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Bill Gates Says He's Sorry About Control-Alt-Delete (qz.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: At the Bloomberg Global Business Forum today, Carlyle Group co-founder and CEO David Rubenstein asked Microsoft founder Bill Gates to account for one of the most baffling questions of the digital era: Why does it take three fingers to lock or log in to a PC, and why did Gates ever think that was a good idea? Grimacing slightly, Gates deflected responsibility for the crtl-alt-delete key command, saying, "clearly, the people involved should have put another key on to make that work." Rubenstein pressed him: does he regret the decision? "You can't go back and change the small things in your life without putting the other things at risk," Gates said. But: "Sure. If I could make one small edit I would make that a single key operation." Gates has made the confession before. In 2013, he blamed IBM for the issue, saying, "The guy who did the IBM keyboard design didn't want to give us our single button."
I'll control-alt-delete you (Weird Al)
I have a LONG list of things that I think Mr. Gates should be embarrassed about regarding Windows. The three finger salute is very, very low on my list.
Blaming IBM eh?
Looks like it's time for another volume of "What Happened".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I thought it was supposed to be a *good* thing to prevent people from accidentally restarting their machines by pressing the wrong button. From that perspective, it's a success.
The fact that windows now adds a whole bunch of other options to that command, like change password, log off, lock the computer, etc, is entirely their fault; there's nothing stopping them from adding *those* commands to another button, say an F10 or something, that allows you those options. So what is wrong with Ctl-alt-del again?
Apologize to poor old Two-Finger down at the bar!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The reason they used that combo in the first place was for compatibility with legacy applications. In legacy Windows, CTRL+ALT+DEL was handled at a low level and could bring up task manager or restart the machine. Applications could not detect the keypress.
When they went to implement multi-user and logins, they realized they needed to ensure applications could not spoof the login screen to trick users into entering their credentials. A malicious application could potentially save and reuse these credentials especially if they were of a DIFFERENT user or an admin user.
What to do? Well if they had the user press a key combination that applications couldn't detect to log in, or even a key combination that would result in a different action if they were already logged in, a fake application would not be able to detect this keypress and spoof the actual login screen. Guess what, an existing key combination fit this criteria. They could have invented a new combination, of course, but chances are a legacy application might use this combination as a hotkey, and reserving it for login user would break that application.
so where was this single NMI button supposed to go - right next to the enter key I suppose.
Besides, it's not as if c-a-d gets my PC's immediate attention anyway, I can sometimes wait 10 minutes after I hit it, unless I get impatient and hit the power button. If the machine is doing OK then Billy could have picked any key to get its attention, when things go wrong the Non-Maskability of the interrupt doesn't seem to do the trick reliably
Nullius in verba
I forgot to mention... I think the key combo stretches all the way back to MS-DOS, where CTRL+ALT+DEL would instantly reboot. I assume 16-bit Windows trapped this combination first of all so DOS wouldn't intercept it and reboot right away, and also so they could anticipate the user was having problems and offer to run Task Manager. But the key combo was first declared in DOS as a key press that could be used to soft reset the machine, but would not be pressed accidentally. CTRL+ALT+DEL makes perfect sense for that scenario. Then it just evolved organically.
"Sure. If I could make one small edit I would make that a single key operation."
On an Apple ][ we had a reset key. However it only would work in conjunction with the CTRL key.
Why? So you can not hit it by accident and cause a reboot.
Basically every Workstation, Mini Computer, uses a 2 or 3 key combo which REQUIRES BOTH HANDS, so it can not be triggered by accident.
Is ctrl/alt/del a good combo? No idea, never cared.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Er, hitting the windows key while gaming would crash or lock up the system. Left that part out.
What's wrong with Alt-F4? I use it all the time.
