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posted by LaminatorX on Friday September 26 2014, @06:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the Babe-the-Big-Blue-Ox dept.

Having spent some time recently shredding HuffPo for repeatedly printing a braggart's bogus claim, Mike Masnick at TechDirt is going after another guy who has also made some "interesting" claims.

Another Story Of A 'Fake' Brilliant Inventor? Is 'Scorpion Walter O'Brien' A Real Computer Security Genius?

There's apparently a new TV show on CBS called Scorpion that has received mixed-to-decent reviews. It supposedly is about some computer security geniuses/outcasts who help "solve complex, global problems." However, Annalee Newitz's description of the stupidest, most batshit insane hacker scene ever from the first episode, suggests that the show is not worth watching. In the past few years, it had been kind of nice to see Hollywood actually seem to have some clue about accurately portraying hacking in some situations, but that's all apparently been tossed out the window with Scorpion. Even if you don't read Newitz's story (or view the video clip), just know it involves an ethernet cable hanging from a flying plane with a car racing beneath it to download some backup software needed by the airport so planes can land. Yeah.

A big part of the show's marketing is the claim that the story is partially based on the life of one of the show's executive producers, Walter O'Brien. CBS News has an article talking up these claims of O'Brien's amazing feats, helping out its parent company, CBS, who broadcasts the show. But... for such a "genius," many of O'Brien's claims are coming under scrutiny, and they're not holding up well. Having just gone through the whole Shiva Ayyadurai / inventor of email crap, it's beginning to sound like a similar case of someone pumping up their own past for publicity purposes.

Seen the show? Got an opinion? Think this guy really has an IQ of 197?

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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday September 26 2014, @06:23PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Friday September 26 2014, @06:23PM (#98659)

    Are there more cliches or incoherent things in that scene?
    Don't listen to me though, I'm just jealous I didn't succeed at making a living by abusing special effects to hide terrible content...

    • (Score: 2) by CoolHand on Friday September 26 2014, @07:04PM

      by CoolHand (438) on Friday September 26 2014, @07:04PM (#98668) Journal

      The show was full of shite that didn't make sense technically. Another one of the big premises for the big emergency for which they had to help out was that the Airport's old software was backed up every 24 hours to an offsite datacenter, and apparently the new backup just overwrites the old backup, and they don't keep the old ones. So, they patched their old outdated software and introduced a bug that wouldn't let planes land. At first, their only chance to backrev the software was to pull the backup from this offsite DC (and for some reason I don't remember they didn't have connectivity), so their only chance was to physically drive their through backed up traffic to stop the new backup from overwriting the old one, and physically grab a copy. Then they get there and their psychology genious guy deduces what server it is amongst two rows by small clues about the supervisor of the datacenter, like a picture of he and his family on his desk (in 30 seconds). It was just crazy outlandish stuff that rarely made any sense technically... My wife and kid made me watch it with them, but I doubt I can suffer through another one..

      --
      Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
      • (Score: 1) by Darth Turbogeek on Friday September 26 2014, @08:29PM

        by Darth Turbogeek (1073) on Friday September 26 2014, @08:29PM (#98697)

        It's TV. I'm not wattching that shit to begin with.

        • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 26 2014, @08:43PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 26 2014, @08:43PM (#98700)
          Let me guess... [theonion.com]
  • (Score: 3) by Subsentient on Friday September 26 2014, @07:03PM

    by Subsentient (1111) on Friday September 26 2014, @07:03PM (#98666) Homepage Journal

    Is the greatest failure a person can have. From pride all mistakes follow, even the Vorlons knew that.

    --
    "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
    • (Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 26 2014, @07:58PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 26 2014, @07:58PM (#98685)

      And yet ego is also the tool that enables people to succeed when the odds are against them.
      Nothing in life is black and white.

  • (Score: 2) by strattitarius on Friday September 26 2014, @07:10PM

    by strattitarius (3191) on Friday September 26 2014, @07:10PM (#98669) Journal
    From CNET [cnet.com]:

    Flying down a tunnel of 1s and 0s is not how hacking is really done. The staff here has been really good about staying away from the cartoony version.

    It really was down to earth and how things are done. Sure, everyone is focusing on the fact that they had to "reboot" into a backup. That was only stored on the planes (or they had to get a live copy because the backup failed - unsure here). And apparently only on the planes in air, not the many that were probably on the ground. And that the runway they were trying to safely land them on with the rebooted backup was too short for the plane to land so they could download the backup (huh? - I only watched the clip in TFA earlier today). Or the fact that it looked like the laptop that downloaded the data flew away at the end, but was somehow able to transfer the data to the terminal and reboot the system before it was pummeled from being dropped at 200MPH.

