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            Now He Tells Us

            
               Now He
Tells Us
            

            So we
were reading the Washington Post on Wednesday--online, of course--when
we came across a report of a speech by Bill Gates at Cambridge University.
We're always interested in what Bill Gates has to say because--well, obviously.
You would be too, would you not? Anyway, this speech was especially interesting
to us. According to the Post :

            The computer genius
sketched out his rosy vision of a future world of technology-loving households
[... yeah, yeah ...] and schools in which computers enhance the learning
process [... sure, buddy ...]. ... But he conceded that sometimes the
old ways are still the best. He prefers magazines the way they come in the
mail , he confessed, and he cannot read anything longer on his computer
screen than a three-page memo.

            Whoa. These words came as
quite a shock to those of us who have spent the past year and a half trying to
develop, on behalf of the Microsoft Corp., a magazine whose distinguishing
characteristic is that it does not come in the mail. Although we
disagree with Mr. Gates about the best way to read magazines, we do agree that
sometimes the old way is still the best. For example, we generally prefer
typewriters to Microsoft Word, and we find that our sturdy abacus crashes less
often than Excel.

            Lesser
online magazines might find it discouraging to learn that their own proprietor
prefers magazines that come in the mail. And there were tears, of course, even
at Slate--mainly from the software developers, a notoriously sensitive lot. But
ultimately we at Slate invoked the true Microsoft spirit and took this as a
challenge. A two-pronged challenge, actually. The first challenge was how to
prevent Bill Gates from finding out that his company publishes an online
magazine. The second challenge was to misrepresent (or "spin," to use the
vernacular) his remarks to the general public.

            The second part is easy. The Washington 
               Post ,
as is so often the case with the media, misquoted Mr. Gates' speech. What he
actually said was that he prefers magazines that come in e-mail , and he
reads them on his specially designed computer screen that can display a
three-page memo. He was referring, of course, to Slate's free weekly e-mail
delivery. (Click here to subscribe.)

            Part 1 is tougher. Although
Slate is a tiny division of a large company, it is frequently mentioned in the
press, and its Microsoft connection is often noted. But we have assigned a
junior staff member to lurk near the Gates family mailbox and, when no one is
looking, to go through the contents and Magic Marker out all references to the
fact that Slate is owned by Microsoft.

            That'll
teach him to get his magazines by mail.

            

               Fourplay
            

            If you've installed Internet
Explorer 4.0, the new version of Microsoft's browser, you might like to take a
peek at our new Table of Contents, designed especially to take advantage of the
advances in Internet Explorer 4.0. Among other features, it allows even the
smallest standard computer screen to display the entire contents of an issue of
Slate without scrolling. Make sure that you're running Internet Explorer 4.0,
then click here to take a
look. This is still a "beta," meaning that we're still tinkering with it, but
we think it's pretty close. If you run into any problems, e-mail [email protected].

            And if
you haven't yet installed Internet Explorer 4.0, you can get a free download by
clicking here. Be
forewarned that the download takes quite a while via modem. You can also order
a CD. Or you can while away the time reading magazines on paper.

            

               --Michael Kinsley