What striker builds let you play a secondary defender role?

Question: I'm going to play D&D 4e on the PC side of the screen for the first time soon, and it looks like the best way to fill the party's needs is by taking up a striker that can also defend a bit. Maximizing stickiness in a striker build is a priority.
Answer: On paper, I'd go with a lot of the choices listed, especially the Barbarian, but in practice I've seen melee rangers really end up excelling in this role, especially if they're willing to drop a feat or two into armor proficiency. The lack of marking is, of course, a problem, but it's offset (perhaps strangely) by some of the ranger's more controller-ey attacks that slow or move enemies. This allows for a decent amount of battlefield control (something both Defenders and Controllers achieve) while maintaining an immediate melee threat (which is something Defenders and Strikers both achieve) without requiring any fiddly multiclassing or peculiar gear combinations.
It does require the tradeoff of ditching dexterity in favor of strength, but that choice is one that any ranger needs to make anyway. The trick is not to think of it as forgoing ranged attacks so much as knowing that you have some secondary range capability to fall back on. As a bonus, in reducing focus on dexterity, the investment in strength and constitution means that you can actually take the heavy armor feats.
Again, not as fiddly and interesting  as some other options, but I've seen it at the table twice, and in both cases it's surprised me with its effectiveness.
Comment: Oh, nice outside the box approach. I dig that.
Comment: I'll definitely take a look at that ranger build. It sounds quite interesting, and like it will provide good, juicy choices at the table.
Answer: As of December 2010, here is a list of strikers who can secondary in defender, ordered roughly by effectiveness:
List of Builds taken from the CharOp Wiki and Heroes of the Forgotten Lands, with hypotheticals taken from Heroes of the Fallen Kingdoms previews. (If someone pings me when HoFK drops, I'll update this.)
The important characteristic of the Defender, as taken from the Art of Defending is to impose the Defender Catch 22:

A: Risk a miss against the defender
Concentrate your attacks on the defender. He has high defenses, high hit points and ways to remove or ignore status effects. This makes the enemy's attack likely to have little impact.
B: Soak the punishment
Try to circumvent the defender and attack his softer allies. First of all, the defender imposes a penalty to this attack with his mark. Then, each defender class has individual ways to keep the enemy from reaching the target, staying near the enemy, reducing the attack's effect or punishing the enemy.
A good defender needs to make both A and B painful for the enemy. If he neglects his defense, he is a liability to the party because it is easier for enemies to render him ineffective with weaken, stun and other effects. He also needs to be healed more often, which drains party resources. If he neglects B, he'll be like a stone pillar that enemies can't push over, but they can just walk around him and kill his allies first, then finish him off last.

Defender as secondary presents the "we can defend everyone some of the time, or someone all of the time, but not everyone all of the time." Considering that requirement, I'll class a defender as secondary if they perform at least one of the following well:

a) can compel a monster to attack them that would not otherwise attack them at least once an encounter;

a1) Through mark or peseudomark
a2) By reducing movement options through "stickiness" or otherwise presenting coherent debuffs to attacking other people

b) if they naturally draw attacks, to be able to survive the concentrated punishment of around 50% of the monsters for one round.

List of Builds, each rated by suitability for defender secondary:

Assassin

Bleak Disciple Assassin

A consistent funnel of THP as well as acceptably dex-based defenses means they are not bad at case b. Whlie they would be hard-pressed to survive for more than a round of focus, the right ki-focus (iron-body) combined with their THP should provide for quite acceptable secondary defender. No feats or multi-classing necessary to move to case A, as they're insufficiently survivable for that. Though technically their at-will power executioner's noose which combines a pull and slow satisfies A2 weakly.

Nightstalker Assassin

A complete joke. These folks want to stay as far away from combat as possible. No HP, no THP, no melee.

Executioner Assassin

Jury's still out, depending on the revisions they make to the revised preview. No dedicated defendery powers though, so unlikely to be useful at case B. They have a grab at-will that quite neatly satisfies case A2 though.

Avenger

According to the handbook: "Defender: You've got the defenses and the HP and surges. If you're pursuit, your censure sort of acts like a Mark, you convince the bad guy to not run once you get it alone. Look for powers that let you take your target off to the side, away from the rest of the scrum." From personal practice, at low-levels, avengers do *not* have the durability to be a defender without building specifically towards that.
   Censure of Persuit

 Your class feature punishes running, so intelligent enemies satisfy A2. Dex boosts AC, so your defences won't suck, but you're not con focused and cloth (with bonuses) only goes so far. Decent off-defender, as you're designed to privately wail on someone in the corner and have many class

 Censure of Retribution

 Your class feature rewards masochism, but doesn't have any way of satisfying case A. And you absolutely cannot satisfy case b. No off-defender here.

 Censure of Unity

 No bias for or against, though the unitarians are encouraged to fight in formation. The lack of a secondary attribute allows for multi-classing, as such, MCing defender and grabbing A1 is quite feasible. Again there are case B problems.

Barbarian

Rageblood Vigor

Designed to be an off-defender, the str-con focus means low defenses, while the multitude of THP options means an ability to soak the damage fairly effectively. Ragebloods fail case A, but very neatly satisfy case B. It is important to note that the party will die *very* quickly if the barbarian is primary defender, as ragebloods are charge happy, and thus offer no useful battlefield control, and they don't have the defenses to really soak case B for multiple turns, especially with the nature of THP.

Thaneborn Triumph

Off-leader. Charisma focus means less HP and similar defensive weaknesses. Debuffs are cute, but don't satisfy A or B.

Thunderborn Wrath

Off-*controller* the AoE nature of the powers, and con focus means that taking damage is a tertiary priority.

whirling Slayer

Dex focus helps the AC, and it's far more likely to provoke case B's than the rest, due to the desire to attack many nearby targets. The survivability increase is negligible for the amount of risk. A whirling slayer can be a good off-defender if there's a very capable leader sitting behind them.

Monk

Centered FoB

Off-controller. While the slide is useful, it does not inherently generate stickiness needed for case A2, though it's certainly possible with the right feat support. a Dex focus provides defenses, though HP are lacking

Stone Fist FoB

Pure striker. Can't generate stickness, though multi-classing fighter or warden could provide for weak off-defender support. Very tricky build to pull off.

Iron Soul FoB

Off-Defender as designed. Con as secondary stat with the FoB providing absolutely fantastic lockdown as well as exclusive riders on powers. The Lion's Den at-will provides even stronger battlefield control and defenses as well as the proning attack of Dragon's Tail. With a mark, an Iron soul could be an excellent defender.

Ranger

Archery Style

No con or defenses for Case B. No way of reliably generating sticky through twin-strike. Look at the Seeker class instead if you want case A2.

Beast Mastery

Conceptually possible to send your beast in to off-off-defender, but the mechanical issues are such that it's not feasible. Fails cases A and B

Hunter Style

Rapid weapon switching and twin-strike to not a defender make.

Marauder Style

If you *really* want to be an off-off-defender and ranger, this is the style to take. It's a poor choice, but it's the least bad, and offers some not completely horrible defensive bonuses.

Two-Blade Style

5 HP with a strength focus means your dex is suffering as it fights with wisdom. Good luck surviving, much less sticking people down. You'll do absolutely fantastic damage, so most enemies will target you for preference (and you'll be in range of them.) With two-blade rangers the question is always: who will die first? Make sure to bring a defender to the party who *isn't* you, and focus on doing damage instead.

Scout

Unknown. If the horribly broken preview is any indication, the class is broken and over-powered, and as such may have a magical marking ability as well.

Rogue

Artful Dodger

Fails cases A and B in heroic, though sneak attack offers many options later on to be modified for lockdown via feats. Still, not a class focus at all.

Brutal Scoundrel

According to the guide, the right feats can make a BS an off-defender, Decent fighter synergies provide for this combination, but it takes concerted effort towards this goal. Useful if you want to play a "thug"

Cunning Sneak

The ideas of staying hidden and drawing fire are functionally opposite. Horrible defender.

Ruthless Ruffian

The class feature is a trap, therefore, anything extending beyond it is also a trap. Avoid at all costs.

Thief

Thug's Trick and unbalancing trick offer a easy way to satisfy case A2, while a high dex for melee offers some protection. A very solid off-defender with the right build.

Sorcerer

The guide notes that all sorcerers make horrible defenders. "There are highly specialized builds of Sorcerers with absolutely ridiculous AC, but that just makes them hard to hit, not tanks, and certainly not defenders." As such, and as there are no builds that provide for defendery qualities, I'll skip the class. They have little inherent focus on being sticky, and insufficient HP (even with a defensive focus) to allow for case B.

Warlock

Dark Pact

Charisma based with a pact boon that triggers when an enemy hits you. pass.

Fey Pact

Charisma based with a pact spell that renders you invisible. pass.

Infernal pact

Excellent off-defender with the right choice of sticky-making powers, the THP granted by your boon as well as your con focus make you very tough. Defenses need work though, but that just means that enemies will want to satisfy case B *for* you. You might even survive.

Sorcerer King Pact

Constitution focused with an emphasis on melee touch provides for being in the middle of combat, though few options for surviving combat. Still, there are worse choices. Very build dependent. Stickiness can be achieved by teleporting with warlock's curse via the paragon feat Flitting Shadows.

Star Pact

Con focused, but highly variable. Depends on many build details. No real melee focus

Vestige Pact

Highly versatile, the right vestages can make you a decent off-defender combined with the correct feat support. Requires pre-planning of the character. Difficult to pull off in heroic

Hexblade

Melee focused warlock is already most of the way there. Some powers may provide the necessary stickiness.

