange. Some of the offered methods do not require a bank account.
The question about Steam Wallet is more about Steam Wallet than about Bitcoin, and the answer depends on the technical and contractual feasibility of transferring funds to another person's Steam Wallet. According to ThePiachu's answer, this is impossible.


Lightbulb as an SWR detector?

Question: Back in ye olden days before SWR meters and auto-tuners, how was a ordinary household lightbulb used to help tune an antenna system?  What did the circuit and tuning procedure look like?
Comment: perhaps you've interchanged *swr detector* for *dummy load* ?
Comment: Lightbulbs are known as notoriously bad dummy loads, because the impedance varies as the temperature changes, and the temperature changes with duty cycle. (Also, there's a fairly cool article about someone who did WAC on a 200w light bulb just to prove how silly it is.) I don't think lightbulbs were ever part of an intentional tuning procedure.
Comment: The OQ asked "how was a ordinary household light bulb used to help tune an antenna system? What did the circuit and tuning procedure look like?". Therefore, I am moving your answer to a comment.
Comment: Ahh, I see now, very interesting.  Shows what I know about history...  I guess this explains the need for the dire warnings telling people not to do it in the ARRL literature.  People were using lightbulbs, and they wanted to break that habit.
Answer: I don't know much about this, but for what it's worth I do have a rather distant memory of doing this long ago, before transistor RF power amps became affordable and before I had a way to measure SWR or harmonic content of the transmitter output.
The transmitter was a very basic VFO, buffer and a 6V6 RF final, maybe 3 or 4W RF output max. The antenna was roughly 1/4 wave of wire strung out the window to a nearby tree (with an electric fence insulator at the end), using a pi coupler for matching, all very experimental and mostly built from parts of old valve receivers that I'd been lucky enough to be given. The valve output stage was robust enough to cope with severe mismatches. I remember getting RF burns from the antenna connection.
My equipment was only a small multimeter, a very simple field strength meter (that used the multimeter), a borrowed portable transistor receiver that had short wave bands, and a soldering iron, so there was a lot of guesswork and experimental method involved.
I was being mentored by a ham who was very kind and encouraging to me. He had lent me a copy of the ARRL handbook, and gave me ideas to try. He had been a Post Office/marine radio op in the war I think, and he knew a lot about getting things working with very little test equipment.
He told me that a (15W) 230V lightbulb in series with the antenna at the output of the pi coupler could be used as an indication of how much power was getting to the antenna.
The pi coupler was adjusted until the lightbulb glowed brightest and it was then removed, and the field strength meter was used to peak the pi coupler settings.
Looking back on it I have little idea of how effective this method was in adjusting SWR, but I remember it made adjusting the coupler much easier than just using the field strength. The current in the bulb obviously does not actually indicate SWR, but serves as a rough initial indication of the matching of output stage to antenna I think. It was certainly quite reassuring to see direct evidence of current in the antenna circuit anyway.
Cheers.
Comment: The Pi-network output of those old tube transmitters could tune up onto many various types of loads, one being the light bulb.  The main problem a new ham would have with this is thinking that tuning the transmitter into a light bulb removes the need to tune up into the antenna.  A real antenna poses a different load (R+jX) to the lightbulb's (R+jX) load.  Thus, tuning into a light bulb is not a substitute for tuning into your antenna.  My transmitter at the time (early '60s) was an Eico 720, I used a light bulb for testing purposes only -- that is, does it work at all type testing.
Answer: Mainstream hams first started to appreciate SWR in the 1940's. In that era some of the first SWR meters started to come on the market. But their accuracy and frequency range was quite limited. Toward the end of the 1940's military surplus coaxial cable was hitting the ham market. Up to that point, ladder line was typically used for most ham antenna installations.
In October of 1947, Charles Wright, W4HVV wrote an article in QST bemoaning the accuracy and availabilty of SWR meters for "28 mc" and higher. His article, entitled The Poor Man's Standing-Wave Indicator, described a simple twin lamp (2 volt, 60 mA each) arrangement connected to a one turn pickup loop that when placed in parallel with the ladder line would give a relative indication of SWR.

When SWR is low, one lamp glows. As SWR increases, the second lamp begins to glow. By visually calibrating it using various dummy loads, the author was able to estimate the SWR.
Normally, the on-line QST archives are only available to members but I did find a full copy "in the clear" for your reading enjoyment here.

