Steve Ballmer dodges eggs at Hungarian University
By Donald Melanson 
posted May 19th 2008 3:48PM
posted May 19th 2008 3:48PM
We've already seen how quick on his feet Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer can be, and it looks like the big man finally had to put those fleet-footed skills to good use, as he was recently forced to duck for cover under a barrage of (three) eggs during a speech he was giving at a Hungarian University. Apparently, the disgruntled egg-tosser was angry with Ballmer for "stealing billions in Hungarian taxpayer money," which he demanded that Ballmer give back "right now." Head on past the break for a video of the thoroughly awkward encounter.
Egg-cellent!
did you notice when the egg tosser was leaving some guy had to pick up his macbook to let the tosser through?
Hit the pause at 0:38.
I can see no lighted apple (or any apple for that matter), so it isn't a macbook. It could be just me or the video quality is crap.
@ Mike
and we care because?????
Looked to me like an Eee PC or one of MSI, definitely not a Mac! Good try though.
@Mike
The egg thrower wasn't Steve Jobs buddy. Microsoft bashing can be performed in your own head. Thanks.
JESUS
That video was hilariously awquard to watch, he just throws the eggs, talks some shit then awquardly shuffles out along the rows while everyone is trying to let him pass, watching him like "...."
Oh god, fail.
Actually, it IS a Macbook. The guy who owns the thing was probably just listening and not typing, so his laptop's display finally went to sleep. The logo and the display share the same light source, so if the display is off, the logo is not illuminated.
It most def was a macbook. You people don't even know what a macbook looks like. You think a college student would be using an eee pc? Sheesh!
I really don't care much, but since the bickering needs someresolution, it looks like a mac more than anything. more of a macbook but maybe an ibook.
Ballmer's feeling a bit *sheepish* 'bout now... but with those wimpy tosses, Hungarians can't claim "The yolk's on ewe!"
ballmer's gf does not look amused in that picture...
Engadget needs to do something about people tagging irrelevant replies onto the first post so they can be on top.
@cory, does that include you too?
They don't have Eee PCs in Hungary, yet, unless he ordered it from abroad, which is unlikely.
Is that the same CORVINUS from Underworld?
Eggs?!
Maybe the (egg-) tosser thought Ballmer was feeling "Hungry" ? :P
Best stick to holographic meetings in future, eh Steve.
the university student should demand any money he paid for an economics class back from the university, as he doesn't have a damn clue about comparative advantage and division of labor.
He should also ask for his money back for any phys ed classes he had as well. They sure as hell never taught him to throw, unless it was a class on limp wristed tossing.
Just as you should demand a refund from your English teachers!
@LC: I think that man would be more than happy if he could get the money back for his three eggs.
Omelets, omelets, omelets!!
Mah, that guy didn't even hit him. Shame...
But the facial expression is priceless...
(Referring to Steve Ballamer's facial expression)
Hungarians! Hungarians! Hungarians!
Should have thrown a chair at him!
Now that dude "Ballmer" seems cool under pressure, hell of a recovery.
I think I like Microsoft even more now.
He has to be cool, for every person that he would of touched on the way trying to get that dude that would of been like $10 million in lawsuits, not that he can't afford that.
Cowering behind the desk is "cool under pressure???"
Cool under pressure would have been catching the eggs and throwing them back.
No, He should have thrown that guys Macbook at him. It would have been excellent.
Doug, now that's poetic. You are soooo full of win.
Abe Burnett is God
i love how we only hear these extremist type stories when talking about microsoft. some people REALLY hate microsoft and its kinda funny and pathetic at the same time.
Kind of like hating Carnegie, for anti-competitive practices leading to the forced work housing and near slave labor conditions when they owned practically every steal company in the US?
How about the AT&T monopoly on communications that had to be broken up by the government? Price gouging, outdated technology, new technology being bought out before it could compete...
Did you even study history, economics, or anything when you went to school?
Monopolies are bad. Monopolistic business practices are worse when you own 90% of the market. Microsoft should be forced to follow standards, publish them and release all rights to open standards. No: "I promise not to sue" doesn't count.
Actually, Andir, to say that monopolies are bad and that we should force them to release all rights to open standards is ridiculous. I'm an A student in a top rated economics program (by way of qualifying my disagreement with you).
For one thing, saying that monopolies are bad is nearly a normative statement--rather than the positive statement economics upholds.
Instead, what you should've said is that monopolies are inefficient: they deliberately produce less than society would optimally like them too. This leads to deadweight loss, and a social welfare problem.
As you pointed out, there are various methods of increasing total surplus--and thus increasing, in this case, consumers surplus (i.e., satisfaction/happiness). This relies upon the assumption that consumers are happier when they can have more of what they want: which, optimally, occurs in a perfectly competitive environment where the market naturally is driven to produce a zero economic profit in the long-run. This is the point, too, where consumers marginal benefit equals the producers marginal cost.
With monopolies, a producer deliberately produces less than society wants, at a higher price. They do this to maximize their profit.