Answer: The Rageblood Barbarian is a good choice for a Defender-y striker because you can stand up to a lot of punishment. I think it's the most defender-y of the strikers. But it's not super sticky. Match it with a durable race (dwarf, goliath, or warforged) to be extra-chewy.
If stickiness is the goal, have you considered just making a very striker oriented defender?
The Ardent Paladin is a great choice because it's already a defender, but then it deals some major damage with ardent strike, challenging strike, and blood of the mighty (a reliable 4W attack). Focus everything on your defender toward strength, use a brutal 2-hander, and pick a race like half-orc or human and you'll have a real bruiser of a defender. Another option is a tempest fighter.
Comment: I'll look into the Rageblood and the Ardent Paladin, for sure. I'm iffy on whether the pally's damage will be as consistent as I'd like, though.
Comment: I currently play an ardent pally in one campaign. Damage can be quite surprising with ardent vow, divine strength and holy strike combined. Divine Power gives access to a lot of extra hard hitting abilities. Grab a d12 weapon and start swinging! Only problem is the need to keep your wisdom high to use ardent vow often enough to be effective and damaging and wisdom doesn't help many other abilities. Once you hit paragon tier there are feats and paths that can make this problem go away though allowing you to practically use it twice a fight.
Answer: Barbarians in general have the hit points to be sort of like defenders, although you'll find yourself short on ways to be sticky. There are a handful of powers that allow barbarians to mark at higher levels.
A dragon sorcerer becomes an interesting choice around paragon tier -- the Dragon Guardian paragon path has an encounter power that marks. If you focus on defensive utilities and a couple of specific powers, like Lightning Breath, that damage opponents when they hit you, you can make up for your low hit points and low number of healing surges. Again, though, you'll be punishing monsters that hit you rather than punishing them for leaving you alone.
I would actually choose a pursuit avenger. You can, with effort, push your defenses up reasonably high, although you'll never soak damage like a barbarian would. However, your ability to punish opponents for leaving you alone is unparalleled among strikers. It's an excellent choice if stickiness is your concern.
If you don't mind being a defender with a lot of striker in you, a two-handed weapon fighter or a tempest fighter might work out for you. Fighters who focus on offense and don't bother with defensive feats or shields do a surprising amount of damage even without a striker class feature, and obviously the stickiness is built right in.
Comment: The offensive fighter is probably plan B right now, although I'll look at the pursuit avenger, too. Thanks, Bryant.
Answer: It's easier by far to build a defender who is very striker heavy.  Almost all of the defenders builds have a striker secondary and most feel the roll fairly well.  Both Fighters and Wardens have builds that can make them very capable strikers without sacrificing much in the way of defending.
It's always going to be easier to add damage to a defender build than add marking/defense to a striker.
If you have to go striker, beast rangers do a decent job of sucking up the damage and controlling enemy positioning.
Comment: This is my experience, too.  It's easier to take a Fighter and make him, say, a Dwarven Battlerager (unless they've continued to nerf that in the past year; I haven't kept up) which sacrifices raw AC for temp HP and extra damage if you stick to chain mail.  Pick a decent exotic weapon and focus on powers that roll damage dice, and you'll do just fine.  I was able to keep up with all the fair strikers (i.e., non-Ranger).
Answer: You may want to consider a staradin (a warlock, paladin hyrbid), play it up as a heretic paladin .
Also thraneborn barbarian, despite technically being a leader secondary, is brawley enough to merit some attention as a defender (especially if you use some cheese such as polearms or heavy armour, and a good multiclass/paragon choice could make it viableish I think + Barbarians are fun to play).
Answer: The Master Pai Mei build (courtesy of svendj at the 4e CharOp forum) combines decent (though not stellar) striker damage and an almost complete defender package. It prevents foes from shifting away, has a decent OA if they move away, and starting in paragon its OAs knock foes prone (or as early as level 2 if you go with the minotaur variant) and it gains the ability to mark; the only thing it lacks is defender mark punishment.
It's an Iron Soul monk build so it has good HP & defenses (typical same level enemies need at least a 15 on the die to hit its AC). Monk in general offers a lot of versatility and maneuverability as well, to ensure you can go lock down the enemy you want to lock down.


Ubuntu 14.04 HOST - Windows 10 GUEST - VirtualBox Resolution Issue

Question: Running Ubuntu 14.04 as the host. Got version 5.0.26 of VirtualBox and I'm running a Windows 10 as the guest os.
Like all of the other threads, the resolution will not go above a certain setting. I've installed and tried both 5.0.26 and 5.0.10 guest additions on the guest os. I've also enabled 2d, 3d acceleration and have 256mb video memory on the options for the vm.

The option on the host exists, but when I click on for example 1920x1080 nothing happens to the guest os.
Any ideas how to fix this?
Answer: Wow. I rolled back the driver in the guest os and restarted the vm. Fixed the issue. Weird as ****.


Transport mechanism in absorption of monosaccharides in small intestine

Question: In the cell membrane of the intestinal cells, there is a mobile carrier protein called Sodium  Dependent Glucose Transporter(SGLT1).It transports glucose and galactose to inside the cell using energy.The energy is derived from sodium-potassium pump (Primary Active Transport).How it is possible cause we need energy in Na-K pump too ?
Answer: From my initial reading on this, the SGLT1 does not itself directly use energy in the form of ATP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-glucose_transport_proteins It appears the uptake of the sugars by this protein are achieved by cotransport. In this case, they "hitch a ride" into intestinal epithelium by following the flow of sodium ions back into the epithelial cells. The reason the Na+ ions flow into the epithelial cells is because of their higher concentration outside the cells. This concentration gradient is created and maintained by the Na-K Pump. So, ATP is used to create a chemical gradient, higher [Na+] outside compared to inside. Then the natural flow of Na+ down its gradient "drags in" the sugars.
Comment: I still dont get the point . Na-K pump uses the ATP to keep the concentration gradient stable. How the ATP is generated by this pump to be source of energy for SGLT1 mechanism ?
Comment: The pump uses the energy in ATP to create the gradient. The gradient itself is another form of energy. It is the energy in the gradient that brings in the sugars. Forming a gradient is like blowing up a ballon. Once that balloon is full of air, the compressed air inside wants to rush out. As it does, we can get it to do various chores for us. In this case the higher concentration of Na+ outside the cells is allowed to flow in through the SGLT1. As it does, sugars ride in with the ions. The Na-K Pump keeps pumping Na+ out to keep the process going.


Can my guitar action be lowered further, or is it already too low?

Question: I have gotten a lot better at bending, so I stopped questioning the action on my guitar for a while. But now I feel like although it is good at the lower frets; at the higher frets it seems very high when playing fast, or playing solos, and sometimes my fingers will go under the string above it a little bit. Is it still a preference at this point (since I would like to lower it), or is it possible it is too low here and I shouldn't lower it? Thanks.
Answer: That is a very high action. If you intend to just play "Cowboy Chords" and want your strings to sing out clearly with no fret buzz, that could work, that's high for even slide-first guitars.
You can do great amounts of setup yourself; here's a previous answer explaining the process. I don't see the neck or bridge, so I can't tell if the neck is straight (too much relief will raise the action) or if the bridge is too high, so shimming the neck is within the realm of possibility. That is a doable fix for the home player but it involves unscrewing the neck.
Good luck; we know you can do it!
Comment: I've read before that one should get their guitar "set up" by a professional. Maybe I should just do this, but I don't know what other things are commonly checked.
Comment: The elements of a setup are detailed in the link of the answer. Google searches can get you deeper. At my local shop, a setup is $45, but that might be way low. It could be worth it to you. A Phillips screwdriver and the right allen wrench can do a lot for you.
Comment: 1) straight neck. Fretting a string at both the first and last fret, you should be able to fit a dime under the 12th fret. Not much more. Fixable by turning the truss rod. Turn a quarter turn and let the neck adjust for a few minutes.
Comment: Looking at the Fender setup guide ( https://support.fender.com/hc/en-us/articles/212774786-How-do-I-set-up-my-Stratocaster-guitar-properly- ) and knowing yours is a Strat-style guitar, there's the possibility that you don't have enough spring tension as well. The guide is a good start.
Comment: An embarrassment of links: here's Premier Guitar covering the setup as well. https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/22311-ways-to-optimize-your-guitar-for-under-100
Answer: Normally you want the action as low as possible, for as long as fret buzz isn't a problem. So it depends on your preferences, on how you play and what kind of music.
By increasing the neck curvature and decreasing string height at the bridge you can make the action more even along the length of the neck. Perhaps that can help you. Or maybe not. Various guitarists have various preferences on this as well.
I recommend using a good ruler with fine scale to measure the action, rather than doing it by eye. There are gauges made specially to measure guitar string action, they are very useful.
Last but not least, work on your technique. Slow down, identify the issue, practice good technique.
Comment: 'Increasing the neck curvature'. Are you sure?
Comment: That's geometry. The string is straight. If the neck is straight as well, the distance between the two unavoidably increases as you go towards the higher frets. Neck relief can compensate for that. Of course it's possible to overdo... and everyone has their preferences as well.
Answer: It does look quite high. Setting up a guitar is really for experienced people, but unless you start now, you'll be relying on them for ever, instead of being one yourself.
Apart from trussrod adjustment, all else is pretty safe. And can be reversed safely too.
First obtain the correct tools. A hex (Allen) wrench that fits the truss rod and doesn't slip is important. Look down the neck, and with strings tensioned (they'll obviously be straight), see that the neck/fretboard has a very slight bow, farthest away from the strings around fret 12. As big as yours is will benefit from a tweak of 1/4 to 1/2 a turn. Gently, a bit at a time, leaving some time for all to settle. Maybe hours, or overnight.
Next is to lower the action using the grub screws each side of each string, at the saddles. Keep the string in tune, and lower till it rattles on a fret or two - try all - then raise until the rattle disappears. Re-check the neck relief from time to time, adjust fractionally if needed, but do it bit by bit.
After, when it feels far better than it does currently, it's worth checking the intonation - but that won't affect the action at all.
Comment: `all else is pretty safe` kinda. There are lots of easy tweaks and adjustments you can make, but it is also easy to do some serious damage if you're not careful. Screw heads can be stripped whilst intonating, hex keys can round off the saddle adjusters and the trussrod, etc. Not saying dont learn how to DIY but be CAREFUL!
Answer: Yeah that action is pretty high.
There are a few replies here suggesting you fix it yourself, but I'll play devil advocate and suggest just get someone to do it for you.
I know, I know. Yes you should learn to do all this yourself, it'll save you money and very satisfying. But

from your question I'm getting the vibe that you are relatively new to the guitar
If you have to ask the internet if the action is wrong, you're probably not really sure what is "correct" in the first place
Without being able to see, hold feel the guitar none of us here can really tell you what the limits of this guitar's setup is