Lightbulb as an SWR detector?


fetch publication structure using core-services (java)

Question: I want to fetch publication structure using core-services (java) from SDL Trdion13. what i need to do for this?
Comment: What have you tried? E.g. Look in docs, Google, read blogs, do a code POC, etc. Please put some effort into your question before asking others to put effort into answering.
Comment: Welcome to Tridion Stack Exchange. As Nick says, it will make for a much better question if you can add some of that detail. Our goal here is to ensure that both questions and answers are useful not only to the people directly involved, but also to the wider community. Many people will read your question and the answers it gets, so it makes sense to ensure that it's fit for purpose. That said, there are plenty of people willing to help. So - please, expand on your question, and we'll see where we get to.
Answer: Given your question is rather vague... here's my best answer:

You need to find a way to connect to Core Service from Java. Either generate a proxy from the wsdl as documented here or use a pre-built one from the community
Ask Tridion for a list of publications using the Core Service API, using something similar to this
Ask additional questions based on where you get stuck.


Converting A4 designed magazine to U.S. standard size paper

Question: We have a finished magazine which was designed to A4 paper size but I need to have printed in the U.S. The magazine is in Adobe PDF. Conversion distorts the aspect ratio of all the pages. How can I get the A4 designed magazine printed to letter size standards without having to re-design the entire mag.
Comment: A4 and letter are different aspect ratios. You're going to have to make some sort of edits. Can you post a sample page? Since A4 is taller than letter, I'd be looking at compressing paragraph spacing as a way of reworking your spreads.
Comment: Thank you for your thoughts, Geoff. The magazine was designed by someone on a European publishing web site that used a standard template. So no way to re-lay it out. But thanks so much!
Comment: The only way to do this without redesigning the entire document is to shrink the contents proportionally to fit the height, and acquiesce to having wide margins. As Geoff Ball pointed out, the aspect ratio is different. You can't fit a square peg into a round hole without something giving somewhere.
Answer: "Printed on the US" does not mean that you can not print a magazine of other sizes.
You can print a magazine of whatever size you want, for example a mega Magazine of 50x70 cm. or a tiny one of 10x10cm.
There are a lot of "standard" papers, for example 61x90cm or 70x95cm.
Your a4 magazine can easily be printed in thoose papers.

So you can print that in US or almost any part of the world.
The question is, is A4 a terrible size for your magazine? For example, the case that you have a long tradition of a magazine Letter size? or the A4 size can give you an "European look" that is interesting?
If you need really to convert the magazine you need the source files and reformat manually.
Answer: For quality output, there's no way around a rework of the piece. You don't need to "redesign" the entire thing, but it will require manual adjustment of the layouts.
There's no shortcut if you want good output for both sizes.
Answer: I don't know if you're thinking about reflowing text and everything? In that case you should try to get a hold in the original layout document.
A hotfix could be a combination of resizing and adding equal margins on the sides, and maybe packing things a little bit more in the vertical direction. Might turn out fairly ok.
Comment: Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Since this was designed on a publishing web site using their standard template, there is no way to redesign the pages. But thanks so much! Probably just need to find a U.S. printer that can print to A4 paper size.
Comment: @BillBehr yes indeed any printer than can not do a A4 size is not really a printer but a copy shop.


3D motorcycle models for web 3D tools

Question: I'm developing a website that can display 3D models of motorbike. I haven't decided on which tool to use yet but it seems most of them support X3D and VRML files. So I'm searching for already-made models in either format but got no result so far, anyone know where I can find one? Thank you.
Answer: Turbosquid.com has quite a lot of free mesh models of moterbikes, you can browse them here. If they are not available in your desired formats, you can always download them and convert them through one of many converters available out there, such as MeshLab, which supports both VRML and X3D, among many other formats.

3D motorcycle models for web 3D tools


Assign more Authors, or leave as Contributors, to encourage more interaction on a Wordpress site?

