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A Critical Look At Walter "Scorpion" O'Brien
1729 (581437) writes Back in August, there was speculation that the "real life" Walter O'Brien (alleged inspiration for CBS's new drama Scorpion) might be a fraud. Mike Masnick from Techdirt follows up on the story: "The more you dig, the more of the same you find. Former co-workers of O'Brien's have shown up in comments or reached out to me and others directly — and they all say the same thing. Walter is a nice enough guy, works hard, does a decent job (though it didn't stop him from getting laid off from The Capital Group), but has a penchant for telling absolutely unbelievable stories about his life. It appears that in just repeating those stories enough, some gullible Hollywood folks took him at his word (and the press did too), and now there's a mediocre TV show about those made up stories." Masnick's article is a fascinating look at a man who appears to have conned both TV executives and journalists into believing his far-fetched Walter Mitty fantasies.
I'm happy to suspend disbelief for a good show. Scorpion is not a good show. It's impossible to suspend that much disbelief for the junk they threw at us.
I don't understand why it'd matter. Just look at him as the writer of the series.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Have you noticed that almost every show on CBS prime time glorifies the police state?
And decided it wasn't worth my time. It's not just a crap show, it's a fake crap show and there's no way it's based on anybody's life, any more than that Lazzarr guy worked on an Alien Spacecraft at Area 51. If you believe any of that crap, I've got a nice bridge to sell you.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
So a person's story used to make a fictional drama for entertainment purposes on TV turns out to be fictional drama made for entertainment?
So let's suppose he's a "fake". He would therefor be guilty of turning a lie into a profitable entertainment venture.
Isn't that exactly how every author, producer and actor makes their living?
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
The guy told exaggerated or made up stories about himself. People who are TV writers made a TV show out of them. None of that is fraud.
Even if the writers believed him - and I think that's doubtful - he's still just telling tall-tales to writers who then write about them.
The writers are crappy writers anyway. Let them write crap.
Everything and everyone is an aspect of Gd. So remember to show proper respect!
Basically the story is he is getting screwed on a writing credit.
So you're saying he's like everyone else in Hollyweird?? Oh, how surprising...
No.
He has claimed that his misused image recognition software caused 2600 casualties in the Iraq war, and also later claims that Scorpion has 2600 employees across the globe...
What's his fascination with this number? I think Emmanuel Goldstein (Eric Corely), publisher of 2600 Magazine, has grounds to sue. And so does Captain Crunch (John Draper).
I'm willing to bet this guy couldn't program his way out a paper bag, and I've known and befriended hackers who were many times smarter than this fraud.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Reminds me of when word got out that Frank Dux was a complete and total scam... You might remember a movie about him from the 80s called bloodsport that apparently no one from Hollywood even tempted to fact check.
This is news for people who watch TV.
It's bloody horrible. It's so loaded with fake, unbelievable nonsense it's not even watchable. In episode one, they were racing a ferrari or a lambo or something underneath a jumbo jet, so that they jumbo jet could drop an ethernet cable down to a waiting hot chick who inserted it into a laptop. 2 seconds later they had magically retrieve a backup of the communication software for the fucking air traffic control towers. Which they then uploaded to every air traffic control tower in the country so they can FINALLY land all those planes.
Aside from ogling catherine mcphee or whatever her name is, there was NOTHING watchable about this epicly bad pile of rancid monkey shit.
"If you love someone, set them free. If they come home, set them on fire." - George Carlin
I watched the first episode but only made it to the part where the stereotypical Asian woman was telling the stereotypical black government agent to not shoot the Radio Shack quality keypad at the "data center" that was obviously a self-storage vault, after the rest of the contrived story line (yes, of course, the aviation industry has no backup plans for backup plans if a tower goes dark and EVERYONE WILL DIE ; emergency vehicles in LA are only allowed to use the freeway and cannot bypass traffic ; you have to drive to a data center to get a hard drive ; software at an air traffic control sysem is only backed up 12 hours, every five minutes), collection of stereotypes (the Smart Ethnic People, The Guy in the Bowler Hat, The Unknown Genius Kid and The Misunderstood Autistic Guy. Not to mention The Eye Candy Waitress Who Isn't Just Eye Candy And Tells You About It) and over-used hacking tropes (I just hacked your video camera system from a diner in three seconds).
