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Bill Gates: Sorry about Control-Alt-Delete
KFOR ^ | SEPTEMBER 21, 2017

Posted on 09/21/2017 9:42:02 PM PDT by nickcarraway

Bill Gates is sorry that he made it so annoying to log in to your computer.

The billionaire Microsoft co-founder admitted Wednesday that the Control-Alt-Delete function originally used to get into Windows computers is an awkward maneuver.

“If I could make one small edit, I’d make that a single key,” Gates said Wednesday on a panel at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York City.

It’s a confession Gates has made before. In 2013, he blamed IBM for the issue.

“We could have had a single button. But the guy who did the IBM keyboard design didn’t want to give us our single button,” Gates said at a Harvard University event at the time.

Users can press a single key to log in — not three — on Apple’s Mac computers.

Control-Alt-Delete is also the combination of keys used to force the computer to quit when it freezes.

The tech luminary, along with his wife, is the co-chair of the world’s largest private charitable foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The couple teamed up with dignitaries like President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in New York on Wednesday to promote their new Goalkeepers report, which tracks progress on the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Computers/Internet; Humor
KEYWORDS: bsod; microsoft; windows
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To: sagar

I have never understood why there is no dedicated @ key rather than using shift 2


21 posted on 09/22/2017 5:06:46 AM PDT by ops33 (SMSgt, USAF, Retired)
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To: lefty-lie-spy

I’m still using XP every day. It is a lot less annoying. I use others as well too but XP just works.


22 posted on 09/22/2017 5:12:08 AM PDT by fulltlt
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To: nickcarraway

It’s the BSOD that was the problem.


23 posted on 09/22/2017 5:33:46 AM PDT by Paladin2 (No spelchk nor wrong word auto substition on mobile dev. Please be intelligent and deal with it....)
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To: lefty-lie-spy
I don’t even need to login to my locked computer most of the time. It knows me when I approach it and unlocks automatically.

Chuck Norris In The House !

24 posted on 09/22/2017 5:38:26 AM PDT by onona (Please Lord guide my thoughts and actions)
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To: Extremely Extreme Extremist

Yes, please bring back XP.

Control-Alt-Delete has never worked to unfreeze or do anything on any of our computers.

Took me over an hour yesterday to get into mine because of unasked for updates screwing up.

Ya know, I never have a problem with my toaster. It’s worked each and every time for the past 30 years. No problem whatsoever. Push one button and in a few seconds it gives me toast just like it’s supposed to do. Push one button and blam! the tv is on. Turn the key and vroom! the car is ready to take me anywhere. My computer, snort, takes an act of congress to wake up in the mornings and takes as many breaks away from work as congress does.


25 posted on 09/22/2017 6:06:16 AM PDT by bgill (CDC site, "We don't know how people are infected with Ebola.")
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To: txnativegop

I haven’t given him money in over a decade. Apple products only.


26 posted on 09/22/2017 6:18:07 AM PDT by napscoordinator (Trump/Hunter, jr for President/Vice President 2016)
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To: nickcarraway

He should apologize for Windows ME........................


27 posted on 09/22/2017 8:14:12 AM PDT by Red Badger (Road Rage lasts 5 minutes. Road Rash lasts 5 months!.....................)
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To: nickcarraway

“Bill Gates is sorry that he made it so annoying to log in to your computer.”

I dont understand this comment. CNTR Alt DEL is for rebooting your computer not for logging on.


28 posted on 09/22/2017 9:01:43 AM PDT by Brooklyn Attitude (The first step in ending the War on White People, is to recognize it exists.)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom
You seem to have missed the point of my posts.

With a properly complex key sequence required to initiate caps lock, a "convert to lower case" utility would be needed MUCH less often. Caps lock is too easy to hit by mistake.

"Dude"? Good lord.

We don't all use Microsoft Word, dude. Also, we don't all want to waste our time using a "convert to lower case" utility in ANY word processor to fix mistakenly capitalized text that would never have been accidentally capitalized without the miserable caps lock key on the keyboard.

29 posted on 09/22/2017 4:36:27 PM PDT by TChad
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To: Brooklyn Attitude
CNTR Alt DEL is for rebooting your computer not for logging on.

Ctrl-Alt-Del has long been used to increase the security of Windows logons for some Windows setups.

For example: http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/how-require-ctrl-alt-del-logon-windows-10

30 posted on 09/22/2017 4:47:25 PM PDT by TChad
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To: nickcarraway

I prefer for the ctrl-alt-del function to be a key combination. I can see all kinds of trouble if it was just a single key. For example, the cat jumps on the keyboard, and suddenly, the task manager pops up in front of whatever I’m doing on the computer.

What I really dislike is when the computer crashes so hard that I have to hold the power button to force it to shut off or reboot.


31 posted on 09/23/2017 5:52:02 AM PDT by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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To: TChad
I have not seen any "convert to lower case" utilities, but I'm sure they exist, since they would be trivial to write.

In Word, all you have to do is use shift-F3 to toggle between caps, initial cap, or all lowercase. Plus, if you accidently hit the caps lock, many Microsoft programs will automatically turn it off and fix your typing the moment you type two capital letters in a row. It's a bit of a pain if you mean to type in all caps.

I'm not going to complain about Microsoft products, I find them intuitive to use. Apple, on the other hand, I always found user-unfriendly. I'd had an iPad for several months when my son looked at it and saw that I had just about every app on it running. How was I to know that turning off an app on an Apple product isn't as simple as clicking a little X in the corner? It's actually fairly complicated to turn off an app on the iPad--far more complicated IMO than hitting ctrl-alt-del to log in on some systems.

32 posted on 09/23/2017 6:03:27 AM PDT by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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