The chief technology officer of the City of Los Angeles has asked employees to stop watching the Olympics at work to avoid overloading the city's computer system.
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"We are experiencing a high volume of traffic due to people watching the Olympics online. I respectfully request that you discontinue this as it is impacting city operations," LA CTO Randi Levin wrote in an email on Tuesday, according to The L.A. Times. The email came on a day when the U.S. women's gymnastics team and the women's soccer team were both competing. The revelation that city employees were streaming video while on the clock infuriated some councilmen, including Dennis Zine, who told the newspaper, "City employees aren’t paid to watch the Olympics on their computers or TV. That is not what the taxpayers are paying them to do. The question is where are the supervisors when this is going on?"
Though NBC is streaming video of the Games, watching such video requires proof of a cable or satellite subscription. Highlights of the Games also appear on the NBC Olympics YouTube page.
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The L.A. flap comes after Procter & Gamble shut down access for Pandora and Netflix for its 129,000 employees in April. Other companies, including Cadbury, Cintas, GE Aviation and Major League Baseball have also blocked or limited access to certain sites and apps that are known to hog bandwidth.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Davel5957
This story originally published on Mashable here.