I turned the TV off and read a book about a English policeman who is also a wizard, which was far more believable that the utter crap which Scorpion was. I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, so I'm not opposed to the fantastic and/or the outlandish -- but Scorpion just pulled the same old tired crap out of the file, changed the names, crapped out a script, spent a pile of money and called it done. There are other shows on television with fantastic or scifi elements that are entertaining and fun to watch -- Doctor Who and Sleepy Hollow to name two current series, and there have been plenty in the past which have done a credible job -- The X-Files, Fringe, Alias, LOST, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, 24 to name a few. Some varied from "light mind candy" (e.g. Alias showed off Jennifer Garner's abs at 30 minutes in every time) to serious business (LOST, BSG), but Scorpion just missed on everything -- plot, story, characters, originality. It's just terrible to watch.
Pilot episode was unwatchable. Characters were annoying caricature of "nerds". I wanted to punch people at CBS after about 15 minutes.
"Based on true story" can mean only one fact is in the whole story, it's Hollywood. Relax people! It's entertainment , either watch it or don't, hate it or love it or anywhere in between.
It's not perfect, but it still manages to do ok with the topic of AI.
The Democrats in general.
Step 1. Repeat something enough.
Step 2. Get media to report it over and over again.
Step 3. Point at steps 1 and 2 as examples of why it's true.
No like Baron von Munchhausen you insufferable twit.
Oddly Obama rhymes with you're momma. What's with that?
Yeah, the show is mediocre, but it starts off with an end tag so what do you expect. I saw the end of the show first and wound back to see if they had started with a matching open tag, but no. Nobody there has a clue what they are, just "web stuff."
Look, compared to network tv shows, it's in the top third. Would you rather have another reality show about an ugly woman and her abusive husband who both have an IQ of 98?
See if you can maintain a perspective on all this.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
I watched 10 minutes of it the other night (on accident I swear!) and had to spend another 10 minutes explaining to my wife why I was laughing so hard. They were tracking down some cyber-bad guy (ugh) through the internet and one of the characters stopped working to do the obligatory "I'm going to explain how the internet works to the seasoned tech-illiterate detective who fears technology" part of the episode. He then proceeded to explain how data flows through many points on the internet to get where it needs to go (okay so far). He told the cop that these points are called (I am NOT kidding) "Router-hubs". These router-hubs each keep a "shadow copy" of every document (shut up shut up SHUT UP!) that flows through them for months (what the hell?) and that they could find the document they needed by going to some random data center with one of these router-hubs (it hurts to type that) and getting the shadow copy.
Then they went to some random building start doing things on a computer next to a long row of what appeared to be rack-mounted LED lights. Oh, and there was a smokey haze in the DC for some reason. Probably some atmospheric bullcrap. Anyway this show does have entertainment value, but only if you look at it as a parody.
This space for rent...
To original Poster:
I think you made a typo in the heading paragraph.... right where you said "a mediocre TV show", I'm sure you just hit the wrong keys a few times. What you clearly meant was "abysmal TV show"
Mediocre is way to much praise for what is a truly awful awful show.
The terms 'based on a true story' can be as vague as 'His name was correct' all the way up to 'They got it right, all the way down to his shoe lace color'. The whole purpose behind being able to say 'based on a true story' is that something about the story is true and they (the writers, directors, etc) took 'artistic license' with the actual facts.
The way I see it, the only possible problem is that the network claims that the show is based on real life. Otherwise, pretty much everything on TV is a made up story, including everything on "reality" shows, some of the stuff on the news, and perhaps even the occasional sporting event.
Proverbs 21:19
For everyone saying "it's just a show": that's not the problem. Walter O'Brien is using his credibility from his show to promote himself as a real super-genius consultant. He has news programs touting him as the person who solved the Boston marathon bombings. He spent two hours on the radio last night promoting his "concierge" service. It's not just a bad TV show; the guy is perpetrating a real-life fraud.
There will always be people willing to capitalize on the ignorance of others. O'Brien may be laughable, but he wasn't the first, nor was Michael Synergy, nor will either of them be the last.
People don't usually watch TV dramas expecting them to be based on reality. So who cares if he lied about "what really happened"? People just want to be entertained. If his dreamed up fantasy life does the trick, then yay for him, and yay for people who've found entertainment.
