"See what the omission of four keystrokes can do?" he said.
But like it or not, Fahlman has become famous for three keystrokes.
Four keystrokes and the green becomes purple, the blue background fades to the azure of a summer sky.
You've made 100 million keystrokes and moved the computer mouse more than 100 miles to show how these simple programs could, in fact, develop into complex patterns.
He makes charts — a personal specialty — of the third of a million e-mails he has sent since 1989; of his 100 million keystrokes (fully 7 percent are backspaces!).
Conducting experiments on a computer, where he says he has logged 100 million keystrokes in the last 10 years, Mr. Wolfram wrote simple programs that generated odd and intricate patterns to test his ideas about complexity.
As it turns out, the only reliable way to escape from a chat room is to use the on-screen Exit Chat button, which you can reach with three keystrokes.
Not surprisingly, the result is self-indulgent in places: Mr Wolfram lists every model of computer and programming language he has used since childhood, and estimates that while writing the book, he typed 100 million keystrokes and moved his computer mouse more than 100 miles.None of which bodes well for the book's content.
This explanation does not seem to tally with the claims of some Malaysian officials, however, that the change in direction was the result of "seven or eight keystrokes into a computer on a knee-high pedestal between the captain and the first officer".
Look at all the paper and trees, he said, that could have been saved if people had not had to write or type out those slashes on paper over the years -- not to mention the human labor and time spent typing those two keystrokes countless millions of times in browser address boxes.
