First, Bill Gates get nailed with a custard pie while on his way to meet government officials in Belgium.
Then, a decade later, Steve Ballmer is pelted with eggs while giving a speech at a Budapest university this past May.
The reasons for these foodie attacks on Microsoft CEOs have been debated endlessly online — ego-deflation efforts, anger over glitchy software, the list goes on — but one thing is certain: The strikes, especially the former, have spawned dozens of tribute Web sites.
Here, then, are some of the more interesting efforts:
risoftsystems.com/store/pietoss.asp: Offers up a $9 “Bill’s Pie Toss Interactive Screen Saver,” described thusly: “Come one, come all — step right up for a chance to toss a pie at your favourite billionaire.
Whether sticking his head through the circular cut-outs in the “pieboard” or riding by on a tricycle, Bill is there to have fun with you and help you enjoy throwing pies in this carnival-like atmosphere. This screensaver features an Interactive Mode that allows you to control the pie action!”
(After all, who hasn’t wanted to control the pie action?)politicallycorrect.com/gates: The best of several shockwave games in which Gates gets pelted with pies. This isn’t Grand Theft Auto, but it will amuse for a few minutes.
bertisevil.tv/pages/bert024.htm: The whole “evil Bert from Sesame Street” thing is so 1998, which makes it quite appropriate in a photo of Gates about to get pied, with Bert lurking just around the corner…
Continuing in the MS vein, it remains unclear whether the Microsoft-Yahoo! merger will ever happen.
But eWeek magazine’s Microsoft Watch recently assembled a top-10 list of reasons “Why Microsoft and Yahoo Couldn’t Marry,” which definitely bears repeating here:
10. On Monday, Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s incoming chief software architect, declared that AJAX was dead. Long live Silverlight.
9. Yahoo CEO Terry Semel is a foreign car kind of guy, while Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is strictly Detroit.
8. Steve Case, architect of the AOL Time Warner merger, made repeated “Boo Hoo!” crank calls to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.
7. Microsoft executives balked at marketers’ “We’re No. 2” ad campaign against Google.
6. Yahoo had second thoughts when Microsoft’s Hotmail service spit back all the wedding invitations as spam.
5. The matchmaking computer recommending the two pair up ran Linux.
4. The computer recommending against the matchup ran Windows Server Longhorn Beta 3.
3. Old school guy Ballmer thought that the bride should pay the $40 billion dowry.
2. The court clerk’s computer, running Windows 98, crashed when generating the marriage license.
1. Semel refused to run Windows Vista on Yahoo computers until the release of Service Pack 1.