If the show sucks, I doubt anyone's going to cite the fact that none of the storylines were based on truth. They're going to say that the storyline wasn't exciting enough, interesting enough, or scintillating enough. Well, guess what? Real life rarely is. So he should just lie better to get good ratings. That's what entertainment is about.
thank you.. This is the problem, this assclown is representing his delusions as state of the art in the Infosec world. None of us in that community had heard of this dude before.
We have enough problems with the world at large assuming that everything we do is magic. Walter's bullshit is actively damaging to our field.
The comments about this article about the guys website MUCH more impressive than the website. You are all a bunch of nerds, and that makes me happy.
On TV, an IQ as low Albert Einstein's (165?) is a joke.
Big Bang Theory, Fringe, Criminal Minds, etc; I think everybody has an IQ of 190, or better.
Furthermore, I would think that everybody on slashdot would know that computer security is all about high speed car chases and gun fights. It's not as if computer security people just sit around in front of computers all day.
I wonder if he has hand spears?
Hollywood has an idea shortage.
True, but there is another point you might want to consider: media fragmentation.
It used to be that there were only three TV networks, and most people could only see a movie by going to the theatre (which didn't have 12 different screens in those days either). For music, there were a limited number of radio stations.
Now, there are many different cable channels, plus YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, Rhapsody, and DVD rentals or purchases. For consumers this is great, because you can watch what you like, when you like it.
But Hollywood is unhappy because it's much harder now to build a new franchise. As a result, Hollywood is recycling old franchises, even if the end product has very little to do with the original.
For a bonus, many people who have purchasing power now have fond memories of things they watched as kids.
Thus, you have crazy stuff like the Battleship movie; I'm pretty sure they literally started with the brand name, and ginned up a movie project to put on it. I submit to you that Battleship isn't an example of scraping the barrel for ideas, but rather an example of jump-starting the marketing for a movie by building off a well-known pre-existing brand. It's gotta be the same thing with Tetris: we have this brand, how can we leverage it to sell movies?
Many of the reboots and sequels have little to do with the original source material; and I think in many cases Hollywood just took some script and said "we can shoehorn this into a pre-existing franchise" and did it.
Also, in my opinion the reason Guardians of the Galaxy was so successful was that it was made with love, and well-made at that; the third-tier Marvel characters are so obscure that they didn't really bring much to the marketing. I, for one, saw it because the previews made it look fun and because I read some really favorable reviews.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
It's entertainment. I don't really care if it's true or not! You idiots probably believe all "based on a true story" means every milli second of a show has to be true. Why are you so worried about what dumb people will think? Don't you have better things to do?
Isn't this person, it's how useless news media is and how little fact checking goes on.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I did the same thing just yesterday /junior network engineer
The number "2600" appears a lot in his stories. Phreaker wannabe?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I really don't understand why "OW MY BALLS!" isn't a real show on Spike. Or SyFy.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
More like Chuck Barris and his confessions of a dangerous mind.
An ineffectual irish programmer talking gobshite and Americans believed him. No American will ever believe you.
It's bloody horrible. It's so loaded with fake, unbelievable nonsense it's not even watchable. In episode one, they were racing a ferrari or a lambo or something underneath a jumbo jet, so that they jumbo jet could drop an ethernet cable down to a waiting hot chick who inserted it into a laptop. 2 seconds later they had magically retrieve a backup of the communication software for the fucking air traffic control towers. Which they then uploaded to every air traffic control tower in the country so they can FINALLY land all those planes.
Aside from ogling catherine mcphee or whatever her name is, there was NOTHING watchable about this epicly bad pile of rancid monkey shit.
Nevermind that if the plane could get that close to the runway in the first place then there was no reason why it couldn't, you know, just LAND.
The basic problem is that the writers are not smart, let alone geniuses, so they simply do not know enough to write a show about geniuses.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Because if so then I sort of admire the guy, because that is some EPIC level trolling he's managed to pull off:
I've only seen one clip of the show, but I kid you not it was some of the dumbest "hollywood take on tech" shit I have ever seen. Something to do with having to download some software from the onboard computer of a commercial airplane and the best way to do it was... DANGLE a goddamn ethernet cable down from the airplane mid-flight to the protagonists in their fast car so they can plug it into their laptop and download the required software.
