Just as soon as the Microsoft CEO started his speech at the Corvinus University (my Alma Mater), a protesting student wearing a “Microsoft=Corruption” shirt stood up and threw eggs at the Microsoft CEO. Not exactly a sign of the famous “Hungarian hospitality”.

(If your feed does not show embedded videos, please click through to watch it in the blog.  Update: Originally I had the index.hu video here, but as it started to slow down, I uloaded it to youtube and am now embedding the youtube version.  A day later this vid received over 223K views)

On second thought, perhaps it was fair enough. After all, his boss, Bill Gates received a full cream-pie in the face ten years ago in Belgium - Ballmer only got some of the ingredients.

Another ironic moment comes at 0:38m in the video: as other students stand up to give way to the departing egg-thrower, the camera closes in on one of them holding up his shiny Apple - and not the pie variety.

Update: The search is on for Ballmer’s replacement.

Another video from a different angle, and it ends with the Gates Pie Scene.

Update#2: OK, enough of the fun part. As the story circulates people start wondering what may be the background, and since the only sources are in Hungarian, here’s a summary of the circumstances:

A Hungarian Government bid, worth $25B Hungarian Forints, roughly $157M was allegedly skewed towards MS. (A ‘competitive’ bid with wording that all but ensures only Microsoft meets the requirements.) A Hungarian Watchdog Body (sort of like the FTC in the US) challenged the bidding process via the Court system, and a trial date was set for today. The trial was suddenly and unexpectedly rescheduled just as Ballmer arrived in Budapest. So there may be a perception of the Bully lobbying there.

That said, they could have protested with banners, without eggs. Or displaying more of those flashy Macbooks.

Tags: Apple, bill gates, budapes, egg-throwing, gates creampie, mac, microsoft, prank, protest, steve ballmer

OK, time to put things in prospective.  Yes, I believe the Gizmodo prank of switching off LCD’s at CES, disrupting presentations was immature, and they deserved to be banned.  But let’s realize they were still relatively harmless; could have done a lot worse with the almighty TV-B-Gone, just like this Polish kid did:

A teenage boy who hacked into a Polish tram system used it like “a giant train set”, causing chaos and derailing four vehicles.

The 14-year-old, described by his teachers as a model pupil and an electronics “genius”, adapted a television remote control so it could change track points in the city of Lodz.

Twelve people were injured in one derailment, and the boy is suspected of having been involved in several similar incidents.

(Full story at The Telegraph)

Tags: ces, gizmodo, prank, TV-B-Gone