The IBM PC was designed by observing the market leader (the Apple II with a Microsoft CP/M card) and copying all the good stuff while trying to avoid its problems. One of the problems of the Apple II was that reset was a simple key close to the return key. So it wasn't rare for you to type in stuff all night only to watch it all vanish due to a slightly misplaced finger. A popular add-on product for the Apple II was a little plastic cap for the reset key that you had to lift before you could press it. IBM selected three keys that were far enough apart than nobody would type by accident.
I thought the point of Ctrl-Alt-Del was that it generated a system-level interrupt that no other program would be allowed to supercede (I'm getting the exact terminology wrong here probably, but the point is), and only the operating system would be get a user to put in a password on the familiar login screen.
Otherwise, malicious or other programs might be able to spoof the login screen and capture a users credentials.
Good thinking, but it just led to some convoluted keyboard contortions as a result.
Linux has kernel panics too.
It would simply be "F*CK" right next to escape.
I don't read AC
back in my dos/windows days (long ago) i didnt mind ctrl-alt-delete at all, frankly dont see why people make a big deal of it.
We had an instance where one of our customers only had one hand. Pretty difficult to do the three finger salute with one hand. They were resorting to putting things in their mouth to get the third key. I bought a cheap USB keyboard, took out the PCB, figured out what to short out to get CTRL-ALT-DEL, and put it in a box with a single button. Problem solved.
So the key sequence that halts everything and restarts no matter what should be EASY to hit accidentally?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Bill, your wish has almost come true anyway.
Ezekiel 23:20
ummmm I like Cntrl-alt-delete sequence. It is a system interrupt, the 3 key combination means you are not likely to accidentally hit it. It isn't a particularly onerous combination and the combo harkens back to when it used to be a reboot (definitely something you don't want to accidentally do).
Its pretty clear from the abstract that they're *not* talking about Ctrl-Alt-Del as the sequence for resetting the computer. Rather, they're talking about Ctrl-Alt-Del as the non-app-trappable sequence for triggering certain behaviors in Windows NT (login prompt, etc.). In that context, a single button actually would have been fine.
Of course this is Slashdot, so everyone is ignoring that and just skipping to assuming it was the former :-)
Y'all are missing out on something. There is a SysRq key, generally remembered for... actually, it isn't remembered much at all. BUT, the purpose was to be an intentional out-of-the-way key that did System Requests. AKA, things like reboots and shutdowns.
It has very rarely been used by anyone or anything at all, because neither Microsoft nor IBM ever got around to figuring out why they put this odd key on the keyboard in the first place. It might do something if you have some antiquated KVM switch (keyboard, video, monitor) but, the whole reason for the thing is CTRL-ALT-DEL. It's supposed to do that. It just doesn't.
Meanwhile, they added Windows and Menu keys that almost no one actually knows how to use. They are very modestly useful in bizarre emergencies but, mostly, they serve to get in the way.
Someone ask Gates about the Windows and Menu keys, and what the Caps Lock is even doing on a modern keyboard. HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU NEED TO SHOUT AT PEOPLE IF YOU'RE NOT STILL USING AOL? ...you are welcome on my lawn if you bring a beer.
WIN+L will do that just fine.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
>"Linux has kernel panics too."
While that is true, it has happened to me only a few times in dozens of years. From my observations, it was perhaps 1% of what MS-Windows users were experiencing.
In any case, the problem with A-C-D to reboot was not a problem under MS-DOS, or even MS-Windows until MS decided to use it to "log on" in "multiuser" mode, which was really quite stupid. No other multi-user system required such an arcane and ridiculous key sequence for a login. Not only was in inconvenient, it was EXTREMELY counter-intuitive after having been a no-no key combination that would, in essence, reboot (often crash) the machine in all prior versions.
I thought it was humorous when Linux systems mapped A-C-D to the inittab to actually properly shut down and then restart the computer. And then, later, have XWindows intercept (capture) A-C-D and offer a nice menu instead (while in X).
