Bay 12 Games Forum

...or...

ACHILLES!!!

GESUNDHEIT!!!

That was what I was looking for. Perhaps "Special offer*: Any 600 yuan product can be bought for 500 yuan! [* One purchase per customer per visit, T&Cs apply, ...]" And unless there was a ten-pack (not already discounted, as a multibuy, obviously) you just couldn't use the offer at all for the 60 yuan product. (Or anything more than 600/no less than 500 is available with 100 yuan off/the first up-to-600 will be 500.)


So, given it isn't, imagine without the discount:
* You want a cake? Take a cake and they ask for 60. You have 500, so you can pay.
* You want two cakes? Take two cakes, then they ask for 120. You have 500, so you can pay.
* ... this step-by-step is of course unnecessary, just painstakingly illustrative...
* You want eight cakes? Take eight cakes, they ask for 480. You have 500, so you can pay.
* You want nine cakes? Take them, they ask for 540. You cannot pay. Hand back (one of?) the cakes. (Pay for the eight.)
* You want ten cakes? Take them, they ask for 600. You cannot pay. Hand back (two of?) the cakes. (Pay for the eight.)

Now deal with the discount. Two options, according to what the words mean (but same 'final answer').

First of all the "Spend 600, only pay 500!" option. Which would be typical of a promotion trying to attract larger volume sales. As in "Spend at least 600 yuan, get 100 yuan off!"
* ...repeat of above, until...
* You want nine cakes? Take them, they ask for 540. You cannot pay. Hand back (one of?) the cakes. (Pay for the eight.)
* You want ten cakes? Take them, they would ask for 600, but instead ask for 500. You can pay!
* (Probably eleven cakes would be 560 yuan, So if you had arrived with 600 then you would get a free cake and 40 'extra' yuan to pocket/spend on anything else that takes your fancy. Of course, you'd get less 'discount' by proportion.)
* (If you arrived with 1000 yuan, it would perhaps be best to buy 10 cakes *twice*, rather than than 18 cakes (normally 1080!) for 100 less (980 yuan!)
* (These last two examples are probably good to know, but probably not an immediate concern for a 10yo who has not grasped the original premise. Consider adding it as a bonus once the 'lightbulb moment' has clearly happened.)

The other interpretation is the flat "One sixth off all purchases!" offer (16⅔ percent off, or get 20% more than you pay for[1]), which is just a more general "goodwill" discount that is not trying to force spending more than you think you want to. (Noting that the discount is probably below the usual business markup, as rarely will any company actually deliberately engineer such a global loss. Rarely, but not unknown. Usually, it just means that the establishment usually overprices, but feels the need to look generous, perhaps to revive a cooling market and as an excuse to dominate against competitors. It would depend upon the economical model they're working under, but I see no reason to doubt that your system doesn't have similar pressures to ours.)

In this case, each "60 yuan" cake just costs 50 yuan. They will only ask for 5 of every 6 yuan you might have paid. Ignore the 'ticket price' and just realise that you're paying in 50s (of which there could be ten, if you have 500 in total to spend).


Another lesson, though, might be whether there's a need for ten cakes. Depends on how hungry you are, or how many people you can buy for. Don't fall for these base capitalist tricks and overspend/overconsume! Buy one cake, and save the 440 (or 450?) yuan you have left for something more important, or another time.








[1] At some point, it's good to learn that adding/removing a percentage then removing/adding the exact same percentage doesn't put you back on the original value. Because the second percentage change is applied to a different 'starting' point. But maybe this is also not yet a key step in understanding this problem.

News about this from 2010. And, as above, this seems to have been an ideal for as long as I've been in a position to experience it at the sharp end. (And I think that the various Carry On [Nurse/Doctor]s depicted separate wards (with suitably comedic interactions across the divides, as well as the sex-politics of the stereotypical male-doctor/female-nurse dichotomy), plus something like Only When I Laugh taking it as read, too.)

The fuss 'over here' looks to me as having been not able to make it inviolably absolute (i.e. necessity putting an occasional spanner in the works, hospital facilities not being funded enough to be the ideal buffet[1]), thus having occasional breaches while shuffling is organised. And every few years there seems to be 'questions' about why it isn't 100% (at least for England/Wales, I think Scotland's ok and dunno currently about NI).


Which is the basis for whether there is or isn't a problem with/for trans individuals. If it was all omnisex wards then it'd be barely an issue, in comparison. Being separate, it therefor concerns people a lot more (both ways, according to opinion and (perceived) scenario).


[1] "If there's not too much, there isn't enough". By funding (perhaps) to cover the average resource needs over time there's always going to be blips that exceed that, which then adds backlog over the 'average times' and even eat into the dips in demand, and probably ends up costing more in the long run by not having sometimes conspicuously copious unused capacity. But very little effort has been put into sufficiently adding capacity. If, indeed, recent governments have even fulfilled the theoretical average...

I think that's just a degree of corporate narcisism. Whether they try (and perhaps allow to be disabled) displaying a start-up 'splash screen' to advertise that it is their technology behind this particular device. Or not. (The more subtle ones might put a badge up in a spare space in the text-bootup.)

Old one could have had it disabled (you generally could in a BIOS, I delve less in UEFIs), perhaps the new one even has one (by default unused) one which could be enabled?

