Devices behind firewalls and not directly exposed to the internet are being hit with this ransomware as well. I haven't seen any details as to how the devices are getting exploited, but being that devices behind firewalls are venerable it would have to be some sort of 'man-in-the-middle' attack is my guess. Perhaps QNAP wasn't validating SSL certificates, or not using GPG signatures to validate software and allowing a rootkit to be installed from an auto-update. No matter what it was, it seems like it has to be some sort of "pull request" from the devices themselves, so as long as the device is accessible to the internet, and does those types of "pull requests" either checking for updates, or auto-downloading software and extracting it to stage it for update, then ANY device is venerable if that is combined with not validating SSL certificates, and not validating software signatures... But of course, if their private keys get stolen then that's a whole other concern.

I have been in the industry for 18 years or so and have worked for many fortune 100 companies. The answer to your question is "yes, it is this bad".

"Back in the day" we used to need to know several core functionalities to even just get a unix box up and running. I know many "enterprise architects" and they couldn't tell me anything about a tcp stack, how to configure a unix box for performance, how to pxe boot a system, how to patch a system, what mode to configure the network interfaces for LACP, should we use ipmp or LACP?, etc.

The only thing they do is certify a list of requirements to enterprise standards and drag and drop Visio diagrams to show how to plug things in. Then they turn it over to procurement to order it, then it comes in and admins are stuck trying to figure it out, working with vendors to install expensive software.. Which the whole process ends up taking a year or two in the "enterprise".

So if you want an "experienced architect" what you really should be looking for is a young smart kid and test him with a quiz to see if he's willing to work hard, stay focused, and has excellent troubleshooting skills with a verity of experience with various technologies. It doesn't even necessarily matter if the experience is in the technologies you are working with. Anyone curious, hungry, and willing to work hard is worth their weight in gold in today's world. Those have been the hardest to find, in my opinion.

Finding people to solve your riddles will vary in success, but the root of the problem is deeper.

I was initially hesitant with the legalization of pot in California and the other states. But what's fascinating is that now people get their weed from controlled environments instead some back alley with a drug dealer pushing lots of other stuff as well.

I could be 1000% wrong as I have no data to back this up, but it made me think the streets have been safer in California since the legalization of pot. Anyone have any data to back that idea up? Any stats of declining use of other more serious drugs? Maybe it hasn't been enough time yet?

I would imagine they have uplifted the app and re-written a large portion of the application to work with new interfaces like outlook or whatever. Also perhaps they're trying to do something new with spam in specific to help reduce spam as a whole when using various services. This is a bad bug, and could cause a lot of problems for service providers if it's legitimate and not a "single case", but bugs happen. I'm surprised nobody caught it with the beta versions. Apple has been surprisingly good lately about getting developers the beta versions of the OS before the release. Due to the intense secrecy of apple, in the past, developers didn't get access to the later versions of OSX until the same time as the consumers. This used to be a nightmare when dealing with professional software and drivers for anything beyond what came with the mac.

I agree. I find myself using too many machines, in too many places to really care about a desktop version of the mail program, especially now that my mail storage is using about 15GB of data. The only "mail app" I use is the built in app on my iPhone, otherwise all web portals for me.

When upgrading my mac computers I have always seen a significant boost in performance on the same hardware (obviously).

When upgrading the iOS devices I have found the opposite to be true. Each new version, on existing hardware, is slower but the feature set expands incredibly.

I think this is because iOS started out as an infant and did what it was supposed to do really well and performed really well on the hardware it was designed on, and had features that only worked on the existing hardware. But as iOS has matured, so has the feature set.... There are incredible search engines, graphics engines, Siri, and tons more... this has required increasing hardware capabilities to keep up with the features. .... So the trick with iOS is don't expect to get performance gains with iOS updates unless you update your hardware at the same time. Each new iOS version brings new bells and whistles, but not performance. With each iOS capable hardware device you should expect significant performance boosts.

I think the real buzz kill is the massive leaks, rumors and speculation of what apple is doing compounded by their secrecy, and lack of being able to be first to market due to their desire to be the best which makes it take longer to execute and allows for only incremental updates to existing products.

I appreciate apple's due diligence to make amazing products which have the best overall complete end-to-end experience for consumers hands down. But with the leaks happening it's letting people speculate and come to conclusions that are even more grand than apple is going to release. This creates a sense of disappointment at the times of announcements. For example, people had speculated we would see the appleTV Television with integrated iSight camera at this product announcement. Since it didn't happen, and only other things which we already knew (5c, 5s, finger scanner, faster processors, updated camera) there wasn't a lot of room for surprise.

