When I was in college, we had a mandatory online class registration system. However, at the beginning of each semester. when every student at UMass Amherst tried to log on to reigster for classes (did I mention it was mandatory?), the system would crash and then no one could log on!

So late night, when CCTV9 mentioned that the demand for Beijing Olympics tickets had crashed the ticket website, I started to wonder if BOCOG had hired the same programmers that UMass did. This article from the Guardian, though, explains that the website got over 8 million hits, and the phone system got over 2 million calls… I’d hate to be number 1.7 million in the telephone queue, wouldn’t you?

Waiting in a physical line (or a mob) didn’t do any better.

Beijingers started gathering outside the designated 1,000 branches of the Bank of China as much as six hours before the 1.85 million tickets went on sale at 9am.

Cheng Qiang eschewed the chance to book online or by telephone and at 7am on a chilly Beijing morning was first in line at a Bank of China branch opposite the Worker’s Stadium, venue for some Olympic soccer matches next August.

Via CCTV9, additional info from the Guardian