The Techie in Chief

They will soon own the net

2006 revenues: $44.2 billion
Time Warner is the largest media conglomerate in the world, with holdings including: CNN, the CW (a joint venture with CBS), HBO, Cinemax, Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT, America Online, MapQuest, Moviefone, Netscape, Warner Bros. Pictures, Castle Rock, and New Line Cinema, over 150 magazines such as Time, Cooking Light, Marie Claire and People.

Time Warner services 17.9% of all cable subscribers, gaining 3.5 million subscribers from its joint aquisition of Adelphia with Comcast. Time Warner now has 14.4 million cable customers (plus 1.5 million held in partnership)

2006 revenues: $44.2 billion
Time Warner is the largest media conglomerate in the world, with holdings including: CNN, the CW (a joint venture with CBS), HBO, Cinemax, Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT, America Online, MapQuest, Moviefone, Netscape, Warner Bros. Pictures, Castle Rock, and New Line Cinema, over 150 magazines such as Time, Cooking Light, Marie Claire and People.

Time Warner services 17.9% of all cable subscribers, gaining 3.5 million subscribers from its joint aquisition of Adelphia with Comcast. Time Warner now has 14.4 million cable customers (plus 1.5 million held in partnership with Comcast).


2006 revenues: $34.3 billion
The Walt Disney Company owns the ABC Television Network, cable networks including ESPN, the Disney Channel, SOAPnet, A&E and Lifetime, 227 radio stations, music and book publishing companies, production companies Touchstone, Miramax and Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios, the cellular service Disney Mobile, and theme parks around the world.

2006 revenues: $25.3 billion
News Corporation's media holdings include: the Fox Broadcasting Company, television and cable networks such as Fox, Fox Business Channel, National Geographic and FX, 35 television stations, print publications including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, TVGuide, the magazines Barron's and SmartMoney, book publisher HarperCollins, film production companies 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures and Blue Sky Studios, numerous Web sites including MarketWatch.com, and non-media holdings including the National Rugby League.

2006 revenues: $14.3 billion
CBS Corporation owns the CBS Television Network, CBS Television Distribution Group, the CW (a joint venture with Time Warner), Showtime, book publisher Simon & Schuster, 27 television stations, and CBS Radio, Inc, which has 140 stations. CBS is now the leading supplier of video to Google's new Video Marketplace.

2006 revenues: $11.5 billion
Viacom holdings include: Music Television, Nickelodeon, VH1, BET, Comedy Central, Paramount Pictures, Paramount Home Entertainment, Atom Entertainment, publishing company Famous Music and music game developer Harmonix. Viacom 18 is a joint venture with the Indian media company Global Broadcast news.

I'm 24. I grew up in the age of internet, so I am admittedly biased about this topic. I will be the first to admit that there is plenty of junk on the internet and sorting through it all is not going to be the way a leader should use their time. However, McCain doesn't even use email? He doesn't have a blackberry (or some similar device)? Sometimes even important people really do need to look something up online or need to be able to communicate very quickly through email or texting. The fact that he is totally unknowledgeable in this area seems like a fundamental disadvantage for functioning in society today, no matter how grand a scale. Especially because I am a young voter I find this to be quite negative and a bit alienating.

I'm 24. I grew up in the age of internet, so I am admittedly biased about this topic. I will be the first to admit that there is plenty of junk on the internet and sorting through it all is not going to be the way a leader should use their time. However, McCain doesn't even use email? He doesn't have a blackberry (or some similar device)? Sometimes even important people really do need to look something up online or need to be able to communicate very quickly through email or texting. The fact that he is totally unknowledgeable in this area seems like a fundamental disadvantage for functioning in society today, no matter how grand a scale. Especially because I am a young voter I find this to be quite negative and a bit alienating.

Right on all you McCain bashers. Since the computer/internet era, nearly all the world's problems have been solved. As great a convenience as it is, it is not going to save us or the world. Point and click takes little mentality. When a doer like John McCain sees the need to spend his valuable time doing this, I am sure he will. Many of us need to spend less time on our butts at the keyboard and more time actually doing something constructive.

What a ridiculous, typically Quindlish argument.

Begin with the fact that UBL didn't "beat us," but rather merely executed one successful attack against us, and that he did that not "with a laptop," but with 20 committed warriors who knew how to take full advantage of the idiotic bureacracy and the conditioned, sheeplike mindset of the passengers on three of the four planes (sit quietly, do as they say, and all will be well). Bureaucops emailed and sent reports about suspicious behavior of some of the terrorists but, like so much information in the deluge, they went unactioned. Anybody who spends even an hour a day surfing the kind of drivel sites that Quindlen suggests CEOs and presidential candidates should be reading is such an inefficient manager of precious time that the very same activity should disqualify them. Leaders don't surf the net. They have minions who do that for them, and present them with analyses of problems from which the leader can make decisions. That's what we need -- judgment -- not computer savvy. There are plenty of geeks who can do the goggling and blogging and emailing.

