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Is "Scorpion" Really a Genius?
An anonymous reader writes CBS's upcoming hacker show Scorpion is pitched as based on the real life of Irish 'eccentric genius' Walter O'Brien a.k.a. "Scorpion". Some of the claims made for the real Scorpion are extraordinary. A child prodigy with an IQ of 197, hacking Nasa at age 13, [supplying] Ireland with more Personal Computers than DELL and Gateway together. Searching online I wasn't able to find anything which, for me, clearly backed up any of these (or other) claims. For example, rather than being the sixth fastest programmer in the world in 1993, his team ranked 90th out of 250 teams. Curiously, his degree grade was an ok, but hardly stellar B+ (II-I). Does anyone know anything to back up the genius claims being made about Scorpion?
Get in the way of a good story.
And he's not in jail, so sure, he's a genius. But are his exploits legendary? Well, much like fishing stories, I take hacking stories have more elaborations then truth.
Be seeing you...
He was the creator of the Irish virus.
Hell someone should make a documentary about me! I used to empty chat rooms faster than the plague in 1996. I AM L33T DOCUMENT ME!! pffft. May as well pretend the movies Hackers was non fictional.
Looks like CBS got hustled. Spend five minutes on these pages, even the updated one reeks of geocities and Cash4Gold.
Prodigy? Fraudster with delusions of grandeur.
Who cares?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
It start with the facts, and end with the facts. What are they?
He claims to be a frequent speaker at IEEE events. Check that out; interview attendees about their impression of his talk(s). Start there and keep working through the claims, from easiest-to-verify through to the hardest-to-verify, stopping only when you're convinced.
And if you somehow manage to verify every fact and are still in doubt, just don't do business with him.
Who?
He's kind of a douche.
...before you are ready signifies immaturity, not intelligence.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I used to say that all TV was fiction except the weather, but then I saw Fox lying about that too: severe winter weather does not contradict global warming/climate change.
Why is Snark Required?
I have have a 163 IQ. I was capable of making straight A's in high school, but was bored I just acted out and got in trouble. What they called Advanced classes was the top 25-30 students out of a class of 100 people (small school), which was a joke. I was the person who made an A on the test but didn't do a few daily grades here or there and things of that nature. In college I have a 4.0 but it was mind numbing to keep that grade. College for the most part was pure memorization and doing the daily work..
The point of this is that grades do not reflect IQ.
s/©//g
http://www.scorpioncomputerservices.com/the_founder.html
He probably is a smart guy, but these claims here would make me not want to hire him. He's so obviously full of himself that he'd probably never admit he might be wrong about something and that is just plain dangerous. So it's not just the hollywood drama, it's based on his on ludicrous claims.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
His website proves itself false. He claims it was founded in 1988; however Whois records for the domain only go back to 2000, and the web address doesnt appear in the Wayback Machine until 2003.
Looks like the guy has tried to mix his own marketing material into google results, but you can see where his highly touted ScenGen actually comes from here:
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/wi...
This version of MAGICC/SCENGEN was developed primarily with funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, but it rests on developments carried out over the past 20 years that were funded by a number of organizations.
So the "ScenGen" you keep seeing in all the results is not the same as the one this O'brien dude keeps blathering about. In fact, hes apparently the only one who cares about it; he did do one talk at IEEE in 2010 (though strangely theres no mention of it anywhere except the bog-standard event page), but there doesnt appear to have been any chatter on the internet about it whatsoever.
So, to the AC who posted this: hopefully this is a useful lesson. Anyone can say anything on the internet, and even make it look passingly believable. But if it sounds "too perfect", its probably rubbish.
He gave one talk at an IEEE event at a doubletree hotel in 2010. You would be very hard-pressed to find it unless you narrowed your search quite a bit; literally noone was talking about him at that point.
fuckin' Frank Dux gets a big picture movie starring Jean Claude Van Damme and all I get is a puny tv show?
in making other people post\talk about him
From his resume :
I have progressed rapidly into many areas through both theoretical and practical research in the following areas:
Marketing , Networking, Psychology (Child and Adult), Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence, Systems Analysis, Teaching, Speech Recognition, Speech Synthesis, Astro Physics, PC maintenance and enhancement, Human-Computer Symbiosis, Robotics, Philosophy, Cybergenetics, Medical simulation checking, Virtual Reality, Vision Recognition, Computer animation and ray-tracing, Machine code low level programming, Legal hacking, MIDI sound recording, back-up systems, network databasing, autonomous vehicle research, Natural Language Processing, Heuristic reasoning systems, Computer search techniques, Use of the G.P.S, the use of over three million pounds worth of PC software and finally programming in over twenty five languages (at least one example of any significant language development since 1965). I can now become proficient in most languages within a week.
