There's a story doing the rounds about some faces that have been found on the Windows Vista DVD. The page is in Spanish but the pictures speak for themselves. There has been some speculation as to who these people are and why they are there.

A response on the Vista Team Blog attempts to dispell any notions of conspiracy theories. Although what consiparacies might achieve from this escapes me. A mutilated Tux the penguin would seem more apt in that case, although I doubt Microsoft would do something that stupid.

In actual fact the pictures are of members of the team that worked on the hologram on the disc. The hologram is supposed to make it harder to produce fake copies of the Windows Vista DVD. If the disk has a badly placed printed label, don't act surprised if it won't activate.

There's nothing new in this. There is a long tradition amongst stone masons of carving faces in hard to reach places on cathedrals. While spending some time with the masons at Canterbury Cathedral I discovered that one of the recently restored spires had, instead of the usual gargoyles, the face of the current Dean and one of the mason's dogs carved on it. Hopefully that was not a comment on their feelings of the Dean.

At just 1mm big, the Vista images were somewhat harder to find but still bigger than the pictures that used to be printed on computer chips. Sadly the tradition has been stopped in the interests of efficiency but you can find out more in an article in the IEEE magazine Spectrum about 'Silicon Graffiti'