The problem is not with a president who wastes time surfing the web or text messaging.

the problem is having a president who does not understand how most people in the developed world get information and communicate. A president needs to understand how easy it is to tap into vast mountains of information, and how much of that information is erroneous. He needs to understand, in his gut, how quickly a story, true or false, can spread through blogs or email. He needs to have some connection with the millions of emails his staff is sendind, And he needs to understand how terrorists are using the internet to communicate. And how foreign hackers are constantly trying to break into American computers.
He can't, or must not, rely on a handful of tech-savvy advisers to tell him about these things. Unless he's somewhat conversant himself, he just won't get it.

asdf

So is Warren Buffett the richest person in the world because or in spite of his refusal to use a computer?

So Anna Quinland does your critique of McCain's use, or lack of use, of laptops and blackberry's mean that if Obama is elected President you expect to see him running around the world with a laptop bag in his hand furiously text messaging & running the country from his blackberry? I saw more of Obama last week in Europe, as the fawning press left no photo op unturned, than I ever needed to see, but I didn't catch a photo of him with laptop bag or blackberry in hand. I pray to God that while the terrorist are busy on their laptops planning to kill Americans that the President of the U.S. is giving orders to the CIA, FBI, NSA, DIA, etc etc to stop them, not fiddling with a laptop or blackberry. You are so obviously in the tank for Obama I'll bet you have gills. What an absurd silly one-sided useless critique of Presidential candidate. Your editor should take away your laptop & blackberry for a month to give you some downtime to come up with a sensible article!

This really is ridiculous. Sure, being technologically "out of it" is a strike against McCain's ability to personally poll the worldwide web each morning as he whips out his laptop to see what his country thinks of him. But do we really demand our Commander in Chief to hack into our enemies's computers, trade his morning paper for the daily blogsite, and execute his policies according to the shifting sands of cyberspace? Give me a break, Quindlen.

The last thing we need is anoither uninformed President. If you're too old to keep up with technology, you're too old to lead the country.

So, using Quidlen's "logic" that if Phil Gramm was more tech savvy he wouldn't have made the impolitic (yet truthful) comment about a nation of whiners...can we draw the same conclusion about Mr. Cool, America's history-making fist bumper, and his comments about American clinging to their guns and religion out of bitterness? Anna, you've been out of it for a long time, but you've hit a new low of just plain drivel on this one.

The last thing I want to hear about is a President that spends his spare time surfing the web. I have been online for years and I doubt that I (or should I say we) are as informed as McCain. I would rather have the next President get his knowledge about war from being in a war, not reading about one online. Before you say, "Wait a minute. Obama gets his information from those on the ground too," think about it for a second.

This is the worst kind of Anne Quindlen hit piece. It is intellectually vacant at its very core.

Anna: You are not an idiot, you are just very angry. Best, Dave in Summit

Might he not garner votes precisely because he isn't a techno-junkie? Might he not actually be more in touch with ordinary working people (of whom you are hardly one) because he doesn't waste his hours surfing the web? If technology becomes an issue (which it probably won't) then McCain would have to make the case that it's overrated and not at the core of education- that might be beyond him, sadly.

Mr. McCain flew a Fighter bomber off of an aircraft carrier into hostile territory and was shot at doing it.
Military pilots are are well acqainted with many engineering and mathematical concepts.

Mr. Obama spent 20 years hanging around racists and anti-semites(not 20 seconds-20 years!)
It took him that long to do the right thing? So he can use a Computer,so what?

1. Mr. Obama is a first-term senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name.
2. Mr. Obama voted present nearly 130 times,quite a lot for a first term Senator.
3. Mr. Obama lectures on learning a foreign language, can speak none himself.
4. Mr. Obama has never produced a single peice of scholarship,or written anything of note.
5. He earned a law degree from harvard but never practiced law.
6. He did write a book. The subject? Himself.
7. Has he ever admitted he changed his mind or was wrong about anything?
8. on Iraq, Obama has held almost every conceivable position.
9. His Pro-Life (National Right to Life) rating=
2005 0%,
2006 0%,
2007 0%
His Pro-Abortion (NARAL) rating=
2005 100%,
2006 100%,
2007 100%

What does one innocent human life mean to God( not man, but God)?
10. On Iraq, he has held almost every conceivable opinion