Posted on 09/21/2017 1:39:29 PM PDT by dayglored
Gives two-fingered salute to IBM designers for forcing us to use three-fingered salute
Bill Gates has said that if he had his time again, he would not have chosen CTRL-ALT-DEL as the keypress to interrupt a PC's operations.
Speaking at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum, as recorded from about the 8:30 mark in this video, Gates looked a touch bemused when Carlyle Group co-founder and CEO David Rubenstein asked about the infamous three-finger salute.
He nonetheless answered the question directly, and in a very Bill Gates way, saying: "The IBM hardware PC keyboard only had one way it could get a guaranteed interrupt generated. So clearly the people involved, they should have put another key on in order to make that work."
Gates also observed that "a lot of machines nowadays do have that as a more obvious function." Rubenstein pressed, asking whether Gates regrets having chosen CTRL-ALT-DEL.
"I am not sure you can go back and change the small things in your life without putting the other things at risk," Gates responded, before adding: "Sure, if I could make one small edit I would make that a single key operation."
Gates also used his time on the panel discussion to take a small swipe at "Silicon Valley billionaires who want to live forever", saying that his current focus is on problems such as the fact an African child is 100 times more likely to die of a preventable disease than an American child. He also opined that the "digital revolution" has many years to run, with effects aplenty to be felt across all industries. ®
The three-finger-salute was the work of IBM engineer David Bradley, who programmed the original IBM PC BIOS to forcibly trigger a system reboot when the keys were pressed – and there wasn't much Microsoft could do about it.
In 2001, at a party marking the 20th birthday of the IBM PC, Bradley, while sitting next to Gates, quipped to his audience: "I have to share the credit [for ctrl-alt-del]. I may have invented it, but I think Bill made it famous.”
The Redmond billionaire was not amused.
Your child or cat could do it at an inconvenient time...
Most computers I have had have reset buttons somewhere..................
Yeah, is bill getting senile?
True, but they’re rarely just another key on the keybord. In most cases they’re hidden around back, and some require getting a toothpick or unfolding a paper clip.
The average user I know would have mistakenly rebooted constantly and caused all sorts of corrupted files.
“getting”??
The billgates key, operated by middle fingers on both hands
Yeah! And they should add a new key for each CAPITAL letter. I get so fatigued reaching over to push th a Caps Lock key. Aargh!!
I always assumed the whole point of a 3-key requirement was to ensure it wasn’t done accidentally....
That’s correct.
One Dell computer we had at work, circa 1995, had the reset button on the front, dangerously close to the floppy drive eject button.
There were quite a few instances of sudden rage......................
It is so GREAT to know that everyone’s cat walks on their keyboard just as mine does!!! YES the one key would have been a HUGE mistake!!!
His real mistake was letting the last usable Operating System die.
Windows XP.
And truthfully, I don’t see how it actually died - it’s been upgraded for military users afaik.
Really? Is he stupid? You WANT the interrupt to be deliberate, not accidental. If it had been one button it would have had to have a freaking cover over it so you couldn’t interrupt accidentally.
Yes, I suspect that the original goal was to make it something that would be very difficult to do accidentally.
It just had the side benefit of making many future OS related operations difficult to do intentionally.
Huzzah.
Yeah, the “any” key!
Plenty of one finger salutes to go around!
KYPD
Yup.
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