[FRIAM] I am accepting wagers

[Gary Schiltz]

Rather tangential, but I wonder what percent of people in the USA are
computer literate? Here in the "third world" (Ecuador), many, many people
who use the internet almost constantly have never touched a "computer". For
them, a computer is an Android phone.

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 6:35 PM Barry MacKichan <
barry.mackichan at mackichan.com> wrote:

> When the healthcare.gov fiasco was going on, I was trying repeatedly to
> refill my Starbucks card using their web site. I thought it would be
> interesting to see which site would be running correctly first. I don’t
> know which was first but it was close — it wasn’t a slam dunk win for
> private enterprise over government.
>
> I remember when building an online store with a shopping cart was a big
> deal in the ‘90s. Now building these sites is like playing with tinker toys.
>
> I can see a lot more work needed that will never be seen from the public’s
> side of the system. The 50,000 sites will not be constant. Some new ones
> will come, and some will go. Hospitals, public health departments,
> independent as well as chain pharmacies have to feed information into the
> system. How do they pass that information?  How do they prove they are not
> a hacker and have the authority to change hours, capacity, availability of
> vaccine, location, etc. Are there mechanisms for weeding out defunct and
> out-of-date vaccination sites? The problems getting up-to-date and accurate
> numbers for COVID tests, deaths, ICU usage, etc., demonstrate this is not
> trivial.
>
> The system for entering the data has to be built, has to be secure, and
> thousands of people (eg, pharmacy staff) who want to do something else will
> have to be trained and the technical support team for the vaccinator
> entities as well as for the general public needs to be up to speed.
>
> Also, it is easy for us to assume computer literacy which may not exist
> for some parts of the population. Back in the ‘80s, our support people had
> conversations (with mathematicians, economists, and their students!) like:
>
> Support person: “Now copy the highlighted text to the clipboard”
> Support person: <long pause> Hello?
> User: “I’ve looked all over. My computer doesn’t have a clipboard!”
>
> My guess is that about 20% of the population is still at that level, and
> the need to be supported.
>
> And Murphy will be in the wings, watching carefully.
>
>
> Sent from my iPa
>
> > On Mar 13, 2021, at 1:06 PM, Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
> wrote:
> >
> > Biden promised a Federal Website to give citizens easy an accurate
> access to vaccination appointments. Fully operational May 1, date that all
> Americans wishing a vaccine/vaccination will be able to obtain one.
> >
> > Assume 50,000 vaccination sites, 50, 15-minute, time slots per day and,
> at that time, a maximum of 150 million clients.
> >
> > There are several people on this list who, I believe, could build this
> Website over the course of a weekend, including UE (user experience)
> elements like Google Maps for site locations, and install it on a cloud
> server for volume scaling/descaling. Allow a month to collect data - the
> only thing really problematic is a list of sites, addresses, and
> operational hours (to constrain the daily calendar slots).
> >
> > Total cost: < $25,000 ($500 hr - you folks deserve this pay rate - for
> 40-50 hours)
> >
> > Now the wager: I bet that the feds will contract with a major software
> development corporation for development. Contract will be in the range of 5
> and 10 million dollars; there is a 50% chance the site will be late or
> deployed with partial functionality; there is a 20% chance that it will be
> as dramatic a failure upon debut as was the healthcare.gov site.
> >
> > Risk is two beverages of your/my choice — payable when next we can share
> a physical presence.
> >
> > davew
> >
> >
> >
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