This list shows quite a diverse level of experience and can be explained by saying that [...] I was completely self taught and all research was self funded.
He may not be stupid, but he's certain to be manipulative or exploitative before being worth anyone's notice or praise.
I worked for Dell at their Limerick manufacturing plant as a systems engineer back in the late 90's and early 00's. I then worked in IT in Ireland for another ten years. I've never heard of this guy or his company.
I haven't heard of this show until now. I wonder Anonymous Coward is just a sort of straw man trying to drum up interest.
Leaving aside the fact that an IQ score in the 190s is absurd (no one has curved a test over a large enough population for such an answer to reflect actual score distributions), as far as actual, normed IQ tests conducted by actual psychologists go, it's hard to find a test with a ceiling higher than 160 these days. The Weschler, easily the most popular among these, has a ceiling of 160, and getting a score above the low 140s requires doing very well across most of the individual batteries, some of which aren't especially g-weighted. No, the quiz in Omni is not, as far as most psychometricians are remotely concerned, an IQ test. To define it as such is to destroy most of the meaning of the term.
Occasionally, you see high scores due either to very old versions of the Stanford-Binet that did reach above 160 (it's likely that Ted Kaczynski got such a score) or the use of extensions of the old Stanford-Binet to investigate young people who hit or near ceilings, typically on verbal parts of these tests where raw scores tend to have a little more variance, but extrapolations to actual IQ scores aren't valid today due to the Flynn effect (ie: more young people are properly nourished and in intellectually stimulating environments than were in the early 20th century) and the fact that old versions of the Stanford-Binet weren't necessarily normally distributed along the 15-point sigma most tests are today. Though people have attempted to write on the upper echelons of performance on tests of cognitive ability, there's remarkably little that is peer-reviewed.
The tl;dr of all this is that whenever you hear reports of IQ scores above 160, you can more or less assume someone is talking out of their ass.
... would understand that his / her knowledge base about whatever subject is so limited he / she can never be termed as 'smart' in the first place
My IQ is far below "scorpion', mine is only 186, but I will tell you that I never consider myself as 'smart' at all
Well yeah, he's a "hacker" who sold computers. He's no hacker, but more of a salesman who happens to know more about technology than an actual sales rep.
IQ tests are not accurate because you can score better the more times you take it. Practice makes perfect and all that. While IQ itself is useful as one indicator of a person's capability to solve complex problems, it's only one of many such indicators. What good is IQ of 150 if a person is lazy? Or has limited attention capability? Or fails at abstract thinking?
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Having both makes one a genius.
I know him. Never impressed me, and definitely seemed to be talking above his pay grade. I always thought he wanted too hard to show he was a genius. Well, he found someone to eat up his story. Good for him, in this age of self-marketing.
The standard deviation of IQ seems to be 15
octave:16> erfc((197-100)/15)
ans = 5.9493e-20
That means only a fraction of 5*10^-20 of total humankind would exceed his intelligence.
Let me make a few remarks:
-That would mean humankind could exists in it current size for another 10^11 years without finding a second one like him
-Normal itelligence tests dont resolve in that region. It's pretty impossible to design a tests which ca resolve between 100 and 140 and at the same time distinct between 180 and 190. i am not sure if designing a test between 190 and 197
-The most likely other option is that the distribution of measured IQs is heavy tailed (instead of normal). In that case, the IQ measurement needs to be corrected for that.
I wish that journalists would turn their brain on and not off at every number they cite
Sorry for the OT post, but TFA is among the lamer that /. has posted. And that's saying something.
In an effort to claw back some of your wasted time, I would direct any aeronautic geeks in the audience to this article just posted.
http://www.bidnessetc.com/2400...