You need a frame of reference
Take the guitar to an experienced tech they will tell you if the guitar is even capable of being set up any better. Your guitar might be a dud, or it might just have limitations that come with cheaper guitars, or it might have been damaged by a previous owner. A real human being will tell you if there is a realistic chance of improving this instrument.
Assuming the guitar is in good condition and just needed a nice setup, when you get the guitar back from the tech it will be amazing to play, so much easier, much more fun. But more importantly (in the context of this question) you will understand what this guitar should feel like, how the action should be set, how the frets should feel, how much buzz is "acceptable". Then, moving forward, you can use that knowledge to inform your own maintenance and to learn the skills required to maintain your guitars.
I still take my guitars to a tech after 20 years, he's like a magician. If I'm playing regularly I might visit him as often as once every 18 months or 3 years. Or if I've worked on a referb or built a salvage guitar I'll take it in for the finishing touches.
Comment: I have actually been playing for around 5 months off and on...in one of my comments to another answer here I explained how from my research I concluded it was most likely because I sucked. I feel like I will be able to play much faster and more accurately now if I can get the action lowered.Thanks for your answer.
Comment: I'm just saying because people here are acting like I should have known haha, I hope I didn't build bad muscle memory/habits or anything. I bet it will feel very different.
Comment: "Sucking is the first step on the path to Not Sucking" - Someone


Are there any ways to get a bonus feat that are not class or race restrictive in Pathfinder?

Question: Specific feats I'm looking for are Endurance and Iron Will, since I figure those would be the most likely, or Psionic Meditation, Psionic Weapon, or Unlocked Talent.  All but Unlocked Talent are required for PrC class entry so I can't have them on a weapon or anything.  I hope to gain all 5 of these feats before level 5 and I am getting one bonus combat or teamwork feat as is.  The reason for the Unlocked Talent feat is to meet a manifesting a specific power requirement so that does not need to be actually on my feat list but expanding on that is grounds for another question.
Answer: If your game uses the anti-hero optional rule for the hero points optional rule system you can gain a non-class, non-race, non-level-derived bonus feat.  This is the only way to gain an intrinsic bonus feat without spending class or race resources on it.
If you are a half-elf or can pretend to be one Paragon Surge, by far the best spell in the game before the nerf-bat hit it, can get you another 'feat for which you meet the prerequisites' which is effectively a bonus feat.  It only lasts 1 minute/level so it's not too useful to you.
You can get tons of feats from ioun stones, which would let you qualify for class entry, but you stated that you aren't interested in equipment based solutions so we wont go into detail on that.
Comment: I always thought equipment based solutions don't qualify you for class entry or taking other feats or similar permanent gains that need a certain prerequisite.
Comment: @Dorian In the case of other feats, they work fine, you just have more to lose if you lose the item (because losing the prerequisite also loses the feat that required it). RAW, this is somewhat more ambiguous with PrCs, but in your case, assuming this is for the campaign we're both in, the DM has ruled that items can't provide PrC prerequisites. Still might matter for the next person to have the same question, though, so still worth covering here
Comment: @Dorian If you're avoiding items because of DM ruling, your DM probably isn't going to be happy with some kind of extended/continual paragon surge as a PrC prerequisite either, so you're pretty much left with the first option.
Comment: Yeah I don't think any of these options are going to work in the campaign.  Good answer though at least.


Why do there seem to be relatively few imports from India into the United States?

Question: In the United States I see significant quantities of manufactured good imports made in Taiwan, Japan, China and Korea. However, there seem to be relatively few imports from India. Why is this?
Answer: India has significantly worse physical/logistics infrastructure than China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, so it is difficult to produce goods in India because it's difficult to move supplies and product around the country.  This, coupled with the comparatively higher complexity of dealing with government bureaucracy, makes it challenging to manufacture products in India for export.
Here is the World Bank's 2014 Logistics Performance Index for the countries, which illustrates the significant competitive disadvantage India has compared to China and others.

India still has a low-cost workforce, so they do export items where cost is very important (e.g. clothing, sneakers).  More importantly, India exports services (call centers, software offshoring) because it's much easier to lay down fiber optic cable than to build a railroad so certain cities (Hyderabad, Mumbai, Bangalore) have developed strong export services industries which do not need to depend on a lot of outside physical infrastructure to create viable exports.
Comment: As a side note, I was helping work out a cost/benefit of analysis for a project that was considering exporting from India. The complications from government, transportation made it not viable compared to China, or even expanding operations in the US. (also the work would require at least one expat and not many people want to move near industrial zones in India)
Comment: @serakfalcon interesting data.. You raise an important issue, which is that the cost of poor infrastructure impacts more than just the circulation of physical goods and supplies. In China, Taiwan, and Korea, governments worked to create schooling, housing and recreational infrastructure inside industrial zones or near them. This help attract labor force to the area, which is another thing that India foresakes by having weak infrastructure.


Why should iscsi traffic be isolated?

Question: Why should iscsi SAN traffic be isolated? I'm trying to explain to my network guy why we should isolate the traffic.
Comment: How could you be explaining it to him if you don't know? You're advocating for a particular architectural design and implementation without yourself knowing why that particular architectural design and implementation is important.
Comment: No I do know but these are old school network guys that just want to throw mor bandwidth at the issue. I was just hoping to get more info on what I could tell them on why and what can happen if its not isolated.
Comment: Please read http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/data-center/iscsi-storage-networks-full-separation-or-not/
Answer: Because:

Very, very bad things will happen if someone gains unauthorized access to your storage network
Very, very bad things will happen if you have your iSCSI traffic not separated, and someone finds it a great idea to muck around with the STP topology at an edge switch, with the result of your entire network AND your storage subsystem going down at once
Very, very bad things will happen if iSCSI network design isn't done carefully. Keeping it on isolated VLANs makes it much much harder to do something silly, like trying to carry iSCSI traffic across a router or a firewall (there shouldn't be any routers or firewalls on a iSCSI network)
Very, very bad things will happen if your storage/virtualization admin wants to implement jumbo frames, and your network admin doesn't want to implement jumbo frames. Keeping iSCSI separated on dedicated switches will prevent this from happening. Even sharing switches with regular network traffic will prevent MTU mismatch, as you would only increase the MTU on the switches that has iSCSI traffic - not the connected switches.

I could probably list more reasons, but I think it's enough to get an idea. Don't mix iSCSI traffic with any other kind of traffic on the same ports. If you have decent switches then go ahead and share the switch fabric with other traffic, but keep iSCSI on separate ports in separate VLANs.
Comment: Not to mention performance, performance and....performance.
Comment: So to sum up, very very bad things will happen :P.
Answer: Because not doing so allows regular traffic to impact on storage traffic, which is a bad idea as it means that say a user's download could delay an important read or write.
Comment: That's an argument for QoS. Would you also argue in favor of isolating VoIP traffic?
Comment: So you don't need QoS, it has a latency cost usually
Comment: That's by design - QoS lets non-timesensitive data wait for more urgent data such as iSCSI traffic.
Answer: You don't want side effects from traffic disturb your SAN access. We have a small VMWare VSphere environment where we at first had both VMotion and iSCSI traffic going through the same switches on the same network. Different network adapters, but the same network. A bug in ESXi 5.0 made the hosts randomly lose access to the iSCSI SAN whenever a longer VMotion action that made use of more than 1 network adapter was active. Depending on the SAN solution and the iSCSI clients used you can expect all sorts of funny behavior when you mix traffic. Of course it can run without any problem too, but that usually only lasts until that one day when your colleagues are all on vacation and suddenly all hell breaks loose.
Another problem when you have iSCSI SAN systems in your default network: someone could use an IP address assigned to your SAN node. That would probably not happen on accident, but someone trying to get you or the company in trouble could scan your network, discover the SAN and use any IP-enabled device to make your SAN magically disappear.

Why should iscsi traffic be isolated?


How can encryption software accept password lengths which are not one of the AES key lengths?

