Gates: They Didn't Lay A Glove On Me

NEW YORK: Following his Beltway bruising, Bill Gates told a few hundred folks gathered at the New York Public Library this afternoon that he thought yesterday's antitrust hearing was "kind of fun." During a wide-ranging interview with Charlie Rose, Gates was relaxed and expansive, not once losing his famous temper and hardly jiggling his legs at all.

"So your reaction is, you enjoyed it?" Rose asked, referring to yesterday's pile on. "Uh, yes," replied the Microsoft ur-CEO. "You came away unscathed?" Rose asked. Gates: "I feel unscathed." And so on.

Little new ground was broken on the antitrust front, though Gates sounds like he believes less and less in the online-content side of Microsoft's business. He repeated the theme that no-one has figured out how to make money online yet, and expressed doubt about Slate's plan this week to support itself through paid subscriptions. "I love Slate but everyone who's going to subscriptions has had a very tough time," he observed.

Best moment: Gates describing his experience as a high school senate page in Washington, when he "made a lot of money" by selling "Vote for Eagleton" campaign buttons. "I cornered the market on them," he recalled. His first brush with monopoly , asked Rose? "I got it out of my system early," Gates said quickly.