I am flabergasted, yes flabergasted, about how bad the graphic is. Completetly wrong jetliner (a Boeing A380?), absolutely no understanding by the artist about how air flow on a wing works, but brooding death in the skies? Yeah it got that.
The web site reads like they're a big consultancy, another McKinsey. Then the testimonals are all about Walter. Oracle manager: "Walter showed a great depth of knowledge in Word, WordBasic Macro programming". He still has recommendations up which mention Turbo Pascal. Not seeing rocket science here. The biggest success reported was translating some large English-only application into multiple languages, which made it valuable in Asia. That's nice, but a routine job. He claims to have written a general-purpose program to help with such jobs.
He also claims to have written ScenGen, a "scenario generator". It looks like that originated at Boeing in the mid-1980s. Running on a Compaq PC with 2MB back then. The pitch for the current model sounds like the one from back then, although the graphics are probably better now.
The web site is awful. There are lines of text with excess white space in the middle. I looked at the HTML, expecting to find some overly complex Javascript which was misbehaving. No. The HTML source just has explicit non-breaking spaces in the wrong places.
He seems to speak at a lot of strange conferences, such as the Family Office Association. A "family office", in this context,is a staff which manages the family fortune for a large, wealthy family. The Rockefellers have one.
This is getting weird.
Never heard of this dude. In 93 Kevin Mitnick was old news, it was all about this crazy finnish dude doing something on 386s. And a neckbeard with some african animal talking about freedom. Oh and everyone was praising a rich geek dude from Seattle.
"genious level" smart people mostly don't do well in school, they can't cope with the system.
Judging by the comments, Scorpion has been successfully trolling all of Slashdot.
It's worth mentioning that not only are IQ tests utterly unreliable past somewhere around 150/160, IQ itself is widely considered to suggest, rather than indicate intelligence - it really only demonstrates that you can do well on an intelligence test.
I was born on 3/11/81.
I hacked the NSA in 2047.
I was the first man to set foot on the moon.
I discovered Merika.
I'm the stunt cock used in the porno hit Deep Throat.
I'm half Man half Bear and half Pig.
I invented the Dutch Oven.
I'm Chuck Nor.. Never mind better not go there.
I hold the world record for being the most obese anorexic man.
I sold my book as a practical joke to an author named L. Ron Hubbard.
If you do the math for the normal distribution, the 1 person who is the smartest among 8 billion people has an IQ of 194 if you could measure everyone and if there was a test valid for 4 year olds and 25 year olds who speak different languages.. For 5 billion people it is 193. It doesn't matter how well you do on a test, you can't have a higher IQ. You can't give anybody a higher IQ without a large increase in population.
The smaller population is the number of people who have taken the same IQ test, which lowers the maximum possible to the 160's as mentioned above.
His resume is quite enlightening:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=32&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCEQFjABOB4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwikileaks.org%2Fgifiles%2Fattach%2F50%2F50360_Walter_OBrien_Press_Background.pdf&ei=sdbpU4wih8yxBML1gJgI&usg=AFQjCNFENRly3LgRKtmGncBPfD1WHy_X3w&bvm=bv.72676100,d.cWc
It is quite clear that he personally did the work he claims was done by Scorpion Computer Services while employed as a mid to senior level corporate developer at various companies. He had growing responsibilities, the signs of a solid performer. Yet there is nothing that stands out as real rockstar.
CBS of NCIS "we got a hacker in the system" Abi and McGee start furiously typing at the same keyboard Gibbs solves the problem by unplugging the monitor fame got hustled?
You're right:
From http://www.irishtimes.com/cult...
"I was coming home from school and encountered a house surrounded by black cars. Mom was on the couch, crying; Dad was not too happy. A lot of men in suits were wanting to yell at me for what I had done but were a little surprised when out of my schoolbag I pulled an extradition waiver â" which calmed the conversation down. If they signed this [the extradition waiver] then I would show them where the holes are in their network. We ended up doing a deal â" which happens in most hacking incidents you never hear about.â"
and:
"The showâ(TM)s creator, Nick Santora, introduced him as a man who âoehas saved the world several times over, things he canâ(TM)t even tell us aboutâ."
or:
"One of Scorpionâ(TM)s executive producers told Comic-Con, âoeWalter personally caught the Boston bombers by writing an algorithm that tracked motion on all the cameras within a two-mile radius of the blast. That kind of thing makes for a really compelling episode of television. He also stopped nuclear meltdowns from happening.â"
It's so full of weasel words it's unbelievable. An algorithm that tracks motion? what you mean checking if one frame is different to the next? that's tracking motion, hardly rocket science, any CS101 student could do it. Helped stopped nuclear meltdowns from happening? Well so have I, by not becoming an incompetent nuclear engineer that goes on to produce a flawed reactor design I assure you have also done exactly this. Things we can't be told about? Oh well, I'll assume they just don't exist then or I might as well just mention that I'm personally better than this guy because I saved not only the world numerous times, but the entire universe, I just can't tell you how.