Question: AES comes with key sizes of 128, 192, and 256 bit.
But in Truecrypt or other crypto software we can use passwords of different length, even less than 128 bit or more than 256 bit.
How is this possible?
Answer: I imagine that Truecrypt uses a KDF, to derive a 128/192/256-bit key from your password.  This is standard practice.  It's unadvisable to use a password directly, as they're generally low-entropy (predictable), and too short (as you've noted).
Comment: Truecrypt uses PBKDF2 with around a 1000 iterations as KDF.
Answer: It is almost universally a bad idea to use the actual password you typed as an encryption key. While the ciphers mentioned use 128-256 bit keys, and ideally with 8 bits of entropy (complexity/randomness, loosely) per byte, the symbols a user can type on a keyboard are no more than 5 bits - even assuming a very diverse character set beyond the typical letters, numbers and top row of symbols. As pointed out, they can even be less than the full size the cipher requires, so presumably padded with nulls or something else predictable, further reducing entropy.
Add to that we humans like patterns, enjoy dictionary words and can only remember a few simple substitutions (S-$), and the eventual key is likely not very strong and so more guessable.
Key-Derivation Functions (KDF) "stretch" these relatively simple passphrases into the required number of bits, and even turn longer passwords into the required shorter length - considering how weak the original could be, this shorter derived bit sequence (key) can be stronger than even a very long text passphrase.
Additionally, since good derivation functions add in some randomness (salt), typing the same password should result in very different keys each time they are are used to generate a new key (to encrypt a new thing) since a new salt is used. Using the same salt (or no salt) will result in the same derived key which is obviously essential to actually decrypt the content. However, using the same derived key to encrypt two different objects introduces vulnerabilities related to key reuse, so effective salting very much improves security while allowing re-use of the same passphrase, which humans like.
Finally, many implementations allow you to tweak how hard the KDF works to create the derived key, so that you can set how hard an attacker should work to break it, and trade that off against the time a successful derivation would take with the correct passphrase. A ten second derivation on an embedded device may be a millisecond task for a well-equipped attacker with GPU or other hardware-based assistance.
Comment: Might want to rephrase penultimate paragraph.  Seems to suggest that re-entering a password creates a different key :-)
Comment: Yeah, I went through a few revisions, tried to remain terse but clearly sacrificed clarity, thanks.


Canceling my pending withdrawal BTC

Question: How can i cancel my pending withdrawal BTC of $1,240. Its been pending for 2 days. it has no confirmations and on the blockchain it says it receives 0 and sent 0. Someone PLEASE help me!
Comment: Are you withdrawing from a custodial service? If so, this is a customer service concern and you'll need to contact the service to ask for their help. If you are withdrawing from a non-custodial wallet and you have already broadcast the transaction to other nodes on the network, then there is ~no way to cancel it.
Answer: You can not cancel the transaction, but what you can do is to spend that same UTXO to a different address of yourselves (effectively a double-spend).
The reason it has no confirmations is likely that the fee is not sufficient for miners to prioritise your transaction in their mempool. As long as it has no confirmations, you can still double-spend to an address of your choosing.
Comment: how do i double spend and how much do i have to put
Comment: You 're'-spend the same, unconfirmed UTXO to an address of yourself. At this time, if you set a fee of 110 sats/byte (https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/), then your transaction will be confirmed in the next block.

Canceling my pending withdrawal BTC


How to remove duplicate songs from itunes playlist?

Question: How to remove duplicate titles from itunes playlist ?
When adding directories with mp3s to itunes that contains playlist files, it's listing twice (or more) the songs in the album view.
Answer: After selecting the playlist you would like remove duplicates from in iTunes, you'll then want to select "Name" in the "Sort By" menu (located under the "View" main menu item).

This will sort the songs in alphabetical order to where you can easily identify any duplicates since they'll appear right next to each other.
You'll then want to select a duplicated song and hover over the selected song to reveal the ... (More) menu.

Then select "Remove from Playlist" to delete the selected duplicated song.

And, just in case you're wondering, yes – doing this operation will only delete the selected duplicate, not all instances of the song within the playlist. (Which was a secret worry of mine.)
Answer: iTunes actually has a feature to display duplicates. It shows you all songs which it thinks are the same and you can delete one of them.
Here is a support page from Apple explaining how: Link
Comment: That feature only shows you duplicate songs in your library. It does not show duplicate songs in a playlist, which was as I understood the question.
Comment: Is this feature available on iPad or iPhone?


What are the main differences between the network-level and the application-level regarding information security?

Question: I'm fresh new to the field of security, so I'm sorry if this question seems stupid to you.
What are the main differences between the network-level and the application-level regarding information security ?
Comment: There is no infrastructure layer...
Comment: @Lucas Kauffman Oh, I thought there is... thanks for pointing this out. I've edited my question.
Answer: A simple way to think of it is in terms of devices you have in your kitchen; microwave, toaster, blender. The "network level" is the connection. Perhaps the electricity powering the devices in our example. The "application level" is specific to the thing, perhaps it involves what you put into the device or the buttons you press.
So in our example, a "network level attack" would be something like cutting the power or sending the wrong voltage. An "application level attack" would be something like putting tinfoil in the microwave.
If our device was a webserver, an application level attack would be something like SQL injection. A network-level attack would be something like a ARP-poisoning.
Often the distinction doesn't fall directly along those lines, and people are fond of the "Standard OSI Model" of network abstraction when describing behavior.
The OSI model describes the connection, so it's technically "network" either way. But it's often helpful to talk about certain aspects of the network, rather than just treating it as an opaque thing.
In that model, the application (HTTP, FTP, SMTP, IRC) is layer 7 (and sometimes 6, the OSI model doesn't directly map too real-world implementation). It's the language your programs speak once a connection is established. An attack on this layer might involve flooding buffers or authentication bypass.
Layers 2 or 3 through 5 or 6 describe getting the data successfully across the Internet. It involves IP, TCP, SSL, and all the fundamental bits that we normally describe as "the network". An attack here might involve replaying packets, redirecting traffic, or attacking stream encryption.
Layers 1 and sometimes 2 describe your physical connection; 1 is the actual voltages over your ethernet cable or radio modulation over wifi or bluetooth, while 2 is the way data is encoded to get it successfully from your machine to your router. An attack at this layer could involve cutting the wire, brute-forcing WEP keys, or MITM interception of raw traffic.
Comment: I think the question is more focused on job scope of said "job titles", as opposed to the actual work the terms describe.
Answer: Generally, when you talk about application/network layers, you are speaking of layered protocols in the OSI model of a networked communication system.  The network layer is layer 3 and deals with how to send packets over a network (both routing and forwarding).  The main network layer protocol in use today is the internet protocol (IP) specifically IPv4 (though IPv6 is gaining more use).  When your computer at your IP address wants to send packets to another IP address, it and all the intermediary routers use the internet protocol to figure out which intermediary links your packet should be sent to, so that it moves towards its destination.
The application-level is at the top of the layered protocol stack, and is the protocol that your applications conform to.  That is your web browser understands and speaks HTTP, HTTP is a application layer protocol.
Granted in a security discussion where you differentiate network security issues from application security issues, you may simply split "application" issues (there's an exploitable bug in this application) versus "network" issues (an attacker on the network can eavesdrop, tamper, or cause denial of service using network services).  In this broader sense, "network" would contain any security issues arising from layers 1-41.  For example, attacks like public wifi eavesdropping (based in physical layer of listening to the radio waves), ARP spoofing (link layer) or SYN flood (transport layer) would all be network attacks.
Application level attacks would be things like SQL injection, stack/buffer overflow, where the application takes input in an exploitable way due to bad logic (or insufficient safety checks) by the application developer and has nothing to do with computer networks.

1 The important layers for the internet are:

Layer 1 - Physical layer -- how to encode 1s and 0s using physical processes in a specific medium (e.g., wifi, ethernet, etc.).  May deal with issues of how to detect/prevent collisions.
Layer 2 - Link layer -- How to provide a reliable connection between two computers directly connected to each other both using the same physical protocol.  (E.g., wifi router and laptop; or two computers with an ethernet cable between them.)  MAC addresses are used for addressing at the link layer.
Layer 3 - Network Layer -- How to send a packet over the internet potentially through many different computers and possibly traversing many different types of link layers.  (E.g., wifi at your home, to cable, to fiber optics at your ISP, to cable, to a data center with fiber optics).  Addresses at the network layer are IP addresses.
Layer 4 - Transport Layer -- How to group together many packets sent over the network into a segment and ensure the segment was transported in an appropriate fashion.  E.g., with TCP ensure there was a SYN/ACK handshake at the start (validating the source/destination IP addresses) and then make sure all packets were sent in order, make sure you aren't sending at an inappropriate rate that congests the network, and have senders resend missing packets in an appropriate way.  (UDP is the alternative transport layer to TCP, but provides virtually no guarantees but is more appropriate for say real time VoIP).  Addressing at the transport layer is port number (a number between 0-65535).
Layer 7 - Application Layer -- the data from the network that your application has to generate and parse.

Layer 5/6 (Session / Presentation) are generally integrated into the application layer for the TCP/IP model.  (E.g., the application developer abstracts out the presentation layer, and the session cookie is included in the application layer).
Comment: TCP/IP isn't really OSI...
Comment: @AviD - Agreed. I don't think I said so above.  OSI protocols are rarely used and TCP/IP protocols (incl. UDP) are used frequently.  But the OSI model is very similar to the TCP/IP model, the big difference is Application/Presentation/Session of OSI model are into one Application layer in the TCP/IP model (also a few optimizations bypass strict layering).  But whenever you talk about layering (e.g., layer-2 vs layer-3 switch or layer-7 DoS attack) the general framework is the OSI model, even if the IETF's protocols don't strictly adhere to an OSI standard mostly developed in the late 1970s.
Answer: There is a nice presentation on this which you can find here.
Network security talks more about vulnerabilities at the IP layer. For instance:

IP spoofing
Time to live headers
Packet flooding
IPSEC

Whereas application security talks about:

Software vulnerabilities

as simple as a single message that is "longer then expected", or as
  complex as a long dialogue where an unexpected list/order of otherwise
  correct messages are exchanged.
Comment: Hey @LucasKauffman - that link seems b0rked. Do you have an updated one?


