As well as complaining of unprecedented demands for information from the thousands of sports officials and journalists, IBM Corp’s excuses for the malfunction of its Info 96 computer systems for the Atlanta Olympics have been along the lines that three Lithuanian basketball players appeared on court on Saturday with the wrong numbers on their backs. But that kind of excuse won’t do when, according to Reuter, the system was saying on Tuesday that an Australian and a Dane had set track cycling world records at the Games, even though their event did not start until yesterday. The system also had four, five and six round boxing bouts when Olympic matches are confined to three rounds, and there can be few boxers only half a meter tall or 6. 35 metres tall, as the system also apparently suggested. At the equestrian Olympics, one of the organizers reportedly said after the cross country stage that The IBM system melted down and consequently the results cannot be printed out, and the scoring has to be done manually, You pay $40m for the privilege of becoming an official sponsor, and IBM reportedly spent $40m more building the systems.
