I now mostly play my GBA (haven't quite warmed up to the DS), but I still have my first Game Boy-- the very first model. I keep it around for sentimental reasons, and it still works just as well today as it did when I unwrapped it that Christmas morning. I'd say that not only is it durable, but the Game Boy line is good business sense as well. It's a great product for the price with a huge selection of games. Other portable gaming devices just haven't been able to come close-- even when they have multiple additional features.
I think there is perhaps a stigma that is associated to television and video games. Yes, there's a lot of garbage there, but there's also a world of new possibilities and variety in ways to teach your child. There are a variety of educational shows out there that, when watched together, can make learning fun! Discovery Channel, History Channel, and Animal Planet are favorites in our household. (And at times, I learn a thing or two myself!) Talk about being aware of your surroundings and socially aware... How about watching the evening news together and discussing what's going on in the world? There are also some nice strategy and puzzle video games out there that strengthen the mind-- and are fun! And they cover just about every subject and every age group you could possibly imagine. The possibilities are near endless! Yes, too much time at the boob tube is bad for you, but you may find it quite handy in limited sessions.
It's no secret that hospitals (and doctors) overcharge insurance companies and sometime even charge them for services never rendered. I'm one of the few I know who looks at my detailed bill even though my insurance pays for everything. When I had my daughter, I was not allowed to bring my own pain meds, but a charge of $25 was added for ADVIL (brand name and everything). A $75 charge was added for a box of Kleenex, and $200 for a pack of diapers. When my brother had his surgery, he was charged for neonatal infant care and a mobile, though we're pretty sure my brother never gave birth. A friend of mine once worked for a medical equipment company and was fired for refusing to "accidentally" double bill the insurance. So yeah, it's gotten out of hand.
I couldn't help but respond. The hobbit and Mt. Doom comment had me laughing so hard I couldn't breathe. And indeed, when a municipality fights a vote of the people while paying court costs and attorney fees with the people's money, something is very wrong. We do have another election coming up, though. They'd fight it if they could, but they can't, and if they do, they're gonna be in some very deep doo doo. And when you tell people that they can't vote, and you use their money to tell them that, it motivates them. There's a push now to get people elected and to very quickly have the township dissolved and absorbed into surrounding municipalities-- in pieces and to different municipalities. It would be nice if we could keep the town whole, but the focus now is on getting these people out of power and keeping them that way.
I used to run a regularly updated blog that covered, among other things, a situation in the town I live in. Basically, a group of local politicians (or their cronies) hijacked the offices they were voted out of by filling the open spots of mayor and city council that were conveniently vacated by the people that won the election. Those people who had been elected (not the ones who were voted out and later appointed) left under a series of very suspicious circumstances, leaving the impression that they were bullied out of office. The ones that came back served local business interests. The locals, fed up with what was going on, decided that the best way out was to dissolve the city and be annexed into the city next door. Upon following the state law, this group of locals was successful in their efforts and were supposed to have a vote on the annexation. The town "leaders" didn't want that to happen, so they fought the election in courts-- which they lost. So they racked up a large amount of debt for the town, the town that agreed to annex pulled out because they didn't want the debt, and our town never saw an election.
The local media picked up very little of the story, so I called the town out on its actions on my blog. It got quite a bit of attention from the locals.
The town officials didn't dare come after me, but one of the local business leaders (and a friend of the council and mayor) did. He showed up on my doorstep, came inside my home, and raised his voice in front of my toddler daughter and paid no attention to the fact that he was scaring the crap out of her. While I used no names or businesses or people, and there was more that one person who could have fit the description, the business owner told me that he had the right to sue me. I spoke with no less than four lawyers who told me that he was delusional. The owner's rationale was this: If I wrote a convincing blog that affected the outcome of a local election, the town would be absorbed into another town that has building codes and zoning laws, and he'd have to spend money to get his buildings up to code. So he would sue me for the money he "lost". During the meeting, he fiddled with his pocket and asked me questions like, "What was your intent in publishing this?" Yes, I was being recorded, and I suspect he was fishing for something because someone told him he had nothing.