What's the current status of quantum computers?

Question:
Is it real now or not completed yet?
Can I buy one? / How many quantum computers have been manufactured in the world?
Is quantum computing independent (e.g Quantum+LCD+Keyboard) or it add-on for PC (e.g GPU)? / Can I use a quantum computer directly or must connect it to PC?
Can a quantum computer process same CPU data? (e.g CPU can't process GPU graphics)
Can quantum computers run high-end games?
Can I program a quantum computer using C++? If not, why so?
Comment: Welcome to Quantum Computing SE! That's a fairly large number of questions - we're able to answer questions much better if they get asked as one question per post and are more specific - as an example, for your first question here, quantum computers exist but really aren't very good (not 'universal' and not 'fault tolerant') and are very small, so it's one of those 'depends what you mean' cases, so if you [edit] your question to focus on something specific in more detail, it can get put into the reopen queue
Answer:

Is it real now

Quantum computers are real, and they have been made by several companies such as IBM, Intel, Google, Alibaba, and Rigetti. D-Wave also makes quantum annealers, which do not have provable speed-up over classical computers for most problems, but do have the same speed-up as circuit-based quantum computers for some problems (such as the square-root speed-up for the sort problem that Grover's algorithm solves on circuit-based quantum computers).

or not completed yet?

The pursuit to build quantum computers is far from complete. We want to make machines with more qubits and less noise, for example.

2- Can I buy one?

D-Wave has released 4 models for public sale in the last 7 years. They sold their first annealer (the D-Wave One) for \$10 million and their second one (the D-Wave Two) for $15 million (see here). Their most recent machine, the 2000Q also sold for \$15 million.
None of the circuit-based quantum computers are publicly advertised for sale, but I'm sure if you offered Rigetti \$15 million for one, they would make it for you. Google and Intel might not be as interested in your money since they already have a lot of that, and since they seem a lot more reluctant to let people use their machines than IBM (who let's anybody use their machines directly), maybe they wouldn't sell you one for any price you offer, but this is just a guess.

How many quantum computers have been manufactured in the world?

The first quantum computer had only 2 qubits in 1998 and was made at Oxford University by Jonathan Jones with theoretical input from Michele Mosca (see the original paper). Hundreds of quantum devices like this have been made in universities since then.
15 larger-scale quantum devices are listed here, but this list doesn't include Alibaba's quantum computer, and dozens of other prototypes made by these companies. For example this shows that D-Wave made at least 9 more machines that are not listed in that Wikipedia article. They have also made machines for their own testing such as the machine with the Pegasus architecture.

Is quantum computing independent (e.g Quantum+LCD+Keyboard) or it add-on for PC (e.g GPU)? / Can I use a quantum computer directly or must connect it to PC?

Think of it more like a GPU accelerator. Use a classical keyboard and mouse to give it commands, and a classical LCD screen to see the output, but allow the calculations to happen on a device that involves qubits.
Here's a famous picture of someone using a classical keyboard and classical LCD when using a quantum annealer:

Can a quantum computer process same CPU data?

QPU's can process all classical data. A classical CPU can't process all QPU data, but certainly can process any classical data that a QPU uses.

Can quantum computers run high-end games?

Quantum computers right now don't have enough qubits. If and when quantum computers have enough qubits, they will be able to do anything that a classical computer can do, and more.

Can I program a quantum computer using C++? If not, why so?

There's some C/C++ simulators here but there's also languages specifically for quantum computers, such as Q#. See this list.
Comment: I am not exactly sure if the statement "anything that a classical Computer can do and many more" is true. Isn't the problems solvable by QCs classified under BQP problems?
Answer: 1 - Not completed in the sense computations suffer from noise. Doing fault-tolerant quantum computations would be a major advancement.
2 - Unless you are wealthy, no. They are hosted by big groups generally. For how many, it is non-exhaustive but you can refer to this link
3 - So far it is just a chip, with big cooling system which takes some storage place. Connection with a classical computer will be just to send instructions to the chip and get the answers back to you as classical information.
4 - No classical data cannot be processed unless we have a way to convert it to quantum form, which is non trivial.
5 - So far it is not the purpose.
6 -  You have some quantum simulators in C++. You can find them on Quantiki's list of QC simulators.
Comment: At the future, Can Quantum replace CPU? Can Quantum process all data? (e.g read input from keyboard and process it the output to LCD)
Comment: No they are not meant for replacement. They are seen as accelerators. Quantum computing could help solve a few problems that are difficult to solve classically.
Comment: For data, it would depend on how you encode it. In theory, a quantum computer should be able to do any classical computations, but this would require so many qubits and it may take time before you see them out.


Use of race tokens when conquering new regions

Question: When conquering a new region, do you deploy race tokens from other regions you have already conquered, or do you use your unused race tokens?
Answer: You only use your unused race tokens (those you took into hand at the start of your turn). The only time you can take race tokens from already conquered spaces is 1) At end of turn when you can reallocate tokens on conquered spaces, and 2) At the start of the turn when you can take race tokens from conquered spaces into hand.
Answer: It's a 3 step process:

You take as many tokens back into your hand as you wish (you can empty regions that way, giving them up), normaly you keep 1 token in the regions you want to keep.
You do your attack with the spare tokens you have.
When you don't want to attack anymore you can redistribue tokens (but this time you are not allow to give up regions).
Answer: I think it may be helpful to think about the structure of a turn this way:
0) Decide whether to put your active race into Decline. If yes, then perform the "Going Into Decline" steps and end your turn.
1) Leave only 1 token in every one of your active-race regions. Pick up ALL the rest of them. This is your "hand" of active race tokens.
1a) Optionally pick up the last active race token from any of your regions and add them to your hand.
2) Conquer regions with tokens from your hand, until you are either out of legal moves or you decide to finish.
When you are finished conquering regions:
3) Collect your gold rewards.
4) Perform step 1 (but not 1a) again.
5) Place active race tokens from your hand onto the board, only into spaces which already contain an active race token.
6) End of Turn
Of course racial/special abilities will cause exceptions to the above, but this helps visualize what's really going on under typical circumstances.


Raspberry Pi 3 with Windows 10 IOT using USB Webcam

Question: I just got this new Raspberry Pi 3 and I have installed Windows 10 IOT on it. I am doing this project and it is for a webcam detecting objects. So  my question is, can I use a USB webcam on my Raspberry Pi so when I execute the code on my Raspberry Pi, it will automatically detect the webcam and will bring up an image?
Answer: You can not detect image because Windows 10 IoT does not provide a driver for the camera - it is still in development.
So by using Raspbian OS, it is possible to use the webcam but when using Windows 10 IoT it is difficult.
Answer: Here is a "Basic webcam app" sample that seems to fit the bill: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/samples/webcamapp
Comment: Link-only answers, while they might work for a while, are pretty useless as soon as the other end of the link changes or moves. Can you summarise their approach or otherwise provide some clues as to namespaces/critical code chunks?
Comment: Fair enough - it should probably have been only a comment.


What is the GroupId for "Everyone except external users" in SharePoint online?

Question: I have a Highlighted Content web part on a hub site that shows news intended for ALL employees (intranet) with content being rolled up from various functional area sites connected to said hub.  I am filtering by managed properties, which works fine.  The issue I have is that not all of the content in the functional area site pages is intended for ALL employees.  I found a way, I think, HERE, to use Flow and REST Api to set item level permissions to "Everyone except external users" so that only those items with the managed property of ALL are visible to all employees.  Other items in Site Pages would stay set to Functional Area permissions.  It looks as if I will need the GroupID.  Does anyone know what that might be for "Everyone except external users".  Or a better way to accomplish my goal?  Much help is appreciated.
Comment: Hi, are you saying that the permission is not getting applied automatically in the Highlighted content web part? i.e. people can see news which they shouldn't? In this case, please double check with a lower access user account. SharePoint automatically applies the permissions, even if it's a hub site, you shouldn't be able to see news from sites where you do not  have access.
Comment: Agreed, but my client wants some news from other sites to show on the hub site but not all, e.g. Executive site has news just for them but they have one news item that they want to share with All employees.  This item should have the permissions changed to Everyone except external based upon a managed property called News Audience.  I understand that they should just keep news for hub in the hub site collection and news for functional area in functional areas, but they feel that's too confusing.
Answer: based on the additional points shared in the comments section, I feel you can look at the following model to achieve the need:

Create a sub-site, say 'Private', under 'Executive Site', which should be accessible only by 'Executives'. You can have a new group created only for 'Executives' and break inheritance on the sub site to provide permission only to that group.
Now, have 'Everyone except external users' group added as 'viewer' in your top level 'Executive Site'.

News created in 'Executive Site' and the 'Private' sub-site, both would roll up to the Hub. There is no way you can stop the roll up if you are using 'News' pages. 'Everyone except external users' (not members from 'Executives' group), will see news items published in the 'Executive Site', but they won't be able to see any news from the 'Private' sub-site. News from 'Private' sub-site should be visible only to the members from 'Executive' group.
Let me know if this model will match your need.
Using managed property to filter News will work visually, but it will not necessarily restrict unwanted user-groups from viewing the content. They can always grab the direct link of the page to browse it. So, there should be restrictions through permission.
Just wanted to add that, SharePoint news audience targeting feature is in development which would give you more options over your particular issue.

Please check Microsoft Roadmap for SharePoint Online.
Comment: Thank you for your input.  They still would be creating the news in two different places.  That's what they don't want to do, but may have to.  I appreciate you pointing me to the Microsoft Roadmap. Very cool features coming up.


