Our thanks to UK online retailer Bluepoint (and to reader Chris for point it out to us) for 'revealing' Microsoft's latest selling technique: subliminal advertising.

You know the kind of thing: flash up an image so quickly it's below the viewer's perception threshold but gets picked up and (hopefully - if you're the advertiser) acted upon by the subconscious.

Cinema trials by Coke in the 1950s saw sales of the well-known sugared water rocket during the interval, and presumably the Beast of Redmond is hoping for something similar with Windows Millennium Edition. Here's the original ad, which you can see in all its glory over at Bluepoint's Web site, but using The Reg's unique, patent pending image enhancement software (yours truly hitting the Print Screen button on his keyboard real quick), we can reveal the message hidden within:

Nice gag ad, Bluepoint. Perhaps Bill really will do something like this - assuming he hasn't already... ®

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