Software inside, footwear outside
Sometime in the early nineties, when I was in school, when the eight-letter word C-O-M-P-U-T-E-R was considered nothing less than a machine with divine intelligence (and they called it AI!), capable of performing tasks ranging from processing of complicated accounts in a grocery store to launching of a rocket in NASA, I remember this funny poster (printed from an incredibly slow and lowest quality dot-matrix printer) stuck outside my computer lab in school that said, "Software inside, footwear outside"; as if, the computer lab were a place of worship and the computers themselves, the avtaars of gods! Not to forget the lab in-charge staff and computer sirs/ma'ams, who were considered messengers of these gods. All this hype, for a couple of old and rickety 386 machines with MS-DOS (one of them even had Windows 95!) installed in them! Whenever we passed the computer lab, we'd see the staffs sitting in front of the computer, with their legs crossed and fingers on their chins, giving a sophisticated expression on their faces. Wish I had a camera then. If I did, I would've slowly panned it behind these guys and showed the entire world what they were actually doing -- playing solitaire.Coming back to the funny notice stuck outside the lab, when we asked the faculties why we had to leave our footwear outside and how wearing it inside the lab would affect the computers, one of them replied, "You see, there are lot of viruses and bacteria inside your shoes and chappals. If you wear it and come inside, the viruses will attack the computers and destroy the confidential software data!"
And these people were considered the tech geeks of the so-called fifth generation of computers.
I still wonder why we were asked to leave our footwear outside the computer lab. Was it just my school, or was that a universal rule then? Hmmm...nobody has given me a convincing reply till date.
Comments
And.. did your teacher really think that this is the virus that affects softwares?? Glad she didn't say the computers will catch a cold :P
This is the case even in colleges. The reason they quote is its the only AC room in the whole lot of buildings
and so it must be clean and tidy. But these hard and fast rules are only for the students and not for the professors. But i personally feel if there r no shoe marks.. the place remains tidy and the administration would take no pains to clean them then!!
My teacher did relate this to the biological virus! But, we consoled ourselves since it was our Sanskrit teacher who thought so. However, what disappointed us was the fact that our Computer teacher actually kept quiet when our Sanskrit teacher said that, as if she concurred with him :-D
And what business did our Sanskrit teacher have in the computer lab, you may ask. He came there to play solitaire *grin*
I think you're right. I remember to have done the same in college as well. As for the administration not taking pains to clean just one single room, I think they should start applying this principle to all the buildings in the college...and that goes to say, that everyone in the college would have to roam around with bare feet :-D
Thanks for wandering by!
keep writing things like this. it tingles my past memories. haha
never thought of that! always thought it was to avoid dirt being dragged into the labs.
also because computers run better with the aroma of smelly feet.
Your name is giving me a hint that you are a good adviser. I need some advices as well. Please do visit my blog.
Do check out my blog!
@Sahefa: Don't judge people by their names ;-) Anyway, thanks for stopping by! And I sure will visit your blog!
@Shruti: Point noted! And thanks for that! Am blog-rolling you too :)
You've been tagged. I wonder if you've done this earlier, but no harm in trying again :P
Regarding tagging, I was never tagged in the past, though I've read several such posts in other blogs. As for the punishment, anything is fine as long as it's not corporal :)
LKS