Which is a shame because it sounds like the show may be a bit like Numb3rs, the sort of show that might interest me, but with this insurmountable pile of tosh and bullshit that's apparently surrounding it I'm going to steer VERY clear. This guy is obviously an egotistical self-publicist and a serial liar, and the guys writing about him are obviously absurdly naive and have failed to realise that they could've made up these exact same stories without getting him involved.
Everything he says is something many people could say and it would hold as much validity, there's literally nothing about this guy that's actually in any way verifiable - the incidents he claims to have been involved in, the things he claims to have done, absolutely none of it is verifiable. A genius that got a bog standard degree at a run of the mill UK university? - Christ, it's not like his "intelligence" even got him into Cambridge early, or even at all. It says he graduated in the late 90s, so if he was 13 in 1988 then that implies he only followed the same path of literally millions of other teens the same year he did. Why if he was such a genius wasn't he doing his A-Levels or degree early like real actual genius kids consistently manage to do? Even my fucking cousin got an A-Level at 14 because she was ahead of her years and yet she wasn't exactly exceptional - a few others in her school did too. I have two degrees, one of which I studied for whilst working full time, this means my academic achievements at very least are well ahead of this guy and I'm not exactly stand out either.
I can find not a single shred of evidence that this guy is anything other than mediocre at best.
hacking stories have more elaborations then truth.
That's why I always skip to the end.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
He is only using 10% of his brain.
And just as unrealistic, I mean wouldn't a tattoo of the prison layout on your back be a bit of a givaway.
'Written by the team behind Prison Break, the show “follows an eccentric genius and his international network of super-geniuses as they form the last line of defence against the complex threats of the modern age”, according to its makers.' ref
Nope... but Sub-Zero is!
Posting anonymously so I can't be accused of e-peen extension, but I can confirm this is the case.
I was IQ tested at age 7 and scored a 160. They "age corrected" the score to 152 using some kind of algorithm that was never explained to me.
I was IQ tested again at age 16 and scored a 148, non "age corrected".
So I guess however they do the tests for children tends to over-inflate the scores, but my own experience tells me that someone at least knows how to correct those scores if they so choose.
That said, I would still suspect anyone claiming publicly to have an IQ north of 180 to be 100% full of shit.
Has Walter produced any actual papers on computer science that were published or reviewed or cited in reputable journals.
Of course it's based on a true story. Once, there were some kids, and they thought they were badass hacker geniuses.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
> hacking Nasa at age 13
He's currently 39, which means this took place in the 1980s. A dog could "hack" NASA in the 1980s. Hell, they were already so far back down the other side of that bell curve of interest, they were talking about it as passé in "Out of the Inner Circle" which was published in 85.
I dunno about the degree thing. I mean, the kid is full of bullshit talk, but hey, I've had bad grades in school. My Statistics teacher was pissy because I had Ds and I got like 4 exam problems wrong all year--I never paid attention in class, I never did any homework, I was always goofing off, and I chewed through stat exams like a correctly working version of Mathematica. Obviously, I knew my shit hard; but I was failing the class.
It was boring. Well, homework was boring. I got better shit to do than waste time relearning things I already know. I'll relearn things I've forgotten, thanks.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
it is raining, it is cold, there is no trees, food and the water tastes like car batteries. I'd be laser beaming of the irish kind myself to get out too. The irish tales have been around 1500+ years just like walter o'brien but different subjects of the century. Even my own surname has a mythological god...that lived in the flesh.
"It is about insecurity, more than inferiority. A fine line between the two." - Walter O'brien
A claim of brilliance counterindicates brilliance.
How many genuinely smart braggarts do you know?
