- The Washington Times - Thursday, September 26, 2013

Apparently, money really doesn’t buy everything. Even Bill Gates, one of the world’s wealthiest, couldn’t convince a technology engineer to fix one of the seven greatest mysteries of Computer Geek Land — the infamous Ctrol+Alt+Delete command.

It was all a mistake, Mr. Gates said, of the three-key command. Completely unintentional, he said, United Press International reported.

But even with all his powers of persuasion — not to mention powers of the purse — Mr. Gates still couldn’t get it fixed.

“It was a mistake,” Mr. Gates said, in UPI. “We could have had a single button, but the guy who did the IBM keyboard design didn’t want to give us our single button.”

So don’t blame Mr. Gates — blame a guy named David Bradley, who worked as an engineer on the original IBM model computer, UPI said.

Fast-forward to present day, and Windows users are still having to use the three-button command to lock their PCs or run Task Manager. 


SEE ALSO: Microsoft shares drop on $7.2 billion Nokia phone deal


 

• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.

Copyright © 2024 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

Please read our comment policy before commenting.

Click to Read More and View Comments

Click to Hide