First off Bill Gates didn't invent crtl-alt-delete. That honor goes to David Bradley of the original IBM PC design team. The primary use of which is to perform a warm-boot of DOS, as that particular combination is hardwired into the IBM PC BIOS. In Windows NT it caused the NT login screen to be displayed. Given the quality of security in WinNT it was the only way to be sure you weren't running a fake login screen.
"I would make that a single key operation."
Wrong answer, Bill.
By making it a little hard to do you reduce the chances of it accidentally being done. Control-Alt-Delete is a good choice. Adding a single function key to the keyboard just for that would be a VERY BAD choice as it would waste space and make errors more likely.
(Remember, space is infinite so don't waste it.)
You want another? Why is Alt-F4 still available to shut down programs and log off Windows. It's been there since Windows 1.0. Maybe then it made sense, but why now?
I use Alt-F4 all the time. If you're annoyed that it's still in windows you'll be really pissed off if you ever use a Linux desktop, they all seem to use it as well. Inertia, it's what's for dinner.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
While that is true, it has happened to me only a few times in dozens of years. From my observations, it was perhaps 1% of what MS-Windows users were experiencing.
Try doing the same stuff people do in Windows on Linux, like hardcore gaming. Most BSODs are failure of the graphics driver (typically IRQL_something_or_other) and most of them happen when stressing it.
Back in the Windows 3.x days, and also in the Windows 9x days, windows stability was embarrassing. In fact, Windows NT 4 was embarrassingly unstable as well, in a way that 3.51 was not. However, it also supported USB and disks larger than 2GB, so people had little choice but to "upgrade". But they merged memory spaces in NT4 that were separate in 3.51 in the name of multimedia performance, and the rest is history.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Linux panics less often than Windows stops in part because Linux kernel developers maintain their own drivers. It's traditional for Linux-friendly peripheral makers to contribute their kernel-mode drivers upstream. Microsoft, on the other hand, delegates most driver development to hardware makers, who are obligated to pay a code signing CA trusted by Microsoft but aren't obligated to provide source code to Microsoft. This means defective drivers end up in widespread use, and driver defects are the single biggest cause of stops on Windows. The drawback here is that desktop Linux gets less attention from hardware makers, particularly those who are more possessive about their trade secrets, than Windows.
IMHO it wasn't a mistake.
On the Apple ][ there was a RESET button.
On the Apple ][+ it was changed to CTRL-RESET because it was too easy to _accidentally_ trigger a single button.
With the Apple //e a third button was added: CTRL-Open Apple-Reset for a built-in ROM test.
Of all the "mistakes" with Windows, Bill picks this one???? And not the retarded 8.3 filenames when an Apple ][ had _30_ character filenames WITH spaces in then!
---
"Get off my LAN" -- grumpy old programmer
Ah yes ... The Windows Weanie's version of "but her emails!". They are almost always an indication of faulty hardware in any stable kernel release. There is no equality to be found no matter how hard you try.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Programs cannot (could not?)trap ctrl-alt-delete.
That means that it is not possible to have a rogue program get at people's passwords. If people knew only to type their password after pressing those keys.
Then, in Windows 8, they gave up on it.
(The password that is stored is hashed. And should have been salted.)
Every time I want to log into my multimedia box while eating a sandwich.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
NT didn't support USB. I recall having so many issues with Windows 95 and when I finally installed NT4 everything suddenly worked like it was supposed to.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The apology was for the choice to capture the historical "Reboot" key sequence and re-purpose it for logon. This was particularly annoying when we still had a mix of OSes in the workplace, and people got into the habit of walking up to any unknown "PC" and the first thing they do is give the 3-finger salute, rebooting the computer if it was running something other than the latest Microsoft product.
Almost as big a sin against computing as the 1994 introduction of the "Windows Key".
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
That sounds suspiciously like something a retired time traveller would say...
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Jesus! We don't need another key on our keyboards. It's already Bill's fault that we have 105 key keyboards instead of 101 key keyboards. He just HAD to have that silly windows key. And what was it good for? Throwing you out of your FPS game when you accidentally pressed it.