Nevertheless, he said that I'd incorrectly stated someone else's opinion. (This person was also never named.) While I'd talked to the person previously and published their correct opinion, that opinion changed when I spoke to them afterward-- leading me to believe that he'd had a similar visit. I had no way to back up my claims, so I went ahead and corrected the statement with an editor's note. I was also told that I'd incorrectly identified the mayor as being the owner of a particular business, but there were no defaming statements made, so it was no big deal. I've since been told that the mayor IS the owner, so I just took the sentence out altogether to avoid confusion. They even tried to say that I'd misquoted the mayor, but the quote I'd published was a quote from the local newspaper and was noted as such. Not to mention, the reporter had a taped recording of what the mayor said, regardless as to what he meant to say.
My little meeting actually DID change the way I wrote, and it made me an even bigger thorn in their side. Since they were going to play hardball, I started collecting paperwork to back up every single thing I wrote, and they could no longer tell people I was lying. I even published pictures of the "park" they claimed to have on their publicity website and turned some heads, and they had to change the wording to say that they were going to have a park in the future. (I got a couple of phone calls from state legislators about that one.) When they passed a city ordinance to discourage a peaceful demonstration at a town event, I published the ordinance and pointed out in the wording that they could still prot
"Sometimes I think Christians get all hung up on the sex thing because it's easier to worry about sex than to ask yourself, Am I a good person? If as long as you don't have sex with a lot of people you're a good person, that's easy. It's easy to avoid that. It's easy to think, I'm not f***ing anyone, so I'm good. It makes it easy to be cruel, because as long as you're not f***ing around, nothing you do can be that bad. Is that really all you think of God? Is he just the sex police for you... Or is it that sex is easy to worry about, easy to avoid, and the whole love-your-neighbor-as-you-love-yourself thing that's hard?"
I've been a #3. It doesn't work that way. Management hates you because your call times stink, and you're either out of a job, or you join management, where you're encouraged to keep a team of #1's. Now, having been a #3, you want a team of #3's. So now you're a bad manager according to company standards. Meanwhile, your benefits are getting slashed, and you haven't received a pay raise in three years.
#3 will be gone as fast as possible, either having moved on to something better with better pay and better benefits. Else, he will move on to another industry. And likely, by the time he does, he will be jaded and irritable as a result of his time in tech support.
As for the script... It really doesn't matter whether or not you know what you are doing. There's a QA department listening to your call, and you'd darn well better stick to the script. Otherwise, you are providing "bad customer service" and can and will be disciplined for it. And if you're looking for another job, you want a good recommendation from your previous employer. You'd also better not show that you know more than #1 or #2, because if you go outside your support boundaries, you'll get dinged.
Seriously speaking, I did ISP tech support. I'll never forget the guy who called asking me how to charge his laptop battery. I almost got fired for telling him to plug in the power cord instead of sending him to Dell.
Walking, carpooling, avoiding the area completely, and having a suspended/no drivers license. I fully expect a fine for my 13-month-old daughter at any moment for the driving she would have done if she were of age.
Moderation is key for anything. I don't think that anyone will argue that a soda is good for you, much less that 2-3 a day is anything but bad for you. The same goes for artificial additives. It's unlikely that you'll hear an argument that these things are good for you in mass quantities. Whole, natural foods are always better for you than the processed stuff.
But 2-3 sodas (or even diet sodas) a week isn't going to kill you or even spoil your diet.
As to the additive sodium benzoate, it's a preservative. If there is a problem, it's easy enough for soft drink companies to replace with good old fashioned salt. The overall recipe of the syrup might have to be adjusted for taste, but it shouldn't be too big a deal.
Usually, when you deal with any person who is working customer service, you are dealing with someone who makes minimum wage or just a little better. They work long hours and usually have really bad benefits. But we all want to save an extra buck or two, so guess where the company is skimping on funding... And then we act surprised when the underpaid, overworked customer service reps aren't smiling and happy. Cheap and easy will never be as good as moderately priced and thorough. It's the difference between shopping at Wal-Mart and Saks. Wal-Mart has a cheaper suit, but the Saks employees will take care of you.