The only surprise I saw was the dual colored led flash. Everything else I seemed to have already heard about and seen leaks on the Internet for several weeks if not months.

If apple wants to keep surprising us, they need to close the loop on their leaks, or show us products sooner to be the first to introduce it to us, instead of the rumor mill.

Agreed.

Put in a managed switch, log in the switch to enable / disable the port when you want... <yawn> ...

Microsoft wants to join in because OSX is in the spotlight. Other companies have already admitted infiltration with the hack, so this gives them an opportunity to shine a bright light on OSX' security issues away from their own for a brief minute.

I'm pretty sure somebody did go in and fix the X11 desktop..... It was Apple w/ OSX.

When a game starts, it wants the entire desktop, it doesn't want the other desktop elements at all, no dock, no icons, interaction, etc.

Why isn't there a function to create a new virtual desktop at any resolution you want and leave the other desktop untouched? So when you switch between them it knows to switch resolutions as well. Have the resolution tag part of the desktop, so when you switch between them it knows what to switch to.

Seems like an easy fix.

I seriously attribute my love for adventure games to help me refine my troubleshooting skills and drive to "find the answer".

I believe that it's troubleshooting and the drive to find the answer that makes someone stand out in the work place, whether it's programming or anything else.

I played a lot of Kings Quest, The Secret of Monkey Island, Space Quest, Myst, etc.

Don't take away their freedom to do something they enjoy.

I don't know if anybody "enjoys" smoking. They probably enjoyed it the first year or two when it was cool to hang out with the friends and feel cool "smoking", but nobody enjoys smelling like that all day long, or having their breath stink, or have your body take the toll it goes through from smoking. It's something that starts out socially, and then slowly but surely becomes incorporated into their daily living experience as a vice.

Someone needs to come up with some new "cool" way for people who hardly know each other can hang out and feel part something that doesn't involved sex, drugs, alcohol or smoking something. Smoking is a gateway to feel like you have friends. If you ask a stranger for a bite of a hamburger or a couple french fries they're going to think you're insane, ask for a light or a cigarette and they'll put down whatever they're doing and reach in their pocket and gladly help you out.

Same thing goes with the workforce. If you want to feel immediately cool, follow the group of people down to the smoking section and immediately there's a group of people who welcome you in to make you feel like you have a group of people to hang out with and talk to. Plus who can argue with going outside and talking with people all day long? It seems like smokers get the free-pass to leave their desk anytime they feel like it, and they have a good excuse.

With the high-school social desires of teens and interoffice acceptance of smoking it makes for tough competitor to "nothing".

Instead of putting all this money towards increased anti-smoking campaigns, all they would need to do is funnel a little bit of money into some sort of "social spots" that have gum, some candy, soda, water, nice chairs, and a place where it's accepted to hang out and talk for a few minutes and move on. This would give people the gratification they want to go into an area and hang out for a few minutes, talk, and go back to work. I think the problem with this idea is that there's no acceptable "need" to go down there every few hours. People might look at you as a slacker hanging down there, whereas the smoker doesn't get deemed a slacker for "going for a smoke"..

I think the problem is that people are trying to answer the question with a "one size fits all" approach to answering the question. Sure anybody who can make toast can program. But not everybody can make a toaster.

What I mean by that is you mentioned that the average joe mechanics don't have these conversations, but you have to consider that the average mechanic is not making the advancements or creating the car from pouring casts and machining the parts. They're assembling or disassembling. There is creativity in finding a problem with a car before taking the whole thing apart but otherwise it's fairly laid out.

Programmers, the big daddy programmers are special and unique. Just like the engineers who created a ferrari or any other major achievement. Any body can program, but not everybody has the patience, confidence or desire to take on massive tasks by themselves.

I have programmed for many years and I have never found a good workflow of working with a large team of developers to create a specific product. So far what I have seen is one or two highly motivated individuals to create the bulk of the product and the rest become break/fix contributors or continuing development after the product is well underway.

It's just what I have seen. And those examples could make me an exception not the rule but that's what I've seen.

Were projects like MySQL or PostgreSQL initially effects of one or two highly motivated and focused individuals? I know that unix was and about evey project I have ever seen at the early stages.

Being that these efforts are largely surrounded by individual contributors I think it enables these individual's to feel special and different. And to be honesty, anyone who takes on these massive feats and succeeds is unique and different. The rest are "programmers".