The history of the “Three Finger Salute”

Bradley worked on everything from writing input/output programs to troubleshooting wire-wrap boards. Five months into the project, he created ctrl+alt+del. The task was just another item to tick off his to-do list. “It was five minutes, 10 minutes of activity, and then I moved on to the next of the 100 things that needed to get done,” he says. Bradley chose the keys by location—with the del key across the keyboard from the other two, it seemed unlikely that all three would be accidentally pressed at the same time. Bradley never intended to make the shortcut available to customers, nor did he expect it to enter the pop lexicon. It was meant for him and his fellow coders, for whom every second counted.

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Computing has changed in 50 years

A very interesting article in Ars Technica today – a look back at 50 years ago to the time when IBM created the mainframe that helped send man to the moon. It’s incredible how things have changed since then, and almost unimagineable what the next 50 years will bring us. (more…)