The Guy Responsible For Ctrl-Alt-Del

Gannett News is running a story about David Bradley, the IBM engineer who, in 1980, coined Ctrl-Alt-Del. Interestingly, he meant for it to remain a developer-only tool, not something for end users, and certainly not to have Windows users change their passwords or logoff. He also says he chose those keys specifically as it's not a key sequence that can be struck by accident.

Comments

Wow, this is really bad article....

[malakai]

It was not a memorable event," said Bradley, a longtime IBM employee, speaking of that day in 1980 or '81 when he discovered control-alt-delete.
...

He's much too modest. Would Alexander Fleming have said, "It wasn't a memorable event," when he discovered penicillin? Would Albert Einstein have said, "I really can't recall when I discovered E=MC squared?"

uh huh...

Bradley chose the control and alt keys because he needed two shift keys to make the operation work, and he chose the delete key because it was on the opposite side of the keyboard. He didn't want people to hit control-alt-delete by accident.

It's more complicated than that, of course, but most people don't have a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Purdue University, as Bradley does

oh please. He picked a key sequence that's difficult to accidentally set off. So what? It could have been shift-esc-break. If this is what a Ph.D. in electrical engineering is good for, I'm glad I don't have mine.

And the reason MS used it for login in NT 3.1 was for security. It negated the possibility of a impersonation client that displayed an image which looked like the NT 3.1 login, but just stole Passwords instead. If such a client was written to DOS or Windows it would simple reboot. So it was a sanity check, at the time.

exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

Bradley says the "strength of the country" is at stake because relatively few students go into science or technology

Why should they when engineers can't find jobs, salesmen are making 6 figures and MBAs are stealing all the money.

Re:Er, that's a bit much....

[jason0000042]

The author's comparing reseting a dead Windows computer with penicillin. Isn't penicillin used on unwanted infestations of bacteria? Not that far off, if you ask me.

But CTRL-ALT-DELETE wasn't discovered, as the article states. It was developed. Bradley made it up. Comparing it to the discovery of penicillin is like saying Tolkien discovered the lord of the rings.