Looking at the legislation, $25K must be raised in order to even begin to qualify as a paid effort. How many people running ads seriously make $25K? Even if you did, it doesn't qualify according to the legislation. Then again, I'm reading it straight off of the senate.gov website and not off of some article that is doing the interpreting for me.
Problem is, TFA got it wrong. The section doesn't define "paid" as "communications to more than 500". It defines "grassroots lobbying" as "communications to more than 500" and specifically states in the second line that only paid efforts to stimulate "grassroots lobbying" would be affected by the law and not "grassroots lobbying" by itself. In other words "paid efforts to stimulate communications to more than 500" is applicable and not "communications to more than 500." It's an intentional misleading, and all you have to do is carefully read the law to realize that this is b.s.
Lobbyists are regulated for the same reasons that advertisers are. Truth in advertising. Your right to extend your fist ends where another person's nose begins. If you are trying to influence the Christian vote, and you say you are a Baptist pastor, but you are actually a special interest, the public needs to know.
Actually, it defines "grassroots lobbying" as communications to more than 500, not "paid efforts to stimulate". It also says that the legislation applies to "paid efforts to stimulate" and not to "grassroots lobbying." Go to www.senate.gov, find SB1, scroll down to S220, and click on the link. Look at the second line down.
Not necessarily. The only way that reading this site would be considered pay is if they don't normally allow people to read it without paying for it. Further, the second line down specifically says that the new law does not apply to blogging (defined as "grassroots lobbying). Rather, it applies to "paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying", like blogging. In other words, your average blog is exempt, but if an organization like the AFA (which receives donations) pays to put one up, then the AFA must register, particularly if they are encouraging a letter-writing campaign of sorts.
Interestingly enough, the AFA is telling its sheep that this will cause them to have less information about a bill. That just isn't the case. It's the exact opposite. The purpose of the legislation is to make the legislative process more transparent. For example, if a particular group is trying to influence legislation, you will know. That being said...
The second sentence down states the following: "Lobbying activities include paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying, but do not include grassroots lobbying." It follows with a definition of "paid efforts" and "grassroots lobbying". In other words, if your blog isn't the direct result of a group that raises money to influence political decisions (like the AFA), you don't qualify as a group that has to register. Further, the blog itself isn't necessarily what falls under this legislation, but rather the paid efforts behind it. Fearmongers who belong to those groups (and don't like the legislation) are spreading rumors that Joe Blogger is going to have to register his blog with the government, and that just isn't the case.
Unless you're being paid by an organization to run your blog, you don't qualify.
There are more than a few problems with your argument.
First, you are working under the assumption that a particular area is more important than another. A company needs ALL of its parts working at full efficiency in order to compete. When any of those parts do not function at full efficiency, or (worse) if they bring down the efficiency of others, they are a liability. Now, let's look at this from a different perspective. Let's say that you have an IT department of 5 people. They service a staff of 200. Now, let's say that you have 8 of those 200 staff are highly experienced and valued employees, but they don't know the basics of how email works. These will be the people who regularly call IT to have them come and personally fix an issue for them. Now, at some point, those 5 IT pros are going to get backlogged with calls from these people, and you can only do so many things at once. Meanwile, your highly valued and highly experienced employees are not doing anything, so they can't be making you money. Worse, the backup created by a problem that they could have easily remedied themselves is causing other employees to come to a halt. Throw in the fact that the IT department also has a few system updates to push out and something on the server really DID break...
Second, you are assuming that experience in IT has nothing to do with a value of an IT professional. That's just not the case. An experienced, capable IT professional is worth his weight in gold. The first time an older program that they don't teach those starry-eyed graduates shuts down on you, you'll realize that. And no, they are not easy to come by and are not easily replaced. Don't forget that it also costs roughly three times as much to replace an employee than it does to keep the one you have.