How much market data is required to confidently predict the yearly returns of a stock?

Question: I am looking to passively/lump-sum invest stocks. If I averaged the yearly returns of a stock, how many years would I need before I could say with 95% confidence that the averaged value would accurately predict the average yearly return for the next 10 years? If the answer is that "it depends", what factors would it depend on?
Comment: For example, it depends on the way you predict the price. It probably also depends on the volatility of stock returns..
Answer: It seems implicit in the question that you are happy to assume that the distribution of historical returns is an unbiased and consistent estimator of the distribution of future returns. Else "it depends" (on every variable that affects stock prices, ie all of them) ;-)
You can always come up with such an estimate; but your confidence interval will just be absurdly wide in small sample sizes. Let's say you have 9 years of data, suggesting a mean of say 5% and a vol of 15%. The standard error is your vol divided by root-n = 15% / 3 = 5%. So you can be 95% confident (ie 2 sigma) that the average future return should be between -5% and +15%. Not exactly helpful; and 5% of the time the long-term future should indeed be outside this range!
Broad rule of thumb is you need to quadruple the sample size to halve the confidence bands. So 36 years of data would be +/-5% (ie 2 * 15%/6) around mean 5%, ie somewhere between 0% to 10%. Still not very helpful.
And you would need 144 years to pin this down to say +2.5% to +7.5% - assuming the 15% vol is correct, but that's the long-run average for the US stockmarket. For single companies (more like 25% vols), you would need maybe 100 years of data to be 95% confident the mean was 0-10% (ie 2 * 25%/10 = 5% standard error = same 5% mean).
But once you've been patient enough to find and gather all this data to give you these kinds of levels of confidence, you start to run into an inevitable problem. Is the stockmarket, let alone any company, I'm buying today really the same beast as it was 10, 25, 50 or 100 years ago? That's the real problem here.
Comment: Nice one. So statistical *representativeness* is the issue here; i.e. you simply cannot be certain that the you truly sample from the exact same distribution all the time. Companies come and go, the political framework shifts, tariffs, export bans, new technologies... And then you have a lot of other investors who try to identify valuable investement opportunities, thereby actually increasing the problem of finding/fixing a *good* (in whatever sense) expected-return-estimate.
Comment: One typo corrected above. Note that a 95% confidence level AROUND a mean is a 97.5% confidence it will be higher than the lower bound. And the choice of 95% imposes its own constraints. M=5% real, S=15%, N=100, you could argue there was a ONE-TAILED 75% confidence that the average was >4% real; versus almost zero of this from cash or bonds. A lack of academic precision around the underlying return process doesn't alter the uncertain relative likelihoods it generates.


Optimum parameters for genome assembly via canu

Question: I have been trying to assemble my genome via canu. Canu gave me about 200 contigs using default parameters. My genomesize is ~9Mbp. Can you recommend some parameters I can tweak to decrease the contigs number?
Comment: You can also try other de novo assembly tools like SMARTdenovo to see if they output results more in line with what you expect
Answer: The canu parameter reference guide is always a good place to start.
It would help to know a little bit more about what your assembly looks like. E.g.

what is your n50, n90...?
What is your dataset coverage?
Have you run any tools like quast to evaluate quality?
What is your input data type (probably PacBio)? Read length distribution?
What is your expected chromosome/replicon number?
Have you compared the assembly to any other data, e.g. genomes of close relatives? (quast can do this)

Basically, why do you think that 200 contigs is too many contigs? Sometimes you just don't have enough coverage to get more contiguous/"nice" assemblies. That's not to say it's not possible, of course, just that we don't have enough information to evaluate.
It's possible that some of those contigs are small and artefactual, so you might get rid of them with just length/coverage filtering. You can do some of this in canu itself (see "Output Filtering" section).
Comment: It is pacbio reads. It results in a contig which is circular and ~9.5 Mbp. Other contigs are either 2Mbp or lesser. They do not seem to be plasmids as well from annotations, and their coverage is also good, ~20X (for the 9.5Mbp contig, its ~30X). Also, other contigs are not repeats of the 9.5 Mbp contig. The longest contig is similar to the reference genome from mauve alignment and dot plot.
I am confused if even the 2Mbp contigs could be artefactual?
Comment: @menten well, to me it sounds like your circular contig is your reference genome, congratulations. the fact that you get other contigs in addition to it suggests to me 1) you have contamination. 2) the other contigs are haplotigs (contigs from alternate haplotypes or clones in your culture) of your genome. I would suggest doing an all-by-all alignment of your contigs via minimap2, which should identify any haplotigs. do you know the ploidy? if it's diploid and not homozygous, well, then you likely have haplotigs with high-coverage pacbio.
Comment: (i am guessing that you are working on bacteria in which case I know high ploidy may be an odd question, but you never know)


Why did Lord Humungus kill himself in Mad Max 2?

Question: Driving head on against a large truck seems pretty stupid, why did Humungus do that in Mad Max 2? What was he trying to accomplish?
Answer: From what I recall, Lord Humungus engaged his nitrous boosters in an effort to catch up to the oil tanker Max was driving.  He hadn't realized that Max had turned the tanker around and was heading back towards him.  You have to figure that his car was probably doing 140MPH or so with nitrous (heck, my old Pontiac Phoenix could hit 130MPH with its stock engine!), plus Max was probably doing 60 or 70 in the opposite direction.  At those speeds, reaction time is almost nil.
Granted, it's a pretty flat landscape with little obstruction of view, but I think in theory it was an accident that the two collided.
Comment: If I remember the scene correctly, there was a hill between Max and Lord Humungus until just before impact, so neither could see the other. This video shows the scene, starting at about 3:50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT0Z-T1m1Wg
Answer: Lord Humungus deliberately rammed into Mad Max head on, killing Wez and himself.  I do not think he didn't know that Max was going the other direction, he would have saw him.  The shot just before they hit shows Wez terrified whereas Lord Humungus accepting his fate.  Adds to the chaos and the insanity of the wasteland and its occupants.
Answer: Max turned the trailer back, which Humungus didn't know, as he was far behind (which is the reason he used his 3xNitro injector: a hill blocked his view). By the time he realised the truck was in front of him his mask had already melted with Wez teeths...


What would make 1 key buzz or ring?

Question: I have an old Kimball Consolette .The middle e makes an annoying buzz/ring sound.I can't see anything mechanically different about it.Could the strings be unevenly stretched?The e flat sounds slightly dull also.What might cause this?
Comment: As a guess, some little piece of the action has shaken loose and it's rattling around and also reducing velocity to the hammer. Look for pins that have wiggled out or little bushings or washers that have worn or cracked. Pins you can probably push back in but beyond that seek professional assistance. For your case I'd specifically look at the Eb side of the E key's action. Some piece from the E's action may be dragging on the Eb action.
Answer: Since it's an old piano, it's probably caused by old-related causes, including:

The string is frayed, and makes a scratching, rattling sound.
The piano has been used long and the hammer is padded down too much, and acts like wood hitting the string. Since I have relatively new pianos, I'm not sure what your hammer is covered with.
The string is held loose, and rattles around when hit.
There is something in the piano (such as a pencil or metronome) that fell in, and when the string is played, it causes the item to vibrate on the strings.
You have put something on top of the piano, and the string's frequency makes the item vibrate, even if it's not touching the string.

Also, reasons will differ if you have an upright or "normal" (lack of vocabulary) piano.
If nothing helps, seek professional advice.
Answer: icedtea covered all the possible issues I can think of, but I'd like to elaborate a bit. If the pitch of the buzz/ring is higher than your highest note and has a "metallic" quality to it, I think #2 is the most plausible.
For months some of my piano keys have had a "ringing" sound as well - I spent a long time clearing away loose items outside the piano, checked for loose items inside the piano, muted individual strings, muted things I thought could be making resonance noise, but never found any explanation.
Eventually I needed to get my piano tuned and asked the tuner what he thought it was; he described the ringing as a "zingggg" sound and explained that it happens when the felt hammers are compacted/hardened by wear and tear. To fix it the hammer needs to be voiced (by needling, for example).
It sounds like your e flat could be at the opposite end of the spectrum, i.e. too mellow than the other keys.

What would make 1 key buzz or ring?


Some Music Missing on Huawei Tag-L21

Question: Alright, so I connected my phone to my laptop through a chord and moved a bunch of albums into the Downloads folder on my SD card, and all the music transferred over without a problem. However, when I was checking to see if all the songs were there, 9 songs were missing. I was still able to navigate to all the songs in the fie manager and play them all the way through, but they weren't showing up in the music player. They are all mp3 files. I am using the default music player. It seems to be a problem with the music player, because when I downloaded doubletwist, all the songs were there. I don't wanna switch to using doubletwist though, I wanna keep using the default music player because I prefer it's interface. I think it might be because of the file size, as all the missing songs were under 2000 kb. Please help, this is infuriating me to no end. Thanks.
Answer: May be default settings  of music player.try changing settings of that music player.may be the songs which are missing are false recognised as ringtone.

Some Music Missing on Huawei Tag-L21


Which quantitative metrics are there of the quality and prestige of journals, and how do they compare?

