Ctrl-Alt-Del Inventor To Retire From IBM

wherley writes "AP reports that IBM'er David Bradley, who came up with the (in)famous Ctrl-Alt-Delete key combination, is retiring. The article mentions: 'At a 20-year celebration for the IBM PC, Bradley was on a panel with Microsoft founder Bill Gates and other tech icons. The discussion turned to the keys. 'I may have invented it, but Bill made it famous,' Bradley said. Gates didn't laugh. The key combination also is used when software, such as Microsoft's Windows operating system, fails'." We featured a story on Bradley a few months back.

Comments

Salute!

[Bombcar]

Creator of the Three-Finger-Salute, we salute thee!

(Anyone else get bit by the Linux will reboot with CRTL-ALT-DEL, but Win NT 4-XP will ask for Logon? I've rebooted machines on KVM switches by accident many a time, especially if I can't remap the salute like I usually do!)

Re:Salute!

[shadowmas]

just guessing here but maybe its bcuz non of the existing software at the time used these key combination as a hotkey. so it wouldnt break any existing application.

State of computing

[Lord_Dweomer]

"Bradley was on a panel with Microsoft founder Bill Gates and other tech icons. The discussion turned to the keys. 'I may have invented it, but Bill made it famous,' Bradley said. Gates didn't laugh."

And thus sums up the state of computing today.

XP's killed the glory...

[Rallion]

On your typical XP install the salute just brigs up the task manager. Nothing more, nothing less. Doesn't even halt (or even take precedence over, as far as I can tell) other processes.

I take issue with that, really. I need something a bit more forceful when the program I write does NOT do what it's supposed to.

Re:if only it always worked

[tankdilla]

I hate computers that don't have a reset button and pressing the power button doesn't always turn the computer off. So that when it's really stuck like that, and ctrl-alt-del doesn't work, you gotta pull the plug. I'd get really mad, it almost became personal, as if the computer was saying "You can't restart until I'm good and ready." Thank goodness for the reset button, for saving the effort of reaching behind the computer.

Re:Why only that combination?

[a.koepke]

CTRL+SHIFT+DEL I can easily put my finger between the CTRL and Shift Key, pressing down both at the same time. Now say I accidently do that when using CTRL-DEL to do a Cut operation. Ooops I just reset my computer.

Re:if only it always worked

[Micro$will]

What's even better is a misbehaving laptop; pull the plug, then flip it over and yank the battery.

Re:NT used it for logging on.

[addaon]

It is not a hardware signal. It is a software interrupt, an exception.

Smart for DOS, stupid for Windows

[Spoing]

The first x86 computer I owned -- an 8086 lugable -- had a keyboard that linked directly to the CPU and no virtualization hardware. Pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL was handy on that system, and over time moving on to 286s, and 386s it still had a function till both the hardware and the operating systems started to trap it. At that point, CTRL-ALT-DEL stopped being a reliable override and started to become a function of software.

When Windows NT came out, touting that it supported MIPS and Alpha processors, the system boards for those chips did not have even a hint of this original hardware design. I thought that it was reasonable to drop support for that keyboard combination entirely on the software side, and special case trap it for any of the remaining hardware under x86. Drop it as a historic oddity and move on.

Instead, it was retained as a "security" feature in the NT line for logging in to a machine and locking the machine as if there were something special about pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL on all hardware -- if the keyboard even had those keys or they mapped to anything resembling the hardware on Windows NT came out, touting that it supported MIPS and Alpha processors, the system boards for those chips did not have even a hint of this original hardware design. I thought that it was reasonable to drop support for that entirely on the software side, and special case trap it for any of the remaining hardware under x86.an x86!

This alone was a big red flag to me that Microsoft didn't get it. Add to it the heavy x86 virtualization used on the other hardware and it was clear MS wasn't entirely serious about portability let alone real security.

With that, can anyone give a good reason to keep CTRL-ALT-DEL around for any function except as an old-time legacy habit for DOS/Windows users? Is there a technical reason why that combo is more valuable? I can't think of one...

Great quote at the bottom

[The Fun Guy]

Down at the bottom of TFA is a quote from Bradley about what exactly led to the PC hardware revolution, i.e. cheap, interoperable, expandable hardware. First was IBM's decision to outsource development of the OS (Microsoft) and CPU (Intel) [giving them expertise which they later used to markey directly to clone vendors].
Bradley: "Second, we made it an open system. We published a user manual that made it easy for other people to develop software."

The parallels with the prospects for a PC software revolution are obvious.

Another quote (by Grove): "It's hard 20 years later to realize how drastic a departure this was from the computer industry's standard practices. Computer companies at that time tended to base everything on differentiation. My software will run only on my platform. The thinking was, 'If I don't differentiate, I'm just in a commodity business.' ... if IBM senior management had fully understood what it was unleashing in 1981, I don't think it would have done this.""

I think Microsoft realizes exactly what happened with IBM... they lost control of the PC hardware business, but the open platform they originated blossomed in a hundred creative directions. MS has no intention of losing control of the PC OS business.