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The Guy Responsible For Ctrl-Alt-Del

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the three-finger-salute dept.

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.

3 of 867 comments (clear)

  1. in honouration... by smurphette · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I three-finger salute you!

  2. Contrary to Popular Belief by pete-classic · · Score: 2, Redundant

    David Bradley created this key sequence.

    Bill Gates merely made it famous.

    -Peter

  3. Re:Er, that's a bit much.... by Theodore+Logan · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Well, with Pi being proved as infinite and non-repeating, then Lord of the Rings was actually sitting there encoded in Pi forever and would have been sitting there un-discovered had it not been for Tolkien finding it.

    Nope. A number which contains every k-digit string equally often (in the asymptotic sense) is said to be normal. Whether or not pi is normal is not known (although most mathematicians suspect that to be the case). Thus it is not certain that pi contains LotR.

    But even if it was known that pi was normal, in what sense could Tolkien be said to have found LotR in pi? Presumably, he could not provide us with the offset. And thus he would only know that it was in there somewhere, but not having found it anymore than anybody else.

    Silly remark, of course. But your post was just as silly, so I would assume it to be warranted.

    --

    "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok