Take a closer look...

The Dell PowerEdge 2950 comes with a hardware RAID controller, which needs to be invoked during boot (press Ctrl + R at the prompt).  Once the PERC 5/i Integrated BIOS Configuration Utility loads, you can follow the handy guide over at thegeekstuff.com to set up the hardware RAID.  Their guide cites the PERC 6/i, but the steps are the same.

Thanks, Ramesh (the author)!

I have four 2TB disks installed, and I selected them all to participate in the RAID-5.  Some brief research reveals that in a RAID-5 with four disks, all parity bits are stored on one drive.  I would ask if anyone could confirm that, but I'm R'ingTFM.  In the mean time though, feel free to chime in.  :)

Update: Make sure after you stage the RAID, you select your Virtual Disk and press either the right arrow key or enter.  In the Initialization menu, there will be a Fast Initialization which you definitely want to select.  It will save you hours of build time (48 in my case).  It may pop up and tell you there's an initialization already in progress, but go ahead and break that one to start the fast init.  Add it the lessons learned! 

It's been about a month now, and the talk of the Java exploit has largely subsided.  Thank you, five-minute attention span.  (Don't worry, I'm accusing myself too).  When the Java exploit received such a critical warning from the Department of Homeland Security's, U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (DHS US-CERT, for short), on January 10, 2013 the news spread like wildfire.  The reason more attention was paid to this than the other 20 alerts for significant risk published in 2012 is that it's very rare for the CERT to advise the general public, consumers and businesses alike, to completely disable a software component - in this case, a browser plug-in.

A complete breakdown of the exploit is available at Mitre's Database of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures, but in essence the exploit payload, once executed, escalates privileges to allow an attacker control of the system.  A key factor in this exploit receiving so much attention is that all versions of Java are vulnerable across all operating systems, and a package to deliver this exploit was built for metasploit - the free, open-source penetration testing software suite.  Here's a video demonstrating how easy it is to exploit a Windows 8 virtual machine running Internet Explorer 10:


The exploit delivery is all hinged upon whether or not the user accesses a page and auto-loads Java, which will make a request for the .jar file.  What does this mean?  Key dangers come from compromised websites hosting this malware and phishing attempts.

It took Oracle about four days to patch the vulnerability.  If you haven't already done so, it's highly recommended that you update your version of Java.  Most of those concerned will just patch Java and get on with browsing the web, but I think this exploit brings to attention interesting browser behavior.

Running the Browser Gauntlet

When I was first alerted to the exploit, I wanted to test the three big ones to see how they'd inform me of a website wanting to load the Java plug-in.

1. First up, Internet Explorer.  As in the video above, when I visited a website hosting Java, IE didn't prompt me for action and immediately loaded the Java plug-in.  FAIL
2. Next in line, Firefox.  FAIL
3. Okay, Chrome...here we...wait, what?  Chrome alerts me that individual websites want to run Java?  I can still see the rest of the page and just choose not to let Java run?  And this is a default browser behavior?  Well done, sir.  Well done.

Background

When I first purchased my Sony laptop, it came with PowerDVD or something similar installed in Win7 allowing Blu-Ray playback.  Any time I travel, I always take this laptop so I can play my Blu-Rays for shows not available through streaming methods.  When I upgraded to Windows 8, Sony doesn't offer the Blu-Ray playback software in the list of software available for download for my laptop model, so I basically lost my ability to play Blu-Rays.

I've used VLC before, and it's a great open-source, multi-platform video player.  I encourage everyone to check it out if you haven't had the privilege to use it.  Since it was free, I installed it and tried to play a Blu-Ray - no luck.  I used the 32-bit version, which is the default download version for Windows.  When I inserted the disc, I just pointed VLC to my disc drive and clicked "Play."  Since that didn't work, I opened the menu: Media > Open Disc, and on the Disc tab I selected BluRay and tried to play it.  Still no luck, but this time I received a more informative error, which was that VLC was missing libaacs.

The Fix
I Googled how to add libaacs capability to VLC, and came across an older guide.  Here's my specific steps:

1. Install VLC
2. Visit http://vlc-aacs.whoknowsmy.name/
3. Copy the libaacs.dll to the root VLC installation directory:
• C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC (x64)
• C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC (x86)
4. Open your appdata folder
• Start > Run (or Windows key + R)
• Type %appdata%; on Windows 8 the qualified path is: C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\
• Look for an aacs folder, and if there isn't one, create it
• Inside the aacs folder place the KEYDB.cfg file
5. Insert a Blu-Ray disc, open VLC, and try to play it.