LOL, I spent the rest of the time wondering why you would want a huge ethernet cable coiled up under the floor of an airplane. I don't even remember why he couldn't just land. Agreed the whole thing was bit too much. Out of fuel? I am landing if you are ready or not! No, wait, I'll fly around in circles til I crash that will end much better. They were talking to the planes obviously, so I don't even get the whole premise of the magic software anyway.
Personally, stealling the airport firetruck to do that scene would have been cooler. Those things are awesome when you floor it!
hurfy
says i am logged in and i have mod points and the buttons to select em. yet comments only AC wtf
really only a zero?
Are you perchance "weird" al-vin-rod?
Cause a suggestion such as that reminds me of only person that would keep that much tin-foil handy.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
No like curve ball the guy who told your man Bush about the WMDs
bTW yahoo news is that way.
"All of the lazy copy and paste repurposed articles written about O’Brien after he helped sell a TV show are based on one initial article in The Irish Times." ref
...like passing a cat5 cable down a wheel well of an airliner and into the waiting hand of someone in another vehicle (without scraping engine nacelles on the runway - yeah, those wheels were NOT down and locked) while travelling over 200mph and waiting around long enough to download some firmware that for some reason couldn't be done entirely from the aircraft (what, nobody on board had a fucking ipad??) then bringing a Ferrari to a stop before it pancaked into a steel barrier, from 200+ to 0 in less than fifty feet - sideways, without flipping? All in the space of SEVEN SECONDS??
Not far fetched at all.
By the way: SPOILER ALERT.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
When the writers of the show wrote O'Brien as a borderline imbecile with some odd form of technical jargon spouting Tourettes Syndrome, it was not because they, themselves are idiots. They were actually going for accuracy.
It's so loaded with fake, unbelievable nonsense it's not even watchable. In episode one, they were racing a ferrari or a lambo or something underneath a jumbo jet, so that they jumbo jet could drop an ethernet cable down to a waiting hot chick who inserted it into a laptop. 2 seconds later they had magically retrieve a backup of the communication software for the fucking air traffic control towers. Which they then uploaded to every air traffic control tower in the country so they can FINALLY land all those planes.
I bet you loved McGyver...
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I don't know about the rest of you, but when I see an ad for </SCORPION>, I keep looking for the opening tag.
A techie mailing list I'm on has multiple people ranting about the absolutely bs that happens - not the way aircraft comm works, not the way this, that and the other work, and the plot...um, what plot?
mark
I was almost certain this Walter O'Brien figure is a promo creation, because what he claims to have done is just too absurd. I guess the cognitive and fact-checking skills of TV execs cannot be underestimated.
"Breaking In Season 2 Episode 1"
"Breaking In"
If you had seen the pilot, your brain may have melted.
Spoilers ahead!
Hacker Dude is a Super Genius with a troubled past. As a child, he hacked into NASA to get Space Shuttle blueprints to use as wall posters. This results in black helicopters and Secret Agents raiding his childhood home. Secret Agent Man recognizes Hacker Dude's brilliance, and asks him to Do Some Stuff.
Fast forward many years, and Hacker Dude is making ends meet by fixing the WiFi of a local diner where Single Mom works as a waitress. Her Young Boy likes to rearrange condiments. Hacker Dude sees that the Young Boy is actually a Super Genius playing chess with condiments. Nobody else realizes this, because Super Genius kids act all autistic and stuff.
Hacker Dude is an asshole and can't go three sentences without telling everyone what a Super Genius he is. He wants to do Super Genius Stuff, so he's put together a Super Genius Team. There's the neckbeard who's the Math Whiz, a tough and spunky Asian woman who's The Mechanic, and a fedora wearing rogue who's The Mentalist. They have an average IQ of nearly 200, but can't remember to pay the electric bill, and haven't figured out what to do with themselves yet.
Secret Agent Man shows up at their hideout and needs their help. You see, a software update has broken the communications system for air traffic control at LAX. As a result, they can't communicate with the planes circling overhead. In a few hours, planes will start to run out of fuel, and they will have no choice but to scramble fighter jets and shoot them down, because shooting down passenger planes that are out of fuel is the correct solution.
