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Control-Alt-Delete 'was a mistake'

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo

Bill Gates: Control-Alt-Delete 'was a mistake'

Microsoft's co-founder claims that an IBM keyboard designer created the function and wouldn't allow a single button to access the login screen.

Speaking in a broad interview at Harvard over the weekend, Gates said that the control-alt-delete function, which allows users to log in to Windows and access the task manager (you may be most familiar with it as the first step in rebooting), was conceived after an IBM keyboard designer wouldn't give him a single button to perform the same chore.

I feel like I've been living a lie up until this point.

First the recession, now this!!! :mad:

Why is the world so cruel?

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Celly Smunt

Potatoeman wrote: »

It depends what you use it for. It already does not support some games.

Well thats a given, XP wasnt designed for the hardware specs we have today.Also developers arent going to go out of their way to develop games for the minority.

Potatoeman

yoyo wrote: »

It's the security issues that start occurring with no patching will be the worry. And there will be criminals out there looking for security issues in XP and will keep them secret until EOL.
It is a pretty stupid decision for businesses to allow XP machines on the network once EOL is reached. I doubt there will be much issues initially but there's a reason Windows 2000 declined in popularity once it hit EOL and upgrades to XP were necessary.

That is fairly unlikely, good news for Server 2003 users is you do have until 2015 to migrate, if you haven't already..

Nick

You can pay for extended support it just gets expensive. If you are behind a firewall with up to date av and no admin rights for end users it should not be an issue.

who the fug

Gee Bag wrote: »

Windows 8 and Vista were bigger mistakes

What about ME

Bacchus

The real story behind Ctrl-Alt-Delete. It's quite interesting nerdy...

http://mentalfloss.com/article/51674/history-ctrl-alt-delete

Celly Smunt

who the fug wrote: »

What about ME

Lets just never bring up the topic ME ever again.

Potatoeman

Celly Smunt wrote: »

Well thats a given, XP wasnt designed for the hardware specs we have today.Also developers arent going to go out of their way to develop games for the minority.

Many people can afford top spec systems. you can look at the steam user specs on their survey report.

Potatoeman

Celly Smunt wrote: »

Well thats a given, XP wasnt designed for the hardware specs we have today.Also developers arent going to go out of their way to develop games for the minority.

Many people can afford top spec systems. you can look at the steam user specs on their survey report.

who the fug

Celly Smunt wrote: »

Lets just never bring up the topic ME ever again.

But look at this advert what could go wrong

Celly Smunt

Potatoeman wrote: »

Many people can afford top spec systems. you can look at the steam user specs on their survey report.

Yes, but developers cant really afford to make everything XP compatible.

Potatoeman

Celly Smunt wrote: »

Yes, but developers cant really afford to make everything XP compatible.

Its a trade off. I had xp64 bit up until last year. Not enough users using it for certain things even microsoft themselves. Only a few games were not supported though and I eventually made the move this year.

EyeSight

Dodd wrote: »

I fine it hard to beleave it was a mistake

Control-alt-delete was out before windows was and was to restart a PC if it was not responding.
Why would anyone make a PC that has one key among the other keys that would shut down the PC.
You would be bound to shut it down by mistake.

I believe it was original made as a way to test functionality during development. It was never meant to be released and used so much

Also btw. Win 8 is really good, once you get used to the new layout. It is pretty fast too

shruikan2553

Potatoeman wrote: »

What about keyboard layouts. The qwerty design is not optimal. I believe it was designed for typewriters to stop typists jamming the typwritter by type too fast.

I dont know about the typewriter bit but it would make sense. There is another keyboard layout that is based on how often you would be using a letter. Dvorak I think its called.

Hobbes

CruelCoin wrote: »

Can you imagine the amount of tech support calls if you could get at the task manager with one button?

Awww... You make me feel so old.

CTRL-ALT-DEL when it was initially designed rebooted the machine without interrupting the power supply. This was long before windows appeared.

Having it as a single key would have been bloody stupid IMHO.

Jordan 199

Duggy747 wrote: »

Ctrl+Shift+Esc FTW!

I gave that a try

The only time I use Ctrl-Alt-Del is to go into the task manager when a program jams up and is unresponsive.

yoyo

Potatoeman wrote: »

You can pay for extended support it just gets expensive. If you are behind a firewall with up to date av and no admin rights for end users it should not be an issue.

For a year or so yes, but it's so expensive the better option would be to bite the bullet and upgrade. Companies have had plenty of time to plan for this it hasn't just been announced out of the blue.
If XP is really needed for certain programs/hardware offline machines can be kept while the Windows 7 or whatever are used for the day to day.. Still plenty of '95/'98 machines out there running legacy programs supporting older very expensive hardware

Nick

jimgoose

Most platforms have some sort of Vulcan Nerve Pinch, with good reason. Gate's mistake was not just using a button for the login function.

Amirani

Potatoeman wrote: »

What about keyboard layouts. The qwerty design is not optimal. I believe it was designed for typewriters to stop typists jamming the typwritter by type too fast.

Don't think I could hack a non-Qwerty environment at this point. I'd never get to the same typing proficiency on another layout.

Wabbit Ears

I don't see it as a mistake at all, Its a well spaced out sequence of keys that cant easily be done accidentally. This is exactly why the IBM designer used those keys. The same logic applies to logging onto the computer, the key sequence means that the logon does not appear accidentally with one key. Kids/cleaning ladies all over the world imputing passwords numerous times without realising it and locking out accounts!!!

What gates meant to say is he never realised that so many PC's would end up in the hands of tardos who cant perform such a simple sequence.

Knex*

Duggy747 wrote: »

Ctrl+Shift+Esc FTW!

But Alt+F4 is quicker!

Years ago, back when I was in TY, we had a computer class. Broadband at the time was the terribly slow satellite set up.

One day the teacher had us doing some sort of survey/quiz, I think one of those multi page personality assessments that are meant to help you decide what career you want. Anyway, half way though it people were complaining about how slow the internet was and that going from page to page took for ever.

For the laugh I told them Alt+F4 helped to speed up the internet. Queue half the class closing their browser and me rolling around the place laughing.

Teacher didn't quite find it as amusing, oddly.

Capt'n Midnight

The original story that I heard was that Ctrl-Alt-Del was used as it was the only combination not used already as it was reserved for rebooting and stuff.

As for a missing button ?
The original IBM keyboard had 83 keys
Then it was 101 for US keyboards but 102 for European ones ( extra button :cool: )

not to mention all the multimedia keys for volume , play , Fn that have been added since. Anyone remember the Gateway programmable keyboards with lots of extra buttons ?

Bottom line any keyboard manufacturer could have added a button to send the ctrl-alt-del scan code (two bytes 0c 53 ) anytime. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/32788

It's one thing to say the decision was a bad idea. But they didn't address it in the 20 years since NT 3.1 was released , even when they started to sell microsoft brand keyboards .:mad::mad::mad:

Sunglasses Ron

Again related to the Simpsons, does anyone else actually pronounce it "katoral" in the voice in their mind rather than "control". I guess it is because I saw the episode a long time before I had access to a computer :pac:

Sh1tbag OToole

Gee Bag wrote: »

Windows 8 and Vista were bigger mistakes

Don't forget Windows ME

also, Windows 95. As buggy and as much of a pile of crap it was, it gave you a usable graphical interface that still looks somewhat decent today capable of running many programs while using only 8MB of RAM.