I suppose Bill would want a separate key for login, and then one to logout, and then one to open the control panel, one for Internet Explorer, one for email, etc...
We already had keyboards with all that crap on it - I'll stick with the barebones keyboard thank you.
Ctrl+Alt+Delete is a combination used for historical reasons.
It is the most secure way of doing a login because it triggered an "interrupt" in the system, like a signal that could not be caught by the program running in the foreground. So programs couldn't fake the login screen.
But it was an interrupt--and one that took three keys--because it was used in the old days to reboot a system with a hung program. You wouldn't WANT a computer to reboot when you pressed one key, because then a random mistaken keypress could lose hours of work. (This was before autosave, remember.)
The common way of doing this today on linux is still what, Alt+Sysrq+b? Or for killing X, Ctrl+Alt+Backspace? They're still a 3-key combinations.
It's been thirty+ years and we should just change system or keyboard designs, but it wasn't a mistake.
Real lawyers write in C++
I have had to deal with a reset button above the enter key on apple II+. Something also existed on a TRS 80 models. No a single button is a disaster. Maybe perhaps control reset like later apple II models or something. I have had problems with my cat turning my laptops airplane mode until I toggle it in bios.
The logsim hack predated the existence of Microsoft by decades. Gates displays his ignorance of his own products and lack of care for security along with his growing dementia.
You want another? Why is Alt-F4 still available to shut down programs and log off Windows.
Because keyboard shortcuts are a good thing to have. Sure, I could use the mouse to close a program. I could use the mouse for a lot of the things I use the keyboard for, but it would be much less efficient.
Linux implementations also decided to implement similar ctrl-alt-delete functionality. The Amiga had the similar ctrl-Amiga-Amiga. It's easy enough to remember either verbally (has a certain rhythm to is that) or mechanically (can do it without looking). This wouldn't have happened if it was objectively terrible.
Why is it a problem to use to do a system thing which you normally only do once in a while. Glad IBM didn't want to add a special key for that, because otherwise I would also like a special key for copy, paste, select all, and what more functions I need to pres multiple keys for. Wait... then my whole desk would be one giant keyboard..
One of the things about ctrl-alt-del is that you are unlikely to press it accidentally (apart from issues mentioned). A single key would be a very serious mistake.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Dozens of years. So, minimum of 24 years.
Few... Call few three, but we can say up to five is a few. More than that and your at a half dozen.
Linux is also only like 25 years old, maybe 26.
You're saying that you've used Linux since pretty much day one and only had a kernel panic up to five times?
I love me some Linux and have used it for quite a while, with a break in the middle for a different OS. Much of my computer history was with Unix. I am skeptical of your claim. I haven't seen a kernel panic in quite a while, but I've surely seen more than a few of them. If you've only seen a few of them, in at least 24 years, you're either not using Linux or you're a wizard.
Sheesh! ;-)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Oh, the user you're responding to demonstrates they are unknowledgable in most areas, with alarming frequency. I'm pretty sure they are actually a Windows user who is trying to give Linux a bad name. As absurd as that sounds, it seems the most probable reason. I'm a bit surprised they didn't try to drag politics into it.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This awkward moment comes to mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?... I am sure Bill wanted to strangle that guy.
My old XT clone had a Reset button on the numeric keypad. It only actually did a reset with conjunction with the Ctrl key. I never did get to verify; however, I suspect that it sent the SysReq keycode and was merely intercepted by that particular version of the Phoenix BIOS.
The original Apple ][ had a single-key "Reset" key, right about where the "Esc" key would be.
Users hated it.
Some Users hated it SO much, they took to putting an O-Ring under the Reset Key, so it was hard to push.