So, I've been on Windows 8 for a couple months now, and all in all it's not too bad.  One trend that has started to irritate me quite a bit is the fact that my WiFi connection continually drops.  It's intermittent, but for whatever reason, my adapter just disconnects from the WiFi router.  Then, when I go to reconnect it, Windows tells me I can't connect back to the network.

When this first happened, I thought okay, let me try a different WiFi signal.  Nope!  No matter what other WiFi signal I chose, my adapter basically said it had eaten enough packets.  So, what's the classic solution in these circumstances?  Reboot!  Sure enough, everything started working fine again.  I dealt with that for a couple days before I decided having to reboot every time was ridiculous.  My next troubleshooting effort led me to re-install the driver.  No luck - the problem intermittently persisted.  Then, just out of curiosity, I disabled the network adapter and re-enabled it.  BOOM!  Fixed...temporarily.  Now I just have to disable/re-enable the network adapter, which is less irritating than having to reboot, but still a pain.

I didn't have this issue in Win7, so the only thing I can think of at this point is that the driver is causing issues.  My driver version is 15.5.0.43.  I'm not sure if I can stand to wait for an update.  I think I may go back to Win7.  Anyone else having this issue?

Update #1: just went to Intel's site, and there's an update for the software suite.  To detect if your adapter needs an update, check out Intel's scanning web-app.  You'll have to enable Java for the scanning to work, so only do it if you trust Intel.

By the way, here's the output of the scanner: 

Product Detected	Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N + WiMAX 6150
Current Driver Installed	15.5.2.0
Newer Intel® PROSet/Wireless WiFi Connection Utility Available: 15.5.6

According to mashable.com, Anonymous defaced ussc.gov and posted a YouTube video describing their intentions (embedded in the article) to declare "war" on the U.S. government in response to Aaron Schwartz' suicide. 

I have a Samsung Galaxy Nexus LTE (SCH-i515), and my go-to app for WiFi tethering since Summer 2012 has been FoxFi. FoxFi originally only had one version, which was free. When activated, it sets up a wireless router instance on your phone. Fortunately, it's pre-set to use 802.11n and WPA2-PSK. All you have to do is accept the default SSID (FoxFi73) or create your own, set the password, activate it, and then connect to that SSID from your tablet/laptop. With an LTE phone and depending on the coverage zone, the speeds are better than a FiOS connection! I was in downtown Miami, FL last October and had download speeds of 28Mbps!

Anyway, FoxFi and its free use was an amazing ride. Some time in November, I received a pop-up when launching the app (after an update) that FoxFi was no longer solely free. You could continue to use the limited free version, which appeared to be on a time-based quota, but you had to restart the connection once you notice that it failed. Alternatively, you could purchase the unlock key to get unrestricted access for $7.

"What about rooting your phone so you don't have to pay anything?" you might ask. To that I answer, I was lazy. Plus, I thought the app was great and it got me out of a crappy internet connection otherwise when I was in Florida, so I went ahead and purchased the full version to support the developer. Fast forward a few months and this week I get a new pop-up every time I open the app that FoxFi is now under the PDAnet umbrella. Version 4.0 of PDAnet, published by June Fabrics, appears to incorporate FoxFi with its USB tethering capability. Anyone who's already purchased the FoxFi unlock can retain the unlimited tethering, but for newbies, the price is now $9.95. Still not a bad price, all things considered; especially since it's a one-time fee. 

If you're like me, and you don't want to have to go through the hassle of rooting your phone to get free tethering, skip a meal and spend the $10 on the app instead. Happy tethering!

Installation:
The install is pretty standard.  The new aspect to the install is that you now have an option to either enter a product key or enter in your domain account to complete the process.  I chose the product key option, but I'm assuming the domain account allows end users to perform approved installs without having to pre-stage the product key.  It probably calls out for a domain level license administrator service.  I'll do more research on that aspect down the road.

Load Times:
I'm impressed with the speed of loading any app of the suite.  A nice test for this was opening a 6MB Visio file from a network share.  It took about 3 seconds in Office 2013, whereas in Office 2007 I was waiting about 10 seconds on average.

Bells and Whistles:
The suite allows users to choose from a set of themes for Ribbon decoration (meh).

What I'm most currently excited about is Excel.  Finally!  Microsoft has at last given us the ability to open Excel spreadsheets in two separate windows without any special tweaks!  In prior Office versions, it took a registry hack to be able to accomplish it.  For those with dual monitor setups, you can now easily have one Excel spreadsheet on the left monitor and one Excel on the right monitor!


I'll post more as I discover other features.