Hacker Dude doesn't really want to help because the last time he helped Secret Agent Man, something bad happened. But Secret Agent Man convinces him to help, so Super Genius Team springs into action. First, they need an "unbreakable" WiFi hotspot, so they go to the diner where Single Mom works. In seconds, Hacker Dude has hacked into air traffic control, and he uses their security cameras to point at the computer screens there so he can see what he's doing. Or to see who he's talking to, maybe. He's going to revert the software update by restoring from backup! But for reasons, the only backup is at an offsite datacenter that isn't answering their calls, and according to the backup schedule, it will soon be overwritten! So he sends Mechanic Girl and The Mentalist to the datacenter to retrieve the backup, because hacking into air traffic control is trivial, but hacking into a datacenter is not.
Mechanic Girl and The Mentalist arrive at the datacenter, but the door is locked, and nobody's home! Hacker Dude decides that causing a power outage with a power surge will open the door. Math Whiz scribbles on a board for two seconds to figure out the exact amount of power needed to overload the grid. Mechanic Girl then dumps this exact amount of power by flipping all the switches at the nearest power junction box. As expected, the worst security system ever designed opens. With seconds to go, The Mentalist is able to derive the location of the backup drive from a group photo of the IT staff, and rips the drive out of the rack just before the backup would be overwritten.
The drive is returned to the diner where Hacker Dude intends to send the software to air traffic control via email attachment. But the backup drive is corrupted! Maybe because it was violently yanked from the server rack, but it's explained that The Mentalist put the drive in the door pocket of the car on the way back, and the magnet from the car speaker messed it up. All hope is lost, and Hacker Dude is very upset over his failure to save the day.
Hacker Dude reveals to Single Mom that when he was young, Secret Agent Man had him design a guidance system for delivering aid packages. I'm not sure why aid packages need guidance systems, and apparently the military didn't either, because they used it for bombs instead. Unfortunately, Hacker Dude designed the system for "speed, not accuracy" and on
Haven't sworn so much at my TV ever. Worst technobabble ever. Swordfish at least had Holly.
Let me fix primer for them.
Ali: Bob, there is a bug in the code you just released to LAX.
Bob: Oops should I fix it quick or should we just pull previous version from source control?
Ali: Just fix it, they well use the backup system for now.
Bob: K. What are you doing for lunch?
http://www.selimoglunakliyat.c...
selmmjhdsuru
Walter is an actor playing a part in explaining why the Higgs Boson is also known as the God Particle. P is the 16th English letter, Pi is the 16th Greek letter. If you look close at the letters of Pi they are representative to the binary human reproductive organs. P being the male phallus while the i is cleverly the female genitalia. The action and fantasy are added to the show to generate mainstream viewers then the conspiracy behind Walter not being who he says he is will open this debate when the real scorpion team announce who the real man with 197 IQ is. Viewer are subliminally being implanted with a true story mixed with fantasy so that when team scorpion is given the green light by the justice league the real creator of team scorpion's magic will emerge into the spotlight like Simba singing "Everybody look left!... Everybody look right! Everywhere you look I'm standing spot light". SUB-A-TO-MIC-KEY MOUSE in the study of P-Article Physics. Score Pi On
Scorpions brain decoded Pi to find this information as well as ZION written in a Poly-Alphabetic/Numeric ciphering technique he created.
Z=26,i=9,O=15,N=14 which makes pi 3.14-15-9-26 spell ZION in English letters yet coded in the direction you'd read He-Brew since Zion protects his chosen people.
Look even loser at the letter i and see that it's a point and a one which leads you to see spelling PiE and flip it upside-down and reverse it becomes 3!d which the letter d is the 4th letter making 3!d cleverly code 3.14 hidden as 3!4.
Also look at Starmus' logo on their webpage and see that their logo has a letter V above the letter A in STARMUS. Av in hebrew means father. Starmus is encrypting the isolation of the father who'll explain what the God Particle is. Little hint for you all... It's has to do with why Guy Fawkes masks are WARN-R-BROs on the 5th of November each year in peaceful protest of corruption. And re-member that in ancient He-Brew they wouldn't mention Alpha's name or the letter A. So if Av means father in HE-BREW and the Jewish anciently don't mention Alpha then there would be no letter A in Av so that must mean that guy named V in V for Vendetta is actually a super clever subliminally ciphered message meaning father. Hidden in plain site so subtly that none other than the father himself could point out who patented mind control in a previous life and wrote the idea behind SaleMKultRa and programmed his kingdom for his return.