Maybe I was unpopular a bit because I was a teacher's pet. But even the teachers complained about me. They would say to my parents, 'For every one question any pupil asks, Walter asks 10.'

It's common in rural Ireland to pick up a nickname that relates to an animal, bird, or a spider. Mine became 'scorpion' because I fought back, and scorpions are docile creatures until pushed too far.

Hacking involves a different way of looking at problems that no one's thought of.

Flying down a tunnel of 1s and 0s is not how hacking is really done.

When I was 13, I thought I was pretty hot stuff because I knew BASIC programming, self-taught on the family's Commodore 64. One of my crowning accomplishments was writing a silly little program that showed a crudely-drawn Space Shuttle lifting off in a cloud of pixelated smoke.

Bureaucracy kills people's ability to try new ideas.