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A comment on Bill Gates: Ctrl+Alt+Del was a mistake (2013). Parent comment

Re:Bill Gates: Ctrl+Alt+Del was a mistake (2013) by efaref on Saturday August 01, 2015 @09:32AM (#9986963)
Indeed, it was an important security feature. I think Bill is just saying that they should've got PC manfacturers to add a "Log On" key to the keyboard which they could've caught in the OS in the same way as Ctrl+Alt+Del.

I think the only other key that has this low-level trap feature is SysRq (usually Alt+PrintScreen), which, of course, Linux uses for [Magic SysRq](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key).

Now that I think of it, "Press 'System Request' to log on" has a nice ring to it. A shame it was it in the shifted position on IBM PC keyboards.

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Re:Bill Gates: Ctrl+Alt+Del was a mistake (2013) by cnvogel on Saturday August 01, 2015 @09:59AM (#9987039)
There's no special "low level feature" when your keyboard hangs off a serial bus (as did pm keyboards from the start. XT, AT, PS/2, USB...) As far as I know also C-A-Del was just the default in the original bios keyboard handler to trigger a quick reboot.

Windows, for example, has a (by default disabled) feature to trigger a kernel panic on Ctrl+Scroll lock. Also purely software based and just as arbitrary in its choice of keys. And also very useful to recover from an otherwise stuck system.

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Re:Bill Gates: Ctrl+Alt+Del was a mistake (2013) by dalke on Saturday August 01, 2015 @11:23AM (#9987346)
(As an aside, why do you say "Bill" instead of "Gates", or "BillG" as I believe Microsoft employees refer to him?)

Yes, he said that. If he really believed it then why didn't the Microsoft Natural keyboard, which added the Windows logo keys and the menu key, also add a special "login" button?

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