I noted some time ago that the Windows 95 anti-piracy hologram had to be redone at the last moment due to a complaint from a government (who remains nameless). They objected to the depiction of naked children on the box, referring to the anti-piracy hologram in which the baby is not wearing a shirt. Since the baby is depicted only from the waist up, they extrapolated that the baby wasn’t wearing pants.
There was a scramble to produce a new hologram, and just to be safe, in the new hologram the baby is wearing a shirt and overalls.
You can find pictures of the “clothed baby” Windows 95 hologram fairly easily, such as one appearing about halfway through Steve Sinofsky’s story about getting Office 95 to pass the “Designed for Windows 95” requirements.¹
Harder to find is the original “topless baby” Windows 95 hologram, but recently, I stumbled across a link to a short clip of the original hologram, that shows off the animation.
So now you can see what that unnamed government was upset about.
Windows 95 was released to the public 31 years ago today.
Bonus chatter: Windows NT 4.0 was released to the public 30 years ago today. And Windows XP was released to manufacturing 25 years ago today. I don’t know why things happen on August 24ths.
¹ I find it interesting that the Office team was frustrated at the “Designed for Windows 95” certification process, feeling that the certification team was singling them out more harshly. So much for the conspiracy theories that Office was given favorable treatment. It seems that they were given more stringent treatment.
Hey Mr. Chen – long time reader, first time poster here.
I was browsing through one of the Chicago beta builds (180 to be precise) and stumbled upon a “Multithreaded Demo”/WINBEZMT.EXE PE. It seems to have its origins in the NT 3.1 WinBez (“Kent’s Window Test Application”) and the ssbezier.scr from Windows 3.0, which was created by kentd. Would you have any idea who kentd is?
On that note, are the authors of the other screensavers known? Particularly interested in the OpenGL Maze one.
Perusing the Windows source you see many instances of developers expressing frustration and annoyance at Office for aopcompat reasons.
Windows was not happy with Office.
If anything more developers need to apply for the “Designed for windows” program. Darned Contso products keep putting things that are neither mine, nor documents in the my documents folder.
I have one of the topless baby certificates of authenticity in a old computer nostalgia box. Happy to donate it to you for your collection if interested.