You can try to overcome monopolistic problems through policy, taxes, and subsidies.
THE KEY HERE, is that all those solutions themselves incur deadweight loss, and thus are inefficient, and thus, according to your wording, are bad.
The punchline to the story I'm telling is that it IS possible to increase social welfare (total social surplus) by, for example, subsidizing monopolies (as we see, perhaps, with oil and gas companies--encouraging them to produce more, making people happier), but any solution oriented behavior just incurs financial losses.
So you can see that attempting to defeat monopolies can be a zero sum game. What you gain in total surplus (how happy your consumers are), you may lose in real dollar inefficiency.
Monopolies aren't "bad," they are inefficient for society. They exist as a natural phenomena of a well functioning marketplace--one with strict property rights, consistent public institutions, reliable rule of law, etc. What you seem to be recommending would, almost certainly, result in LESS PRODUCTION by Microsoft, and thus, in the long-run less social welfare for the 90% of the world which uses their products--as they cease to innovate because it has become less profitable for them.
@Andir3.0 : Yes, Microsoft is really such a tyrant "monopoly". I guess nobody is allowed to have Macs running OS X or an EEE PC with Linux.
What a monopoly!
@ Andir:
Abe is correct: monopolies are usually undesirable, but not necessarily "bad."
"Abusive monopolies," on the other hand, are bad.
Microsoft was an abusive monopoly.
Microsoft is simply reaping the scorn it has sewn all these years.
@Abe
What a load of pseudo-academic BS. The best is at the end, when you say that they are not bad by explaning why they are bad.
giuliop,
What were you reading?
What Andir3.0 wrote explained both sides to the argument. Him explaining just one good point of any kind of monopoly rejects the statement that monopolies are "bad". He even went as far as to explaining the difference of bad and inefficient.
It was well written.
Egg throwing is surely a sign of high class. Imbecile.....
Agreed. What a shame this person disrupted his speech.
However, you do get a hilarious picture of Steve ducking behind the desk (as captured by Engadget above). Now THAT is a high class shot!
The sad thing he surely got expelled from the school. That only served to defame the status and reputation of the university... Higher education means something... something more than just sitting in a lecture taking notes...
Protest is always in style. And calling someone names is definitely "high class" (you wannabe-elitist dick)
@WS: chances are the talk was open to all students and staff without registration, and this usually means absolutely anyone can walk into the lecture room. This is the case for our lectures at our university.
So maybe that guy was just some random pissed off dude from outside of the university.
linux and mac users who constantly bash ms are more elitist than anything else. mac users = cool, hip. linux users = smart, gods
windows users = dumb, clueless
Eggs he should have thrown Vista at him
Eggs: Nutritional Value.
Vista: No Value.
OMG bashing vista makes you so cool!!!
Well Mam00th, you have to agree along with all of the vista users downgrading to xp that it really does suck. Hate to say it, but he has every right to bash Vista. Hell you probably bash OSX too.
He should have thrown Hungarian Goulash or Chicken Paprikas, now that would be patriotic and blind him for a couple minutes, and let the world know a lot more about Hungary's delicatessen...
Ridgecity: nice one :D
That reminds mme, i should have some lunch now.
well actually. I dont know why people have problems with vista. If you get the 64 bit version its runs far and beyond any version of XP. Not to mention a large portion of the initial problems are now gone. Vista = much faster than XP when running 64-bit with a half decent rig.
Three throws: Zero hits.
Fail.
Still, nice to see that he walked out without incident. Better than something like "don't tase me, bro!"
I disagree.
"Don't tase me bro!" is like 5 minutes of some of the greatest comedy ever recorded.
Would have been really cool if he had yelled out "Don't egg me Bro". Would have upped his (nonexistent) cool factor by +1
I'm not a fan of Ballmer, but that was just uncalled for.
"Don't tase me, bro" was in the States. I'm sure that Hungary's government isn't as repressive as the US's.
Food products, for some unexplainable reason, have no effect on Microsoft and associates. HMMM.....
""Don't tase me, bro" was in the States. I'm sure that Hungary's government isn't as repressive as the US's."
Or, just maybe, we believe that throwing a projectile at a person is generally not a good thing, and a person's personal security, is something that should be protected?
Silly me..I know...
@andy
I'd like to tase you for 10 minutes and make the even greatest comedy ever.
@gojeda
Personal security and personal pride are different things. One deserves being tased while the other deserves a quiet walk out.
he should have heeded the warning; one of the words in front of him says "egyetem"... Egg at him :D
It's pronounced e-dyet-em.
BTW, lol, after he is asked the leave the organizer(?) says "Walk this way, so everybody can see you and your shame". lol
What a strange encounter. It was so calm and he just got up and walked to security.
It's disturbingly similar to that family guy episode where Peter gets reparations and he makes the bad comment when he is in the audience and everyone is staring at him and he makes an awkward exit and everyone has to stand up to let him through. Kind of an uncanny similarity.
well, wasn't Bill Gates who got "pied" in Belgium years ago?