Question: I have seen several different metrics that are applied for ranking journals: Impact Factor, SJR, and H-index.  Which of these is the most useful and robust for comparisons with respect to the quality and prestige of journals?
Comment: This question is not answerable as such. What does "reliable" mean to you? What is SJR? And I am not even sure whether the h-index is actually used to measure journal quality.
Comment: _h_-index is normally an author metric, but I could also see how you could make it into a journal article (e.g., a journal has an _h_-index of 50 if it publishes 50 papers in the last _x_ years, each of which has acquired 50 citations).
Comment: What I meant by reliable is the most robust, comparative and indicative of the quality, prestige of the journal.
Thank you for your comments.
Comment: @Ahed You should add these clarifications to the question, and possibly expand on why you are asking (evaluation of publication profiles, choosing journal to publish in, etc?). Readers of the question shouldn't have to go through all the comments to understand your question.
Comment: I have clarified the question to match answers (addressing the "unclear what you're asking" closure reason), and nominated to reopen.
Answer: In short:

Impact factor is the traditional measure of mean citations per year shortly after publication.  It can refer to either the official Thomson-Reuters computation (which has lots of problems), or other competing similar computations.
SJR attempts to improve on impact factor by using an algorithm like PageRank to more heavily weight citations from "better" publication venues.
H-index for journals is just the same as for people, essentially looking for the volume of consistently good work.  The only large place I know of that applies this to journals is Google Scholar metrics.

All of these are subject to manipulation and gaming, all are highly field-dependent, and none are very good actual ratings of quality.  Still, they can be used to get a rough sense of the significance of a venue that you are unfamiliar with.
Comment: @CapeCode Among other problems, it has atrocious coverage of computer science venues, the limited time window penalizes journals with slow review and publication processes, and disproportionately rewards "hot" work, even if it has no lasting impact.
Comment: @CapeCode Also, the IF figures that ThompsonReuters reports are not consistent with their reported algorithm run on their reported citation data.
Comment: Can you expand on the 'lots of problems' in Thomson Reuters IF?
Comment: Thank you for your brief, useful answer. I've benefited from this answer.
Answer: One difference between the traditional Impact Factor (JIF) (the official Thomson-Reuters score) and the SJR score (SCImago Journal Rank) is that the former is based on the ISI Web of Science database and the latter on the Scopus database. Depending on the field you are in this can translate to differences in coverage, which can affect the relative rank of journals. The SJR score is also a weighted score, which takes journal prestige into account, and this is not the case for the Impact factor.
The H-index is strongly influenced by the number of papers published by a journal, since this translates into the number of "attempts" of a journal to obtain highly cited papers. This is the main reason why journal rankings based on the H-index usually deviates quite alot from ranking based on avarage-based metrics (such as the Impact factor and SJR). When using the H-index to rank journals a small top-journal within a field (based on article impact) can be surpassed by large journals. As an example, journals from the publisher "Annual reviews" generally come out much lower on H-index rankings compared to IF or SJR-rankings. Personally, I find the H-index a poor proxy for journal prestige, but it might be somewhat useful to determine overall influence on a field (as in number of relatively highly-cited papers). Overall, I think that the H-index is much better for evaluating individual scientists than to compare journals. Why Google Scholar chose it as the only score to present when comparing journals is beyond me.
However, there also exists many other indicies of journal performance, influence and prestige. Hocking (2013) provides a comparison between 11 different journal metrics, using ecology journals as a case study. This study show that while all indicies are positively correlated, they form 3 relatively distinct clusters. The traditional impact factor is closely related to SJR as well as to Article influence (AI) and Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP), while the H-index and the Eigenfactor are part of other clusters. This means that journal rankings based on e.g. JIF, SJR, SNIP will be very similar, while rankings based on the H-index or Eigenfactor will emphasize other aspects of journal performance.
References
Hocking. 2013. Comparing the influence of ecology journals using citation-based indices: making sense of a multitude of metrics. Ideas in Ecology and Evolution 6(1).
Answer: Among widely-available indicators, SJR and the Article Influence Score (AIS) are best for characterizing journals. An important property of those two indicators is that they weigh citations with the relevance of the citing journal, whereas in computing the impact factor (IF) or the h-index all citations are considered equally, regardless of the relevance of the citing publication. While all these metrics are typically highly correlated, taking into consideration the relevance of the citation sources can matter especially when trying to assess journals that are not among the top ones. For example, in the case of a journal that would artificially inflate the IF through self-citations or by participating in a citation ring within a publisher, or in the case of a journal hosting publications of a relatively isolated field, the SJR and AIS would remain relatively low if citations would come from low-quality sources. Another advantage is that the typical values of SJR and AIS vary less among different fields than the values of the IF and h-index. There are established methods for field-normalizing the IF (see, e.g., the SNIP indicator), however is more difficult to field-normalize the h-index.
Comment: SJR and AI do not include a measure of "relevance", if you by this mean the relevance of specific citations to the paper or the scientific field. Both indicators include a concept of journal "prestige" in their weighting of citations, but this is simply a single measure for each journal and does not equate to "relevance" (whatever that is).


My prison won't receive any food from deliveries and it says my prisoners won't come for 10,000 hours

Question: I only have one prisoner left for some reason and it says that the 9 prisoners won't come for 16,689 hours, I tried to open than close the prison intake and also went into the save and changed it into continuous and it still didn't work. Food also isn't being delivered and I made two deliveries and it didn't work. Does anyone know what is happening?
Comment: your save is corrupted, just start a new prison
Answer: You can try to fix the next intake problem and see if that resolves the food deliveries (it's not going to deliver food when there are no prisoners to eat it).
Find your save game file and open it in a text editor. in the top section of the file you are looking for two values TimeIndex and Intake.next; edit the Intake.next value to be 100 more than TimeIndex. That should resolve the time to next intake issue.
Reload the save game and see, after the new prisoners have arrived, if you start to receive food deliveries again.


NAS Recommendations for a specific feature set

Question: I'm looking for a NAS that meets my specific feature set and needs. My use case is a home user who needs to share file storage between multiple computers over a local network and still be able to connect to the NAS from the internet via my cable connection. I'm looking to have a security system that can support multiple users. Ideally the NAS can authentication from accounts on my "sever" conputer (a mac mini) but I would be OK with it handling security internally. All my devices are Apple, no PCs need to connect to this
For the external connection I am aware I'll have to setup port forwards and its not anything to do with the NAS it self.
General Breakdown of features - In order of importance.

Supports APF - That is the Apple File protocol. Other protocols welcomed but not needed.
Mutli-User support - I'm looking to have at a minimum 3 users, they should not have access to each others files
Support 1TB to 6TB of usable storage.
Raid support
Be able to grow the storage size over time without loosing data
Gigabit wired connection. Other connection types welcomed (usb/firewire/wirless/etc.) but wont be used.

Thats it. I am not looking to have this do anything other than be a NAS... no bit-torrent downloads, not a web server (though web configuration is fine), not a media (TV) center, etc. Also, I am not looking to build my own, I've done the build your own PC in the past and they work great but I don't have the time or the desire to go that route. I'm looking to plug it in, turn it on, and forget about it type of device.
I'm looking to spend $200.00 to $1,000.00 USD on the product. If the product is over a grand but you think it would be an ideal match, I would still be interested in hearing about it. I am aware of the Time Capsule products that apple offers. I currently own one and am not happy with the product.
Answer: I would recommend Drobo
Comment: This misses #2 from my list. I'm hoping to find one that includes them all. Not a bad thing, but the Drobo has a bunch of extra features that I'm not looking for.


How do I adopt children when I'm using the hearthfire DLC?

Question: I haven't been able to adopt. I have a home in whiterun, solitude, and now falkraith. I went to try to adopt Sofie from windhelm and it won't give me the option to adopt. I do have two other children but they are at different houses. How to I do this?
Answer: You may only adopt up to two children in an un-modded Skyrim game. You say you have already adopted two children, so you won't be able to adopt any more even if the ones you have are living at different properties as you're at the adoption cap.
There is a Multiple Adoptions mod available that raises the limit to 6, but it recommends starting a whole new game due to the way already-running scripts are written into the save data.
Answer: You can adopt up to 2 children, unless modded. There are 5 places where you can adopt children. You will also need to completely furnish you homestead if you want the family there. Otherwise, if you live in a city house, buy a kids room.

Dawnstar Quickysilve Mines: Alesan
Solitude Katla's Farm: Blaise
Whiterun Gildergreen: Lucia
Windhelm Dock Gate: Sophie
Riften Orphanage [Must complete Innocence lost, which starts with Aventus Arentino in Windhelm]: Runa Fair Shield, Samuel, Francois Bueatfort, Hroar.

If you want to adopt more than one children, get the Multiple Adotion Mod so you can adopt more than 2 children in the game.
For unadoption, get the Unadopt Children mod which adds a power to reset childrens' al.
Answer: You will see orphans in some towns. If you go to them and speak with them you'll get a option to adopt them in the further dialogues.
Mostly there is some kind of dialogue option like this:
I could adopt you, if you want.
You can find a list of adoptable children here.
Comment: That's the thing, it doesn't give me an option. The orphans just tell me their story and leave.
Comment: Well maybe you haven't fit all requirements to get her. Read the requirements here: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Sofie
Comment: Thank you for your input, I will figure it out sooner or later


Are the photos I share using the Photos app not really shared?