(In other words, it probably doesn't mean much at all, or serve any practical purpose. But just an observation based on time-worn experience that might be a bit outdated.)

Might not have used the right term? I mean multi-bed dormitory(/recuperation)-room. And not whole specialist units/departments, if that's what you're thinking.

There certainly is an expectation of these not being mixed-gender (before complicating that in working with trans-gender needs, etc), though apparently not being guaranteed.

(And I don't think I've seen one (other than A&E, which is technically singular cubicles so long as it doesn't overflow into corridors) which hasn't arranged for a male/female split in different areas. Whether that be orthopedics, dementia or wherever else a spare bed has been obtained for the one who requires it. Even as a child (the longest stay in hospital that I ever had, and probably the largest 'open plan' occupancy I've experienced), it was one room (out of several) only of boys, and I must assume that there were girls' rooms elsewhere, with whom I can't remember mixing even in any additional common social area.)


News article on what is being talked about (which says 'wards', so...)

Oh come on.... I was there a week or so ago when the laptop[1] was started up, configured for UK, I had typed on it on the UK keyboard and had produced the quotes-character from <shift>2 (and probably £ from <shift>3). It was a working UK keyboard, everything was UK personalised.

I just had to go over and look at it because instead of "s it was giving @s (and probably vice-versa, didn't check; but it was also giving #s in the place of £, etc). Went through the entire Time & Language settings, nothing changed, nothing obviously US-Keyboard/language, sole Language Pack is English (United Kingdom), and all the rest of the choices are UK-centric where it seemed necessary. There's even "ENG UK" explicitly in the systray, but it's all US typing (tested in applications, command prompt, Start|Run... given that prior windowses could certainly not synchronise GUI, application and command prompt language settings under certain circumstances).

But I fixed it, eventually. You want to know how? "Time & Language>Typing>Advanced keyboard settings".  It was set at "Use language list (recommended)", which should have been suffucient - after all, there's only the one language pack (UK one) even installed according to elsewhere in the Settings hierarchy. But, it turns out that if I change it to the sole other option of "English (United Kingdom) - United Kingdom" then we get our £ back and " in the right place (where it definitely originally was).

Much apart from the godsawful reorganisation of the Settings under the latest version(s?) of Windows (seems like a drive to reduce the 'top level' classifications, by nesting and redirecting further in the 'tree' of selections), it definitely changed without any obvious reason (or indication), or even having US(/generic-international)-keyboard down as being used anywhere. (In-between checking if this was anything to do with it, I also went into "Text Services and Input Languages>Advanced Key Settings" and changed both the Switch Input Language and Switch Keyboard Layout sequences to Not Assigned. The "To English {UK, etc}" was already "(None)", and the only explicit shift possible. The ">Language Bar" is hidden, and "Docked in the taskbar" is greyed out, leaving only "Floating On Desktop", which is of course unselected.)

...so solved. For now. Until some update/restart undoes my probable-kludge. Grrr...


[1] Mentioned, both before and after the fact, over in the Computer Help thread. But, as I've just helped myself, I'm definitely not seeking assistance on this issue. Just venting about it. I really dislike how Windows has been made to look simpler and more intuitive but actually become drastically more complicated and less easy to use, behind the camoflage...

...update on laptop situation. We got something that seems to work nicely (and I've got my eyes on my own next one[1]). Spent a week or so actually wrestling with Win11. Lost a bit of work in some document being edited when the machine restarted for an update as it was left sat idle for a couple of hours (there'd been a "we want you to restart", and a prompt, but we'd told it No, Not Yet, which apparently is even less taking notice of than in prior Wins, and it definitely looked like "We'll ask you again in 24 hours or more", not "the moment your back is turned").

Got rid of all the desktop/taskbar widgets (don't want news/weather, etc, certainly not by default!), shifted the Start button to the left, worked out how the Taskbar as a whole actually currently works ("Pin (an installed application) to Start", "Pin (a Start-pinned application) to Taskbar", anything shortcutted on Desktop can be drag-copied to also be a Shortcut on the Taskbar if it has no Pin-route available, the Taskbar is a mix of Pinned and Running (maybe already Pinned) items, but it's easier for me to Windows-Run "cmd" than to open up a second Command Prompt by right-clicking on an already pinned+running Command Prompt) , made Systray items that we want to be actually shown (like Safe Removal Of Media, which really shouldn't hide away when needed...) be shown, etc.

Getting used to all these niggles. though. Gradually removing the "Do you want to play Age Of Empires?"-type notifications turned off, as we encounter them. (Manufacturer sponsored... thingy... trying to work out if I can or should turn off the whole manufacturer framework thing that is offering these things, or if it's perhaps useful to retain for actual vital updates/info. I obviously have avoided all this fuss in the past when building desktops from scratch with a raw OEM licence, except for the occasional issue with video card drivers coming with 'helper'-software that has pesterware eleements to it, but no such option to bypass all this in this case.)

Right this moment, most dissapointed with Notepad.

But I'm sure it's all just one of the 'joys' of just not trying to fix things that aren't broken (at my end) clashing with an apparent culture of always trying to fix things (at the other end), whether or not they were/become broken! Basic grumble over.



[1] Was going to settle on an i5, 0.5Tb, 8Gb model, but there's I saw this i7, 1TB 16Gb that's not terribly much more expensive, so...