    But what all the haters don't realize is that the backup was password protected and the last IT guy was fired for downloading pr0n and didn't leave the password so they had to brute force the password. That was the "true story" part! It just didn't make the final cut, that's all. But nothing cartoony at all. I told my wife that pretty much sums up my average Tuesday.

    --
    Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Friday September 26 2014, @07:15PM

    by sjames (2882) on Friday September 26 2014, @07:15PM (#98673) Journal

    I want the show to succeed. The actual storytelling is pretty good, but they MUST get some real technical consultants in! It's hard to stay in the story when they're so careless with reality.

    Premise, ATC software at LAX is corrupted somehow and so there's 54 planes that will crash and burn because they can't land. Why can't they land? Who knows. Why can't they divert to a secondary airport? no answer.

    Solution, there's a backup. But, for dramatic reasons, the one and only backup will be overwritten in a few minutes so they rig all the traffic lights to turn green for them as they seed off to the datacenter (which looks like a U-Store on the outside) where it's kept. They find hundreds of drives in an array, but through supernatural deductive skills and psychology, yank exactly the right drive with less than a second to spare. Too bad the wimpy OEM speaker magnet in the door panel erased it on their way back from the datacenter!

    But for some reason, a jumbo jet flying in from NZ just happens to have an uncorrupted copy of the software in it's flight computer (no idea why a plane would have ATC software) but of course, the only way to get it is for the plane to fly low over the runway and drop down the ethernet cable to the laptop in the fast car below. No idea why since they were already at 6 feet over the runway with the gear down they didn't just go ahead and land. Apparently if the tower doesn't have the right software, the plane would crash or blow up or something. They might even get a dirty look from the FAA for all I know.

    There's some other miscellaneous un-answered stuff like why shoot a plane down rather than attempt a water landing (or just landing at the airport without ATC assistance since it has a fighter escort and all) etc.

    It's a shame to waste the skill of telling the story on a story with that many holes in it. I hope it's just pilot (no pun intended) episode jitters.

    I'm not sure how it could be based on anyone's life since it doesn't even conform to logic or reality.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 26 2014, @07:55PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 26 2014, @07:55PM (#98684)

      > The actual storytelling is pretty good, but they MUST get some real technical consultants in!

      You are being far too charitable. This show is loaded with schmaltz to the gills. The tech is definitely terrible, but even if they fixed it the show would be unwatchable due to the utter lack of humor and sappiness overload. This premise was a done a lot better in Christain Slater's "Breaking In" (well, at least the first season) where the hot chick was also really smart instead of just a stereotypical high-EQ girl playing the foil to the all the aspies. Breaking In was also funny.

      If you want a good tech show that is nominally an emergency-of-the-week then watch Person of Interest. The first 2.5 seasons were kind of dull, but right around the middle of season 3 they did a cast change and the direction of the show got a lot more speculative and bold. Like Neuromancer-bold.

      Personally I hope Scorpion and CSI:Cyber both get the cancel-axe because the entire premise is dullsville.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Friday September 26 2014, @09:08PM

      by mhajicek (51) on Friday September 26 2014, @09:08PM (#98707)

      HDDs contain really powerful rare earth magnets. There is no way a door speaker magnet is going to wipe one.

      --
      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
    • (Score: 2) by Ken_g6 on Friday September 26 2014, @10:05PM

      by Ken_g6 (3706) on Friday September 26 2014, @10:05PM (#98725)

      I made similar comments on the IO9 article. My main suggestion there was to fire the writers, send them back to NCIS where it seems like they came from, and hire some writers from Person of Interest, because that show really knows their techno-speak!

  • (Score: 2) by bziman on Saturday September 27 2014, @01:42AM

    by bziman (3577) on Saturday September 27 2014, @01:42AM (#98786)

    While they don't know ANYTHING about computers (or geniuses) they definitely know about fast cars.

    Also, just once, in real life, I wish there could be some computer related problem that could only be solved by stealing a Ferrari.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 27 2014, @07:07PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 27 2014, @07:07PM (#98949)

      Viewers tend to know more about cars than computers and systems. TV writing only includes the level of correctness necessary to satisfy the average viewer.