Question: When I share a photo to iCloud using the Photos app, subsequent edits to the photo in my library seem not so sync with the shared photo. Has sharing created a new copy of my photo?
Answer: Yes - sharing the photo puts it in a cloud backed "truth" where that image is available for all participants of the album to download and modify their copy, but not to change the original.
You'll want to share the edited version and then clean old ones until such time editing directly that shared image is implemented.
Comment: @raxacoricofallapatorius What does "despite all indications in the UI" mean? when I look at the UI - I see the shared photos separated and segregated from the library photos. Things are always in two separate bins. Can you upload a screenshot showing the confusion?
Comment: So despite all indications in the UI (the indication that one is sharing an album, rather than the versions of photos that happen to be in it at the time; the offer to edit a photo by switching *"to it"* in the library, etc.), sharing shares ***copies* of individual photos**, correct?
Comment: If you click "Edit" for a shared photo you get a dialog that says "To edit *this* photo, you must switch to it in your library", which is quite true, and certainly misleading. When you are viewing an album with no individual photos selected and click the share button (and choose iCloud sharing), the album (the only thing selected) is not shared, while the individual photos in it (none of which are selected), get shared.
Answer: No, indeed.
Photos that you share are not shared [sic], but are copied and then shared, despite clear indications in the user interface that would lead to the conclusion that they are.
Furthermore, as a consequence, albums are not shared at all: instead the individual photos in the album at the time it is shared are copied. Moreover, if you add photos to an album, and wish to add them to the shared "version" of that album, you must make sure to "share" only the added photos, as any photos that you "share again" will have new copies made for them in the shared album, and the order of the photos in the ablum will not match the order in the album that you "share" them from (the order is a frustrating combination of the order in which they are added and the date taken).
So albums are "shared" only in a marketing-speak sense.


Difference between a code and geass?

Question: Code seems to be obtained after your geass upgrades to full power and you kill a code bearer. What happens to your geass after you obtain the code? Do you lose your geass? Is code an extra power? What is the difference between these two?
Answer: When the Code is obtained, the one who obtains it seems to lose their Geass Powers. We see this happen with C.C in her flashbacks as beforehand she had the Geass Power to make everyone love her. In the scene where we last see with her Geass her Geass is now uncontrollable before the Nun admits she tricked C.C, from then on we see C.C's Geass Sigals on her forehead instead of in her eyes.
We can assume the same thing happened with Charles. At the end of the first season he uses his Geass to manipulate Lelouch's memories but he didn't have V.V's Code yet as later on in the second season when Cornelia infiltrate's the Order's Base she throws a knife at V.V seemingly killing him until he gets up and takes the blade out of his head. However at the Sword of Akasha after Charles "comes back to life" he doesn't once uses his Geass on Lelouch.
We also know that the Code doesn't have to be given/received willingly. The Nun who gave C.C the Geass powers forced her to take the code (though we are unsure how) and in the second season as C.C is about to reach the Twilight Gate V.V is seen wounded saying Charles "stole" his code
In terms of what the Code Bearer gains, from observations we see:

Ability to create contracts with others to bestow Geass
Immunity to Geass
Immortality

There is another power we only see once in the first season and used by C.C at the Battle of Narita where C.C feeds Suzaku "shock images" to immobilize him. However I am unsure if this is a power related to the Code or a natural power C.C has as neither V.V nor Charles demonstrates such a power.
Also, the Twilight Gates can be accessed by anyone who has Geass or the Code as Charles is seen at the Sword of Akasha without V.V with him at the beginning of the second season (where he first shows Suzaku the Sword of Akasha saying it's a weapon to slay God)
Comment: V.V. does show the similar power, setting a trap for C.C. & Lelouch on Kamine island. C.C. herself does admit that it is similar to what she's shown to Suzaku once Lelouch asks about it
Comment: @NikitaNeganov however as it's mentioned it was a trap and we don't see V.V there himself when it goes off where as C.C had to physically touch to use it. given the Geass Order's own understanding of Geass the trap may have been some sort of device as the Order does go to make Geass Devices like the Geass Canceler
Comment: althouth it was not the order who created Geass Canceller, it was Clovis's R2 division under Gen. Bartley and they knew nothing about Geass Order, as Gen. Bartley indicates in his last moments
Answer: A geass is a supernatural power, like Lelouch's ability to command people to do things, or Charles's ability to rewrite people's memories. A code is a, uh, different supernatural doohickey that 1.) makes you immortal; and 2.) allows you to grant geasses to other people.

What happens to your geass after you obtain the code? Do you lose your geass?

Yes, you lose your geass.
Recall that C.C.'s geass was the power to make people love her. Once the nun passed her code on to C.C., she lost her geass - if she still had the power to make people love her, surely she would not have been tormented and treated as a witch by the people of her time. Similarly, V.V., another code-bearer, shows no signs of having a geass.
Answer: A code and a geass are two different things.
A code grants immortality and eternal youth and allows the person to give geass powers to others.
A geass is a power which differs from person to person. It's said that it is the expression of the utmost inner desire of the person with the geass. Examples are mind control, mind reading, altering memories, forcing people to love you, etc.
when a geass user uses his geass a lot it grows "stronger", which means that after a while he can no longer turn it off and it will be active at all times. if it gets even stronger it will affect the second eye of the user and from then on he can take the code from a code bearer, rendering the former code bearer mortal.
There's a lot of disinformation about this online, but the anime is actually very clear on this:

When you get a code, you lose your geass. This was shown to be the case for C.C., Charles, V.V. and the nun from C.C.'s backstory (those last 2 never displayed any geass, and since they have the code it means their geass must have been constantly active in both eyes, and yet we don't see their geass, therefore it's gone). There are no exceptions for this in the lore. And Charles even explicitly says "I've gained a new power IN PLACE OF geass".
Transferring the code does NOT kill the former code bearer, it merely makes them mortal again. The nun was lying in a pool of blood because she committed suicide after regaining her mortality. V.V. was still alive for quite a while when Charles had his code.
Killing the former code bearer is NOT a requirement to get the code. C.C. herself had been severely injured by the nun (to force a dilemma on her "accept my code and live, or refuse and die") and was lying on the floor bleeding, she was in no shape to kill the nun. V.V. wasn't killed by Charles, he eventually succumbed to his injuries sustained in battle with Cornelia and Lelouch.
Answer: Codes serve as the connection to The World of C, and have enough "power" themselves to enact physical changes to the world ala Regeneration and their soul returning to their bodies. Geass is a manifestation of the users soul plus "power", the bridge between it and their codes getting larger as more "power" is transferred. Once it grows large enough it can "suck" the code through the link. This is probably accidental, with the original owners not wanting to die otherwise why would they seek immortality. The codes can do more than the automatic abilities looking at C.2's telepathy(?) but this knowledge was lost with their original bearers and has to be rediscovered on their own (thus why V.V can't).

Difference between a code and geass?


Has Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance got anything to do with Zen?

Question: I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig a few years ago and really enjoyed it. However I'm not convinced it's got anything to do with Zen. From what I remember the protagonist spends a lot of time fixing his motorbike and contemplating the notion of quality. But does the text link into Buddhism generally and Zen specifically? If not, why has it got Zen in the title?
Comment: I read an article that stated the book has nothing to with Zen Buddhism.  Only a subtle reference to Zen as being present in the moment.  Also, I don't know anyone who has finished the book.  It is a difficult read.
Comment: Pirsig disavows any relationship between the content of his book and Buddhist Zen. Just yesterday I was at the bookstore and this book was right next to the Dalai Lama. Looks like folk philosophy to me. I haven't read the whole book. ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance
Comment: I read the whole book years ago, I didn't think it was that difficult. It depends on whether you can relate to the point it is making and are willing to delve in to someone else's psyche to follow it. **"Quality"** is described as a non-dual experience of reality. He explains it very well. This is probably the first good Western explanation, at least that I know of (1974).
Answer: The main idea is pretty Zen yes. The premise of the book is that Western philosophy made a wrong turn at Aristotle, who placed (conceptual) Truth at the top of the hierarchy of all knowable, thereby subsuming the Good (aka Quality aka Beauty) as a byproduct of Truth. Through this sleight of hands the conceptual has falsely acquired status of universal, while the experiential from being the mother of conceptual became its slave and hostage. Instead, argues the author, the (preconceptual) Good exists in the sphere of direct experience, and can be known directly. According to author, true understanding of Quality, Beauty and Ethics is possible only through such direct nonconceptual contact with the principle of Good. At which point Good is reinstated to the throne of knowable and Truth becomes merely one of alternative ways of attaining Good.
This very much parallels Zen Buddhism's interpretation of Buddha-Dharma, according to which Self-Existing Enlightenment is not to be understood through analytical reasoning, but is awakened to through direct experience. Meditation, koan work, interviews with Zen Master, calligraphy, tea ceremony etc. are all means of getting in touch with this direct experience, which in Zen Buddhism is emphasized over analytical study of texts.
In my opinion it would not be too much of a stretch to equate book author's direct insight into Good/Quality with Enlightenment as it is understood in Zen Buddhism. Although technically, Zen Buddhism goes further in that it gets one into direct contact not just with Good, but also with the very Emptiness itself. So strictly speaking the author falls short of full-scale Enlightenment, but still does a good job illuminating the trap of strict rationality and the primacy of direct experience.
Answer: I think the answer is not much. Robert Pirsig states that

it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual
  information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very
  factual on motorcycles, either.

The title itself is apparently a play on the book Zen and the Art of Archery
However to say it isn't about Zen doesn't mean it's nothing to do with the enlightenment experience. The guys over at Partially Examined life when discussing don't talk about Zen but do talk about enlightenment. In the pivotal point of the book the protagonist undergoes a physiological break. Pirsig himself refused to say whether the experience was a physiological/psychotic break or a genuine enlightment experience
Comment: I think that the protagonist was an intense person who went over into being a **Neo** (self without ego operating) for a while and then self-destructed psychologically due to lack of self-care and overwhelming pressure in his life circumstances. This can happen. Some emerge (Byron Katie?) and become "enlightened" (non-self) from there.
Answer: The word Zen is derived from Pali word Jhāna which means concentrated or absorbed state of mind. So whenever I see the word Zen outside of Religious work I assume it just refered to absorption . Therefore I would assume in your case it would refer to absorption into art of motorcycle repairing :).
Comment: The book actually has little to with repairing motorcycles.