[nicholassmith]

"Half the students at the speech got up and left (not kidding) when he put on a halo, proclaimed himself the Jesus Christ of Software and started auctioning off a stuffed gnu."

Wait, what?! I can only imagine that's like a car crash where you don't want to look, but you just can't tear yourself away from it.

[lewispollard]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S76pHIYx3ik

[saryant]

It was bad. Literally no one responded to his auction, the room was dead silent. After a minute one guy offered ten bucks out of pity and that was the end of the auction.

[berntb]

I've seen a real nerd (the guy that got the big companies to do tcp/ip in Sweden, I'm not going to write Googleable names) do an ass of himself in a similar way.

I happen to know that he considered that "funny". I'm willing to suffer his sense of humour; he is a national treasure, imnsho. The same goes for rms, I guess.