Third, you assume that BASIC computer skills are a completely different skill set, as opposed to just another tool to do one's job. Basic computer skills are no longer a special skill. They are a necessity, and if you don't have them, it's the same as not being current with your particular skill set. That being said, it isn't necessary for every employee to understand the specifics of how computers work and to be fluent in various programming languages. It is, however, necessary for them to understand how to use a mouse, do a search, use a flash drive, burn a CD, etc. Back in the day, I used to take calls from people who couldn't understand why the battery light on their laptop was blinking, and I'd not only have to tell them to plug it in to charge it, but I'd have to tell them which cord (the power cord) to plug in and describe what the cord looked like. Later on as a manager, I hated dealing with the more "experienced" employees because they ended up slowing down my other employees. I ended up spending hours with those employees answering simple "how to" questions when I could have been fine tuning my team in other areas. Those 8-16 hours of lost company time in basic computer training will be a drop in the bucket compared to the multitude of hours of productivity that you will lose when your production comes to a screeching halt.
One particular "highly experienced" employee for the city governmnet that my husband services refused to update his system. Problem was, the guy was using some eons-old program to do his work with, so when he was sending the files to other people, they were unable to view them. His designs were good, mind you, but they didn't do any good when nobody could see them. Thankfully, orders finally came from management that he would either learn how to use a more updated program or he would be gone. Highly experienced employees are great, but they're only great when they're working. If they're constantly calling up IT for something that they should be able to do themselves, they aren't working.
Now, that being said, your employees with 30+ years of field-specific experience are worthless if they can't do their jobs because they can't (or won't) keep up with the tools
Slashdot Mirror
I now mostly play my GBA (haven't quite warmed up to the DS), but I still have my first Game Boy-- the very first model. I keep it around for sentimental reasons, and it still works just as well today as it did when I unwrapped it that Christmas morning. I'd say that not only is it durable, but the Game Boy line is good business sense as well. It's a great product for the price with a huge selection of games. Other portable gaming devices just haven't been able to come close-- even when they have multiple additional features.
I think there is perhaps a stigma that is associated to television and video games. Yes, there's a lot of garbage there, but there's also a world of new possibilities and variety in ways to teach your child. There are a variety of educational shows out there that, when watched together, can make learning fun! Discovery Channel, History Channel, and Animal Planet are favorites in our household. (And at times, I learn a thing or two myself!) Talk about being aware of your surroundings and socially aware... How about watching the evening news together and discussing what's going on in the world? There are also some nice strategy and puzzle video games out there that strengthen the mind-- and are fun! And they cover just about every subject and every age group you could possibly imagine. The possibilities are near endless! Yes, too much time at the boob tube is bad for you, but you may find it quite handy in limited sessions.
It's no secret that hospitals (and doctors) overcharge insurance companies and sometime even charge them for services never rendered. I'm one of the few I know who looks at my detailed bill even though my insurance pays for everything. When I had my daughter, I was not allowed to bring my own pain meds, but a charge of $25 was added for ADVIL (brand name and everything). A $75 charge was added for a box of Kleenex, and $200 for a pack of diapers. When my brother had his surgery, he was charged for neonatal infant care and a mobile, though we're pretty sure my brother never gave birth. A friend of mine once worked for a medical equipment company and was fired for refusing to "accidentally" double bill the insurance. So yeah, it's gotten out of hand.
Keep those Sonic the Hedgehog players away from the jewelry stores. I hear that bad things can happen.
Not to mention... The company pays out less sick time to those who work from home. If you're sick and in bed, you can still do work.
I couldn't help but respond. The hobbit and Mt. Doom comment had me laughing so hard I couldn't breathe. And indeed, when a municipality fights a vote of the people while paying court costs and attorney fees with the people's money, something is very wrong. We do have another election coming up, though. They'd fight it if they could, but they can't, and if they do, they're gonna be in some very deep doo doo. And when you tell people that they can't vote, and you use their money to tell them that, it motivates them. There's a push now to get people elected and to very quickly have the township dissolved and absorbed into surrounding municipalities-- in pieces and to different municipalities. It would be nice if we could keep the town whole, but the focus now is on getting these people out of power and keeping them that way.