Apple got the hint, and rev'ed the Keyboard to require the Ctrl Key to be pressed in unison with the Reset (Crtrl-Reset). This was even made more specific when the "Open Apple/Solid Apple" Keys were introduced. Ctrl-Reset did a "Soft" Reset, and Ctrl-Open Apple-Reset did essentially a Power-On Reset.
Moral of the Story: If Gates hadn't invented Ctrl-Alt-Delete, Angry DOS/Windows users WOULD have!
From: https://www.folklore.org/Story...
I added a feature that allowed the user to kill the current application if it was hung up, by monitoring for a specific key combination during the vertical blanking interrupt handler.
I knew that I had to pick a very rare key combination, because you didn't want users killing their applications accidentally. I decided on shift-command-option-period, four keys held down at once, which I thought would be pretty hard to stumble into accidentally. But I was surprised when I got a call from Jeff Harbers at Microsoft.
"Hey, I like that abort feature that you just added, but you're going to have to change the key combination, because we're using that in Microsoft Word.", Jeff told me. Microsoft Word was very complex, and it possessed an enormous range of keyboard shortcuts, way too many, as far as I was concerned.
"OK, suggest something for me to change it to and I'll consider it," I told Jeff.
Jeff didn't have anything specific in mind, so he told me that he would get back to me soon. I had to laugh when he called me back the next day, and told me that he wanted to withdraw his request and that I should keep shift-command-option-period as the abort sequence.
"OK, that sounds good to me, " I told him. "But why the change? Doesn't it still conflict with Word?"
"We'll change Word in the next release not to use it. The problem was that we couldn't find a safe sequence - I guess we're already using every key combination!"
He effected a bored affect.
My work machine with Win95 did have a single key reboot. It was called the "any" key, and whenever pressed, it did cause a reboot.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
The Apple ][ had a single key reset right up at the top of the keyboard. It was WAY too easy to accidentally press and could seriously screw things up if you were working with floppies.
Ctrl-Alt-Del was an improvement.
Now if we could just get him to apologize for Windows 98, ME, and 10...
>>Gates ... blamed IBM for the issue, saying, "The guy who did the IBM keyboard design didn't want to give us our single button."
That's BS. Microsoft received a dedicated "Windows" button, that is on EVERY PC since then.
No other company got that immense advantage !
aaaaaaa
No, it predates MS-DOS, too--it worked on the diskless machines which could at most be attached to a cassette for storage.
hawk
actually it makes perfect sense. ACD invokes the 'windows security' UI which is a system-wide interrupt. they needed a key combination that wasn't already used by any existing application (including DOS apps), and ACD fits the bill perfectly - because existing real-mode DOS apps would not have been written to expect it.
I think his point is that the combination itself doesn't make much sense nowadays, not that having a hotkey for that is bad. All of the other window management button combinations are either WinKey+something, or are semi-standardized combos like Ctrl-W.
>"You're saying that you've used Linux since pretty much day one and only had a kernel panic up to five times?"
I have been using Linux a very long time, including since the early days. It was probably an exaggeration of being just a few panics, especially back in the first few years. I used various Unix for many years prior, also, and I might have been lumping some of that in too.
I know I haven't seen one in several years.
One interesting tidbit- I am not talking just one Linux machine, but more like 200- server, desktop, home, work, laptop, you name it :)
Maybe. But generally Ctrl-Q and Alt-F4 will both work, rather than only Alt-F4. There's not really any downside to keeping Alt-F4, which in any case is enough of a de facto standard that it works in Linux GUIs. You might make an argument for freeing it up for some other function, but operating systems and other software out there that already have it still will and not everyone will implement the change right away, so you'll wind up with the fun situation where you're not sure whether pressing Alt-F4 will perform OTHER FUNCTION or quit the program, or have to check all the time, or just avoid using it so it might as well not be there for OTHER FUNCTION.
Revisionism. They created 3 keys together to keep people from issuing the command by mistake.
The three finger salute is not complex and not a difficult thing to do.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Lolz at non-mac users.