Yeah, it was him.
It was a cream pie.
Bill's face was full of cream, so there was no.telling possible about the look on his face. But apparently he said he liked the cream.
Here's the vid:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=NpCMJ2xlLfo
And a longer one...
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=CwR4ucv8vsI&feature=related
LMAO :)
What did he say actually? Can someone translate?
It's in English. His accent, however, was quite hard to understand.
...he was speaking English.
The young man sais: The Microsoft has stole us 45 billion hungarian forint. Give that money back! (He refers to a agreement between the hungarian state and microsoft, what worth 45 billion to the hungarian people, to make windows OS and Office softwares avaliable in our schools and universities)
well that was awkward...
Jealous of Microsoft?
That's an egging!
Were they Easter eggs?
Americans should know better than to go into Europe, or any country not in the center of the North America.
Microsoft has been 'stealing' tax dollars from a few countries. They get tens of billions in subsidies every year.
Microsoft isn't "stealing" it. Your stupid country is giving it to them.
Ha ha...you called his country "stupid" for buying Microsoft products.
You're an ignorant asshole. Americans or any nationality can go wherever they please, and don't imply that all Americans are thiefs and "steal" shit from others. With your line of reasoning Chinese people shouldn't come here because we don't like how their percieved as Communist baby killers.
So why is it that many of our elected leaders would be put on trial for various crimes in a few countries in Europe and beyond?
I did put 'stealing' in quotes, did I not?
Hearing someone sounding vaguely like Arnold Shwarzenegger demanding that Microsoft give Hungarians their money back definitely made my day.
That guy sucks at throwing eggs, he practically lobs them. And who let him in wearing a shirt like that?
The best part is his exit. "mlah mlah I hate MS. *Ok, I'm leaving now.*"
On the back of the shirt stands: Microsoft = corruption
He says:
"This country will pay a lot, if this man still makes parades here."
Egganator
Why does anyone think doing things like this will make any difference at all? It just makes the people supporting a cause look like idiots.
I hate people like that, sure MS has done their fair share of underground business and have stolen money but who has not in such huge companies? Besides, there is a much better way to protest than throw an egg at a person. Steve Ballmer might have done a lot of crap underground which I hate as well.
People hate MS cause its "cool" to hate MS and they forget stuff like the Bill and Melinda foundation which has given tons of money for cancer research. Bill Gates himself steps down to focus on that more too.
All the hippies who love Google and open-source crap say that MS fanboys are close minded and support the "evil empire" while in reality they support another "evil empire" which makes money by advertising.
As for Apple, just because Apple makes some trendy (I OWN an an iPod but I hate their Macs) computers does this mean they don't do under the table business like MS does.
This is not star-wars people this is business and if a business has a lot of money it can pay off people and get their shit done. Wake up.
Very true. This kid is very immature. If the dumbass had not thrown those eggs at Balmer then maybe he would have gotten an answer.
"evil empire" which makes money by advertising
Seriously? You're comparing a monopoly indicted in multiple national/international business courts of illegally abusing its market position to the thousands, if not millions, of large, small, and medium-sized companies that offer free ad-supported services *and* open-source, community-based efforts aimed at producing a high-quality public good?
I think you've redefined the bounds of irrationality.
Never said MS has been an innocent child here. I just hate people who call out MS like they are supporting something that takes similar actions as MS...
I've been a developer for free games (MODS) myself.
@aBs, Bill wouldn't have any money to give away if he didn't resort to his monopolistic tactics to acquire it in the first place. Ill-gotten gains...
People often point out that we wouldn't be as far along as we are in personal computing without Microsoft's "guiding hand". I instead think how much *further* we could have gotten if not for the lameness of Microsoft.
"Bill wouldn't have any money to give away if he didn't resort to his monopolistic tactics to acquire it in the first place. Ill-gotten gains..."
Yeah, I love that. If a drug deal were to make billions selling cocaine and meth to kids on the street and take all that money to Africa and spend it on Aids research, does that make him a moral and ethical person?
I think Ballmer handled that pretty well. "It was a friendly discussion" lol. Gotta give the guy credit for brushing off that intensely awkward situation and continuing with his talk.
genius
That was so awkward. Especially how the guy was like 5 feet from Ballmer and he failed terribly.
Nobody knew what to do, the row just stood up and was like, well, your out of here...
If that guy had any smarts, he missed on purpose. Had he actually hit Mr. Ballmer, you can bet the rest of the video would not have been so peaceful...
Still, at the "You are attempting to pelt Steve Ballmer with eggs; Cancel or Allow" prompt, it does look like he hit Cancel.
next time he'll meet ballmer he'll not miss. he's now lvl 2 :D
Ballmer's still a level 60.
Why he said Microsoft stole their money? Because they use to install pirated copies on their computers, so can't understand why their government need to pay for the same software they've been using for free.
what exactly is the guy referring to? link?