I used to run a regularly updated blog that covered, among other things, a situation in the town I live in. Basically, a group of local politicians (or their cronies) hijacked the offices they were voted out of by filling the open spots of mayor and city council that were conveniently vacated by the people that won the election. Those people who had been elected (not the ones who were voted out and later appointed) left under a series of very suspicious circumstances, leaving the impression that they were bullied out of office. The ones that came back served local business interests. The locals, fed up with what was going on, decided that the best way out was to dissolve the city and be annexed into the city next door. Upon following the state law, this group of locals was successful in their efforts and were supposed to have a vote on the annexation. The town "leaders" didn't want that to happen, so they fought the election in courts-- which they lost. So they racked up a large amount of debt for the town, the town that agreed to annex pulled out because they didn't want the debt, and our town never saw an election.
The local media picked up very little of the story, so I called the town out on its actions on my blog. It got quite a bit of attention from the locals.
The town officials didn't dare come after me, but one of the local business leaders (and a friend of the council and mayor) did. He showed up on my doorstep, came inside my home, and raised his voice in front of my toddler daughter and paid no attention to the fact that he was scaring the crap out of her. While I used no names or businesses or people, and there was more that one person who could have fit the description, the business owner told me that he had the right to sue me. I spoke with no less than four lawyers who told me that he was delusional. The owner's rationale was this: If I wrote a convincing blog that affected the outcome of a local election, the town would be absorbed into another town that has building codes and zoning laws, and he'd have to spend money to get his buildings up to code. So he would sue me for the money he "lost". During the meeting, he fiddled with his pocket and asked me questions like, "What was your intent in publishing this?" Yes, I was being recorded, and I suspect he was fishing for something because someone told him he had nothing.
Nevertheless, he said that I'd incorrectly stated someone else's opinion. (This person was also never named.) While I'd talked to the person previously and published their correct opinion, that opinion changed when I spoke to them afterward-- leading me to believe that he'd had a similar visit. I had no way to back up my claims, so I went ahead and corrected the statement with an editor's note. I was also told that I'd incorrectly identified the mayor as being the owner of a particular business, but there were no defaming statements made, so it was no big deal. I've since been told that the mayor IS the owner, so I just took the sentence out altogether to avoid confusion. They even tried to say that I'd misquoted the mayor, but the quote I'd published was a quote from the local newspaper and was noted as such. Not to mention, the reporter had a taped recording of what the mayor said, regardless as to what he meant to say.
My little meeting actually DID change the way I wrote, and it made me an even bigger thorn in their side. Since they were going to play hardball, I started collecting paperwork to back up every single thing I wrote, and they could no longer tell people I was lying. I even published pictures of the "park" they claimed to have on their publicity website and turned some heads, and they had to change the wording to say that they were going to have a park in the future. (I got a couple of phone calls from state legislators about that one.) When they passed a city ordinance to discourage a peaceful demonstration at a town event, I published the ordinance and pointed out in the wording that they could still prot
Isn't that supposed to be A, B, A, B, UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, SELECT, START? :P
You mean the numbers the industry gave us may have been exaggerated?! *shock* :)
"Sometimes I think Christians get all hung up on the sex thing because it's easier to worry about sex than to ask yourself, Am I a good person? If as long as you don't have sex with a lot of people you're a good person, that's easy. It's easy to avoid that. It's easy to think, I'm not f***ing anyone, so I'm good. It makes it easy to be cruel, because as long as you're not f***ing around, nothing you do can be that bad. Is that really all you think of God? Is he just the sex police for you... Or is it that sex is easy to worry about, easy to avoid, and the whole love-your-neighbor-as-you-love-yourself thing that's hard?"
--Laurell K. Hamilton, The Harlequin
I've been doing it for years.
