So I guess we're supposed to be relieved. The iconic, I call it iconic, Windows XP

default desktop wallpaper, you know the sloped green hill with the blue sky

and the clouds and I've guess people have always wondered if it's real or not.

Hi, on the other hand, looked at it and just figured it was not real. But according

to this story, the editor and chief of the San Francisco gate recently set

out to find if it was true or not. Well, it is true and it must not have been

very difficult since other people knew about it for years and years. It is the

farmland in the Elpaca farm on Highway 12 in Sonoma, California and across

the street it's covered with wine grapes. Well, so Charles O'Rear, the

photographer, snapped the picture back in 1996. It's known as Bliss Hill and he

claims that, look, I just took the picture I'm driving through Sonoma. It's

always a carpet of green grass in January. It's beautiful. I knew that and I

just, you know, it was perfect, the perfect light, the perfect clouds. And the

photographer, Mr. O'Rear, is 79 years old now and he uploaded the photo to a

stock photo agency and Microsoft discovered the shot, paid an unknown but

reportedly sick figure sum for the rights to it in perpetuity and promptly

plastered it, you know, across the globe. It's part of the Arab, you know, marketing

campaign. He, the photographer, I mean, has been a great photographer for a

few years, Los Angeles Times, Kansas City Star, shot for National Geographic for

over 20 years and he knows that this is the only shot he's going to be

remembered for. But the funny thing is is that he says not a week goes by that

some email comes through about the photograph and this is just, you know, a

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