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Lifting The Lid On Computer Filth
IainMH writes "There's a story over at BBC News about how work stations contain nearly 400 times as many microbes than lavatories. Gross. 'A desk is capable of supporting 10 million bacteria and the average office contains 20,961 germs per square inch, according to research. ... By contrast, the average toilet seat contains 49 germs per square inch, the survey showed.'"
Old news? Workstations 'Dirtier Than Toilets' /. article Mon May 13, '02 02:43 PM.
;-)
Same story at CNN
At least... if you're working at your workstation its 'your' bacterias and not some others ass/shit/piss?
I guess we shouldn't be surprised. Most of us sneeze on our hands, not our asses.
Every windows user is a sadomasochist.
Does this mean I have to stop using the top of my computer as a food tray? It was so convinient to be able to place a plate and glass on top of the case while I'm working.
"Oh dear, she's stuck in an infinite loop and he's an idiot" -Prof. Farnsworth (Futurama)
Of course they're filthier! Toilets just have people sitting on them. There's no end to the fetishes explored on personal workstations across the globe!
I guarantee you, if you cleaned your toilet as often as you clean your computer, it would (a) be utterly filthy, and (b) reek like nothing you've ever experienced before.
the "lick test"
lick a public toilet seat you'll probably get real sick
lick your desk and your work mates will just think you're a freak.
Here's to finally giving Bush his exit strategy in November
Not only is this old news (I remember hearing about how keyboards are more germy than toilets years and years ago), but its also not even that surprising if you stop to think about it, as the average toilet is disinfected quite regularly while the average workstation/keyboard is almost never even subjected to a basic dusting or wash, let alone a disinfectant.
Yeah, it's gross, but not at all surprising... I work in a cube farm where it's pretty much common knowledge that touching any of the equipment is going to be worse bacteria-wise than doing pushups on the mensroom floor (one of the stranger things I've seen in my cube farm days). And when you consider that equipment is shared between people on different shifts, and how strongly people are discouraged from calling in sick when they're sick, you start to get a very good picture of the kind of biological warfare taking place in the cracks between the keys. You can pick up more germs in this office by typing "WMD" than you would pick up from being attacked with one.
And don't even get me started on the transmission of scabies in shared upholstered swiveling office chairs...
[Z?]
Seriously. All manner of filth just accumulates just below the keys.
I'd like to know why no one has come up with a decent, washable keyboard. Most of the ones on the market are way too expensive are just too impratical. Are there some engineering problems with the design? Outside of the whole water-and-electricity-don't-mix thing I mean.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Everything is dirtier than a toilet! It's really that simple. Everyone should start making things out of toilets.
1) Find everything to be dirtier than toilets
2) Make things out of toilets
3) Profit!
There's no missing step! Well, except that these things will not actually be toilets, and thus will be found dirtier than toilets. But why? Because people know that toilets are "dirty", and thus clean them! So many things are assumed to be clean because they are not specifically used in a way that would seem to make them dirty, and so they don't get cleaned. No story here, move along.
Really, when you think of your computer area, you don't think of bacteria as you would when you think about a bathroom, so you're less inclined to clean it to the extent you would a bathroom. But either way, pretty much everything else is as equally as bacteria ridden. It's like the test they did on Myth Busters where they tested to see if a tooth brush left by the toilet would really pick up fecal matter, and they found out that tooth brushes all over the building had the same amount of fecal matter on them after a month of use.
Buckethead
I never have understood this obsession of counting the number of small living creatures around us. Now, count what behaviors/locations are more likely to make us actually sick, and you've got my interest, but it's pretty rare I see a study that actually says something along the lines of "cleaning with anti-bacterials will reduce the likelyhood of you getting sick" (in fact, I've only seen ones that show no difference).
The human body has evolved to be pretty capable of protecting against the things around us people now call "gross", and the rarer diseases that we come in contact with generally aren't stopped by staying "clean" anyhow.
Up here in the Great White North we had a bit of a pinkeye outbreak a few years ago. There was a particularly virulent strain that made its way onto campus, and spread like crazy via all the public computer keyboards. Word on the street was that between half and two-thirds of the campus might have had pinkeye that winter. The CDC even sent some people up to study it. Just goes to show what a few dirty keyboards can do.
As long as you power it down AFAP (yank from wall if necessary) water is not that damamging to electronics. If not cleaned up it can delaminate PCBs and destroy caps, but if left off and dried well it'll work fine. Other things, esp sticky thinks (soda, get your minds outa the gutter...) can be cleaned up by rinsing with water and then drying. Not a fix 100% of the time, but usually works out pretty well.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Best not to stick the keyboard in your colon either.
Damn microsoft natural keyboard
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
...when the mods consider "don't pick your asshole and THEN use the keyboard" to be informative. Is slashdot hygiene really this awful?
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.