I've been a #3. It doesn't work that way. Management hates you because your call times stink, and you're either out of a job, or you join management, where you're encouraged to keep a team of #1's. Now, having been a #3, you want a team of #3's. So now you're a bad manager according to company standards. Meanwhile, your benefits are getting slashed, and you haven't received a pay raise in three years. #3 will be gone as fast as possible, either having moved on to something better with better pay and better benefits. Else, he will move on to another industry. And likely, by the time he does, he will be jaded and irritable as a result of his time in tech support. As for the script... It really doesn't matter whether or not you know what you are doing. There's a QA department listening to your call, and you'd darn well better stick to the script. Otherwise, you are providing "bad customer service" and can and will be disciplined for it. And if you're looking for another job, you want a good recommendation from your previous employer. You'd also better not show that you know more than #1 or #2, because if you go outside your support boundaries, you'll get dinged. Seriously speaking, I did ISP tech support. I'll never forget the guy who called asking me how to charge his laptop battery. I almost got fired for telling him to plug in the power cord instead of sending him to Dell.
Walking, carpooling, avoiding the area completely, and having a suspended/no drivers license. I fully expect a fine for my 13-month-old daughter at any moment for the driving she would have done if she were of age.
Moderation is key for anything. I don't think that anyone will argue that a soda is good for you, much less that 2-3 a day is anything but bad for you. The same goes for artificial additives. It's unlikely that you'll hear an argument that these things are good for you in mass quantities. Whole, natural foods are always better for you than the processed stuff.
But 2-3 sodas (or even diet sodas) a week isn't going to kill you or even spoil your diet.
As to the additive sodium benzoate, it's a preservative. If there is a problem, it's easy enough for soft drink companies to replace with good old fashioned salt. The overall recipe of the syrup might have to be adjusted for taste, but it shouldn't be too big a deal.
I have the 2600n as well, and I'm in love. If I want better photo prints, I go to WalMart, but it works great for the everyday stuff.
My only gripe is the control panel, which I think is too small. But I don't really need to use it that much.
The other issue is that "natural" peanut butter tends to separate, and the convenience-oriented consumer doesn't like that.
Two solutions that I've found after years of buying the stuff:
1. Mix it up really well, and then store in the fridge.
2. Pour most of the oil off of the top. Stir in the rest. Store in the fridge.
It all depends on the consistency you like for your peanut butter.
Usually, when you deal with any person who is working customer service, you are dealing with someone who makes minimum wage or just a little better. They work long hours and usually have really bad benefits. But we all want to save an extra buck or two, so guess where the company is skimping on funding... And then we act surprised when the underpaid, overworked customer service reps aren't smiling and happy. Cheap and easy will never be as good as moderately priced and thorough. It's the difference between shopping at Wal-Mart and Saks. Wal-Mart has a cheaper suit, but the Saks employees will take care of you.
Looking at the legislation, $25K must be raised in order to even begin to qualify as a paid effort. How many people running ads seriously make $25K? Even if you did, it doesn't qualify according to the legislation. Then again, I'm reading it straight off of the senate.gov website and not off of some article that is doing the interpreting for me.
Problem is, TFA got it wrong. The section doesn't define "paid" as "communications to more than 500". It defines "grassroots lobbying" as "communications to more than 500" and specifically states in the second line that only paid efforts to stimulate "grassroots lobbying" would be affected by the law and not "grassroots lobbying" by itself. In other words "paid efforts to stimulate communications to more than 500" is applicable and not "communications to more than 500." It's an intentional misleading, and all you have to do is carefully read the law to realize that this is b.s.
Lobbyists are regulated for the same reasons that advertisers are. Truth in advertising. Your right to extend your fist ends where another person's nose begins. If you are trying to influence the Christian vote, and you say you are a Baptist pastor, but you are actually a special interest, the public needs to know.
Actually, it defines "grassroots lobbying" as communications to more than 500, not "paid efforts to stimulate". It also says that the legislation applies to "paid efforts to stimulate" and not to "grassroots lobbying." Go to www.senate.gov, find SB1, scroll down to S220, and click on the link. Look at the second line down.
Not necessarily. The only way that reading this site would be considered pay is if they don't normally allow people to read it without paying for it. Further, the second line down specifically says that the new law does not apply to blogging (defined as "grassroots lobbying). Rather, it applies to "paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying", like blogging. In other words, your average blog is exempt, but if an organization like the AFA (which receives donations) pays to put one up, then the AFA must register, particularly if they are encouraging a letter-writing campaign of sorts.