Question: I send out email newsletters which will also be published on a wordpress site. The newsletter will encourage the recipients to go to the site to comment, or contribute some way. Would assigning the Author role by default to the recipients encourage more interaction, rather than simply assigning Contributor?
Answer: Claiming someone as an author rather than a contributor of something carries the understanding that they did a majority of the work (or at least a significant chunk of it).
In the short term, giving contributors author status may have the desired effect, but in the long term it will most likely cause more problems as you over reward contributors for possibly very little effort.  This will encourage very minor contributions (as any contribution gives author status), which is likely to discourage authors from creating content in the first place.
If however you are the author, and your main priority is to have people feel a sense of ownership.  But from my experience, any credit gives this whether it is author or contributor.
So unless you have a very good other reason, I would say don't give author credit for minor contributions.
Answer: Personally, I feel it might rather have the opposite effect. Seeing how everybody is raised to the role of author for no merit whatsoever might actually devalue the status.
If everybody can post as author, why should I even bother?


Dotted Rhythm in Dance

Question: The Wikipedia article on Beethoven's 7th symphony talks about how "the work as a whole is known for its use of rhythmic devices suggestive of a dance, such as dotted rhythm" and "[the Vivace] is dominated by lively dance-like dotted rhythms". I can hear the dotted rhythms, but what is their connection to dance? Does anyone have any references? Which dances are dotted rhythm based? I couldn't find anything on Google and I don't know much about dance.
Answer: Beethoven said nothing about dancing. In fact the first performance of the 7th was at a charity concert to raise money for veterans of the Napoleonic wars, and Beethoven's own introductory speech said

We are moved by nothing but pure patriotism and the joyful sacrifice of our powers for those who have sacrificed so much for us.

However, Wagner described the symphony as "the apotheosis of dance'' and everybody knows Wagner was a genius, so that must be the right interpretation.
Comment: I' m a genius too ;) and I feel a slow dance in the 2nd movement
Answer: I wouldn't read too much into the 'dance-like' comment.  There are lots of dance rhythms - a stately Pavane, a flowing Waltz, a spritely Minuet, an energetic Jig, a frantic Tarentella etc. etc.    Someone thought the Beethoven reminded him of one of these.   A valid opinion, but not Holy Writ.
Answer: It is referring to the dotted 6/8 rhythm after the dramatic intro. I have also heard this 2 sections might have the subtitle: invitation to the dance
The fast 6/8 reminds me on a gigue or tarantella (event. also a waltz - as 6/8 can be heard as 2 x 3/4 measures)
As it is said in the quotation below the gigue has 3/4 (triplets) or 12/16th and the tarantella has an up-beat of a half bar.
https://ca.royalacademyofdance.org/more/music-at-the-rad/dance-rhythms-for-ballet-pianists/

Dotted Rhythm in Dance


When I release a fretted string how do I keep it silent?

Question: Since adding distortion when I release a string I can hear it, almost even sounding like a pull off, so now I've had to slow down and when I release I have to mute it with my fretting hand before moving on to the next pitch. Is this how it's done or is it better to do it with my picking hand which seems more difficult at this point. I'm talking about when I'm practicing scales.
Comment: I do it how you describe. My fretting hand is always touching all the strings unless any are open and sounding.
Comment: When lifting your finger off the fret, there is a short period where the string is not against the fret, but it is still tight against your finger. This has a dampening effect on the string. This does not work as well in electric guitar, since the strings are already very close to the frets and the 'dampening window' is extremely small. In classical guitar, the strings are often slightly further away, maybe slightly higher tension, and tend to dampen more when lifted off the fret.
Answer: This is a common problem, and being able to effectively damp notes after they are played is, to my ears, one of the differences between a decent amateur guitarist and someone with real control of the instrument. In fact, it is a good idea to damp notes when playing clean, too, although many players don't recognise the need until playing with distortion, which highlights extra unintentional sounds.
Yes, a good way to stop strings sounding after you lift a finger, is to do what I call "self-damping" notes, where you lift a left-hand finger a little slower, so that it damps the string it lifts off (this is what you describe). But, I find I also damp with the right-hand, too, particularly when playing scalic passages and/or with distortion. I do this by keeping my thumb parallel with the strings (pointing towards the headstock), so that it touches and damps strings as I pick each note.
Also, damping open strings, when playing with distortion, can help to avoid extra noise and control feedback. You can do this by touching strings either side of the one you're playing with the left-hand fingers, and by putting the heel of the hand (near the wrist) on the lowest strings, if playing on the higher strings.
Comment: A wee extra: you can also damp with other fingers on your left hand. eg if you are lifting off your third finger, have your first or second damp the string.