Except, obviously, for web design.
Nothing else.
First off, there are two Mensa-grade IQs on every bus at rush hour, statistically. Secondly, High IQ and no ability in music will not make you a 'genius' in music. High IQ and no work ethic will mean you'll end up in your underpants, yelling at the TV about the government.
At best, high IQ is useful for certain types pf intellectual problem solving. That's it.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
He makes fun of Fox News?! Ahahahaha. Smart and sophistocated.
Great scoop slashdot! Next you'll tell me that that one highschool chemistry teacher really couldn't have made all that Meth, or that all those people couldn't have really survived that plan crash.
Shouldn't we be more concerned with whether the show is good or not? There have been a lot of IT and hacking inspired shows popping up lately. It's kind of nice to see a subgenre come to main stream. But just from the cast photo on the FB page, I can tell you it won't be a good show. They might as well have put up photos of the Scooby Doo team, that would have felt more authentic.
OK, so I tried a quick search on "World Olympics in Informatics" and Google corrected it for me to "World Olympiad in Informatics" - minor issue but you'd think he'd get the name right.
The really funny part was the first suggested ad-link was for the Special Olympics
It says right there on the bio page. That's a lot of technologies.
Now *that* guy means something to this world!
Well all my friends did that facebook quiz and it proved they were all geniuses with IQ's all north of 130!
You might as well call yourself a pyromancer or a techomage at that point.
Probably has about the same amount of credibility so far as I am concerned.
Adult IQ's of Famous Geniuses: Bobby Fischer (Chess Player) 187, Galileo Galilei (Astronomer/Philosopher/Physicist) 185, Rene Descartes (Philosopher/Mathematician) 180, Immanuel Kant (Philosopher) 175, Charles Darwin (Naturalist) 165, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Composer) 165, Albert Einstein (Physicist) 160, George Eliot (Writer) 160, Nicolaus Copernicus (Astronomer) 160, Rembrandt van Rijn (Painter) 155
I perused his/their project list. For whatever reason I decided to google this one:
"1994 Created the Generic Micro Universe Robot A-life Simulator & Created the Puzzle-8 G.P.S. Solution. The universe simulator could animate a landscape of any planet in the solar system and then populate it with entities that would visually search for food and drink before dying and fertilizing the ground. The simulation would show for various variables how long life could last on other planets."
The first hit is an identical website called "Strike Force". The fourth hit was an academic research paper explaining essentially the exact same thing, with the word "A-Life" right in it. Funny his name isn't mentioned anywhere.
Here's another: "1991 Created and marketed the Trident-5000 security system for IBM PCÃ(TM)s."
Too bad the Trident-5000 is a file cabinet. I suppose you could call that a security system.
He's no more of a Genius than Frank Dux is a Kumite Champion and responsible for the popularity of MMA...
then this whole discussion would never have begun in the first place. I think that is where the shoe hurts.
Come here!
Intelligence /= Wisdom and are wholly separate.
We don't do A-levels in Ireland!
Intelligence is a boulder sitting on top of a mountain. Ain't nothin' hapennin' until someone gives it a push.
Having a higher IQ just means you have a bigger boulder to push against.
Perhaps he can't count to 198 ?
It's all "fine & dandy" to have a high IQ - trick is, can one show he's applied it to the "general good" of humanity via accomplishments.
APK
P.S.=> Lastly, per my subject-line above - I've always personally admired those known as "polymaths" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... FAR more, & why? They tend to be CLOSE to "genius levels" in what they do (ala say, "virtuousos" in musical arts being extremely proficient on MANY musical instruments, but in this case, different arts & sciences), & "tie together" those skills on sometimes DIFFERENT FIELDS creating something that makes BOTH DIFFERENT FIELDS, better (which makes all the difference)...
... apk
The life if full of hot air. Those that "do" usually don't brag about it. Those that wish they did make all the noise.
Be More, Be Manly, The Manly Geek Ubergeek Extraordinaire Blogger: www.manlygeek.com/blog Podcaster: podcast.man
I know Einstein was a mathematical genius but failed elementary math but still was able to teach himself geometry and algebra before he was a teenager.
Einstein, Tesla, Newton, Boole.
Contributions way the freak ahead of their time, and not just the knowledge they knew, but what they decided to do with it, was probably pure genius in my opinion.