You can find the actual text here.
Interestingly enough, the AFA is telling its sheep that this will cause them to have less information about a bill. That just isn't the case. It's the exact opposite. The purpose of the legislation is to make the legislative process more transparent. For example, if a particular group is trying to influence legislation, you will know. That being said...
The second sentence down states the following: "Lobbying activities include paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying, but do not include grassroots lobbying." It follows with a definition of "paid efforts" and "grassroots lobbying". In other words, if your blog isn't the direct result of a group that raises money to influence political decisions (like the AFA), you don't qualify as a group that has to register. Further, the blog itself isn't necessarily what falls under this legislation, but rather the paid efforts behind it. Fearmongers who belong to those groups (and don't like the legislation) are spreading rumors that Joe Blogger is going to have to register his blog with the government, and that just isn't the case.
Unless you're being paid by an organization to run your blog, you don't qualify.
There are more than a few problems with your argument.
First, you are working under the assumption that a particular area is more important than another. A company needs ALL of its parts working at full efficiency in order to compete. When any of those parts do not function at full efficiency, or (worse) if they bring down the efficiency of others, they are a liability. Now, let's look at this from a different perspective. Let's say that you have an IT department of 5 people. They service a staff of 200. Now, let's say that you have 8 of those 200 staff are highly experienced and valued employees, but they don't know the basics of how email works. These will be the people who regularly call IT to have them come and personally fix an issue for them. Now, at some point, those 5 IT pros are going to get backlogged with calls from these people, and you can only do so many things at once. Meanwile, your highly valued and highly experienced employees are not doing anything, so they can't be making you money. Worse, the backup created by a problem that they could have easily remedied themselves is causing other employees to come to a halt. Throw in the fact that the IT department also has a few system updates to push out and something on the server really DID break...
Second, you are assuming that experience in IT has nothing to do with a value of an IT professional. That's just not the case. An experienced, capable IT professional is worth his weight in gold. The first time an older program that they don't teach those starry-eyed graduates shuts down on you, you'll realize that. And no, they are not easy to come by and are not easily replaced. Don't forget that it also costs roughly three times as much to replace an employee than it does to keep the one you have.
Third, you assume that BASIC computer skills are a completely different skill set, as opposed to just another tool to do one's job. Basic computer skills are no longer a special skill. They are a necessity, and if you don't have them, it's the same as not being current with your particular skill set. That being said, it isn't necessary for every employee to understand the specifics of how computers work and to be fluent in various programming languages. It is, however, necessary for them to understand how to use a mouse, do a search, use a flash drive, burn a CD, etc. Back in the day, I used to take calls from people who couldn't understand why the battery light on their laptop was blinking, and I'd not only have to tell them to plug it in to charge it, but I'd have to tell them which cord (the power cord) to plug in and describe what the cord looked like. Later on as a manager, I hated dealing with the more "experienced" employees because they ended up slowing down my other employees. I ended up spending hours with those employees answering simple "how to" questions when I could have been fine tuning my team in other areas. Those 8-16 hours of lost company time in basic computer training will be a drop in the bucket compared to the multitude of hours of productivity that you will lose when your production comes to a screeching halt.
One particular "highly experienced" employee for the city governmnet that my husband services refused to update his system. Problem was, the guy was using some eons-old program to do his work with, so when he was sending the files to other people, they were unable to view them. His designs were good, mind you, but they didn't do any good when nobody could see them. Thankfully, orders finally came from management that he would either learn how to use a more updated program or he would be gone. Highly experienced employees are great, but they're only great when they're working. If they're constantly calling up IT for something that they should be able to do themselves, they aren't working.
Now, that being said, your employees with 30+ years of field-specific experience are worthless if they can't do their jobs because they can't (or won't) keep up with the tools
And, of course, you won't be charged for any additional airtime that it takes to view the unwanted ad???
From my experience, sex and violence RELIEVES tension.