Microsoft chairman and co-founder Bill Gates acknowledged the "CTRL-ALT-DEL" means of logging into your Windows PC was a mistake but claims that its original inception was done with the best of intentions.
According to PC World, Gates interviewed at Harvard University last week where he confessed that the awkward three-finger combination was actually implemented for security purposes.
"Basically because when you turn your computer on, you're going to see some screens and eventually type your password in, you want to have something you do with the keyboard that is signaling to a very low level of the software-actually hard-coded in the hardware-that it really is bringing in the operating system you expect," Gates said. "Instead of just a funny piece of software that puts up a screen that looks like your login screen and listens to your password and is able to do that."
Gates, recently crowned Forbes' richest man in the world went on to explain how the keyboard got involved in the mix.
"So we could have had a single button, but the guy that wanted to do the IBM keyboard design didn't want to give us our single button, and so we programmed at a low level... it was a mistake."
With Gates thinking the button configuration was a mistake, many may wonder why, so many years later, is it still a stable in Windows 8. Well the answer, according to PC World, is likely that the function has become so ingrained in user's heads that it is too recognizable to get rid of at this point.
Gates' hour-long interview covered a wide range of topics including his early days at Microsoft and his various charity organizations. After stepping down as Microsoft's chief executive in 2000, Gates and his wife Melinda began the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.