SLATE tosses its cookies.
Slate
Tosses Its Cookies
One can lead a happy and
fulfilling life, and even use the Internet contentedly, without understanding
"cookies." So if you don't know what "cookies" are--in the computer sense--go
in peace and consider yourself fortunate. But if you have ventured into the
wonderful world of cookies, you may be one of those folks who is alarmed about
them. This is completely unnecessary. Cookies are merely special messages a Web
site's computer sends to your computer when you drop by to visit--for example,
"Have a nice day," or, "End child abuse now," or, "Wipe out this person's hard
drive on his next birthday," or, "Psst ... hey, buddy. Yeah, you with the
pathetic 486 chip and the broken CD-ROM. Mr. G says there's an extra 8 megs of
memory for you if you crash when she tries to install Netscape." All perfectly
innocent.
Nevertheless, a few cookie
paranoiacs have set their browsers to alert them when a cookie is heading their
way. And some of them have complained that this notice pops up a lot when
they're reading Slate. Slate actually uses very few cookies. For example, we
tell your browser to remember the date of your visit. When you come back the
next time, your computer sends that date back to ours. If it's still the same
day, we don't feed you the cover again but take you straight to the Table of
Contents. Similarly, we use cookies to remember whether you prefer your
contents listed by page number or by date of posting, and to remember which
entry in a "Dispatch" or "Dialogue" you last read. All perfectly innocent.
But we
did investigate these complaints, and it turned out that our server computers
were sending jars and jars of cookies we didn't need. To emphasize: This was
information from us going into your computer, not information
from you going into ours. And it really was harmless stuff. Nevertheless, we
have turned off these superfluous cookies. If you don't believe us, or if that
doesn't satisfy you, your browser can screen or block all cookies. On Microsoft
Internet Explorer, just click on "View," then "Options," and choose the
"Advanced" tab. Of course, is Microsoft really alerting you to all incoming
cookies--or only to other people's cookies? We merely ask.
Fore!
That sense of excitement in
the air ... the soaring stock market ... the summer weather that has lasted
beyond its normal term ... the sudden improvement in scansion and rhyme in
American poetry: These welcome developments can have only two possible
explanations. One is El Niño, the fashionable weather trend that, as David
Plotz explains in this week's "Assessment,"
explains everything. The other explanation is the imminent arrival of IE4, the
fourth generation of Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web-browser software. Slate,
of course, is determined to bring the same degree of objectivity and hype
resistance to this event that we legendarily brought to our coverage of the
birth of Jesus some 2,000 years ago--an occasion the release of IE4, as it
happens, closely resembles.
Click
here to
download IE4. (And, what the heck, click here to download Netscape's fourth-generation browser.) Slate is
already adding features to take advantage of IE4's enormous power, beauty, and
sophistication. For example, if you have IE4 installed, when you click on an
author's name a short bio pops up (instead of the click taking you to the bio
at the bottom of the page). Not just that, but ... well, yes, just that for the
moment. But there's lots more coming. Just so you're prepared.
--Michael Kinsley