There are lots of smart people in the world, but very few of them really contribute anything beyond paper test scores or academic nonsense.
To be a true genius in my opinion, you look the world straight in the eye, tell it your full of crap, and whack upside the head with a contribution that challenges civilization at the time.
All of the above men did that, some centuries before their contributions fully took root.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Alternative: People who can't even cope with high school are too stupid to realize they're not geniuses.
http://imgur.com/dUtjfFi
And a small surprise when you (try to) send your message.
This has to be a joke.
Scorpion. What a stupid name for a so called genius. Sounds like a villain in a good old Chuck Norris movie.
Except you are neither Chuck Norris nor badass.
You should switch to "Clown". Or "The Clown". It is more exclusive.
You made my day, Scorpion. Great material.
It's a T.V show, they are made up by writers looking to make the mundane interesting.
In other words, no one cares as long as it is entertaining. Move along, nothing to see here.
An IQ of 197 implies that it was a ratio test and is statistically meaningless. Plenty of Slashdotters could score 200+ on whatever test he scored 197 on.
Deviation tests (the only tests with any statistical validity worth speakig of) don't allow for an IQ even as high as 190.
No this kid is not a genius. Just skilled. As anyone of reasonably high intelligence could become with similar interests and passion.
I do like from the website http://www.scorpioncomputerservices.com/images/Scorpion_Placemat.pdf
"Our network of 200 professionals collectively has the knowledge of more than 210 years in IT", so that'll be an average of 1.05 years each. Wow.
From the promos it looks like he doesn't even know how to generate properly formed XML:
</SCORPION>
should be
<SCORPION/>
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Real hackers do not care about your latest web 2.0 fad. I'm sure you can code some RAD html , and shoot some point and click some epic video on your Iphone, but when it comes to *actual* engineering, we'll you couldn't create a unique technology that came from your own mind if your life depended on it.
In all honesty, you are a dick rider, riding any latest trend others invent for you to dick ride more on. Keep ridin that dick!
Does anyone know anything to back up the genius claims being made about Scorpion?
I know he's made it onto the Slashdot front page without having accomplished anything much more in his life than I or half a dozen other folks of my generation can boast. My grades were similar to his, I also had a really high IQ on some bogus test when I was a kid. I don't remember exactly how my ACM programming teams did, but 90 of 250 sounds roughly in the right ballpark. I've done NASA work, and know at least one way to "hack" some of their systems. Yet, I seriously doubt you'll ever see an article about me up on the Slashdot front page (and if you do, most likely it means I screwed something up epicly).
So clearly he's at the least a genius at self-promotion.
You can be a genius and not get an A in your typical school. You get bored too easy. As you age you still have the raw genius brain power but you if you don't have self discipline no one else would think you are a genius.
Most things we do with computers, whether "hacking" or anything else, are really not that difficult to do. There are some challenges, but it's not rocket science. However, most people don't understand computers, so anyone who does is seen as a "genius". Sure, maybe one or two are, and a few others are maybe of particularly great intelligence. But most "nerds" are really not that smart, just dedicated, which is really all it takes to become proficient at any particular skill.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
Did all of the /.ers somehow forget that this is another media-hyped fictional storytelling program on CBS? Heck, they even fabricate sources in their everyday news reporting! Why would they somehow base their television programs on any actual facts?
CBS' motto is simple: If Mikey's Little Website has it typed up in color-blinding BLINK tags, then it must be true.
This is the best post showing this to be a badly researched work of fiction. If you have mod points move it up to 5.
This story's headline can be answered, per Beneford's Law of Headliens, as "no."
There is nothing more to see here. You can close the story now.
you didn't do any of the work and you're sad that you got bad grades? did you ever think that there could be more going into a grade than the score on a final test?
My I.Q. score is 119, which is pathetic because I couldn't even muster up enough Brawndo to bust out one more point and make it an even number. I punch myself in the balls every morning for breakfast, and have been doing so since I was four. I can read, but only out loud and I still haven't mastered punctuation. I believed everything I read, saw, and heard as a teenager and as such contracted every venereal disease known to man, got convicted for cattle buggery, and am forbidden to set foot inside the state of Rhode Island. When asked to program using Vi, I do so in EMacs, and I do so by flogging my keyboard with my limp penis. I blame Obama for having the nerve to be Dubya's father, I choke on chewing gum when attempting to walk, and I make all my phone calls while I'm on the toilet experiencing my weekly bout of dysentery. I keep on trying to run Android on my iPhone 3G, Windows on my Linux desktop, and I still cannot wear matching socks. I, sirs, am a complete retard.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
is hilarious.
I couldn't figure out what the hell they meant by "Technologies: XX" until I scrolled down far enough to find a profile with "Technologies: C/C++, HTML...".
It feels like the page is a screenshot out of a video game.
I could not understand how someone could be failing at school if they were not completely retarded. It seemed to me that with 10 minutes a day you could rush through that boring stuff and get the minimum to have everyone (teachers, parents) off your back. I was a geek, and didn't mind going through any book, so I spent a little more time, like an hour or so, and I was always one of the top in the school. Yes, some (mostly girls) who studied hours a day got some higher grades since they did all the homework and learned everything by heart, but since they could not do perfectly in math, physics etc when I could with no effort, overall I was pretty close. And everyone was happy, parents, teachers and me. I mean if the teachers think you are a good student you can get away with anything.
Mods, this is both +5 Insightful and Informative.
...in the name "error function"!
(sunglasses land on face)
Slipped right on his asymptote!
YEEEAAAAAHHH!!!!
Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those that thinks that degrees are essential, or an indicator of inherent knowledge or skill - I did crap at Computing A-Level for example because I was already doing sockets programming in C at home, whilst they were managing to stretch out the teach of what was little more than "Hello World!" in Pascal over about 3 months at college so I just simply wasn't motivated enough to succeed. So I'm exactly with you on that one. Part the reason I did a second degree was because I went back to have another pop at the subjects I'd previously not done great in and hadn't had much professional experience with but wanted to improve my knowledge of some more - specifically pure maths topics like number theory.
But I think in this case the point is that this guy actually went to a Uni - something he just wouldn't do if that wasn't his thing and he didn't go to a stand out one. I didn't go to Cambridge because I wouldn't have gotten in at the time, this guy had no reason not to go to Cambridge, because regardless of his grades Cambridge would've looked at his supposed IQ of 197 and given him a place as that's the exact sort of thing that intrigues Cambridge far more than grades (because it plays to their PR view if nothing else - "Look we netted the most intelligent person in history!"). In fact, chances are Cambridge would've even sought him out explicitly upon news of perhaps the greatest IQ ever known reaching them. Unless of course it never actually did, because the whole thing is fabricated.
Cambridge is also the sort of place that would've challenged him, it's the sort of place that gets geniuses that are unmotivated because they're not challenged because it has a whole massive long history of working with such people and turning them into the greats.
So I get that people like you and me wouldn't have such an easy ride yet still do perfectly well in the real world (I've done far better career wise than every single better graded pupil at the schools I went to for example), but if this kid is as gifted as he claims then that alone would've made the big players like Cambridge notice. Apparently though the only ones that notices were the University of Sussex. It's possible even MIT or similar would've taken him given that he apparently went outside of his home country of Ireland anyway, but rather than ending up at a top 10 world university, he ended up at one that slips outside even the top 100 - there are 16 more highly ranked universities than Sussex in the UK alone. Again, the amount of universities that would be clamouring to take in the most intelligent person ever as measured by IQ would be far higher than just the UK's 16th best university even if Cambridge or Oxford missed him.
And it turns out it's over six sigma above the norm, too.
Aw shit, I mean my IQ.
Nope, wait, I mean my ego.
Who cares? I knew the material better than anyone. If the point of the education system was grades, I'd just cheat.
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Legendary outlaw.
Anyone agreeing to be put in the spotlight of a TV show is the farthest thing from genius.
TV is fiction, even if 'based on real people or situations'. Get over it and move on. I plan on watching anyway. If they make a compelling case, I will watch more, if not or if the acting is unreasonable (either over the top or to bad) I'll drop it like any other fiction. Even the news is fiction to me (or at least under suspicion) until I get the same feed from other sources preferably outside the news media, or at least outside domestic or others known to have a 'dog in the hunt' sources.
... "When you pry the source from my cold dead hands."
These anecdotes sound like Chuck Norris jokes.
give up :)
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