Viral or Bacterial?

Some doctors do not like asking questions. But I have this chronic ‘disease’ of asking questions. Thus, once, when the doctor said:

“Its viral”

I responded:

“How do you know?”

Then I realized that how irritating such a question is, for a doctor. So I explained:

“I just want to know how you doctors comes to a conclusion that its viral”

That was the time I got introduced to this doctor and now he is sooooooo used to me. So, he will be surprised if I did not ask any question during a visit.

Last Friday, I went to meet him since my son was having a cold and cough. And in the present scenario, the school authorities ask for medical certificate even for a day’s absence. The doctor said:

“It’s viral only, but no need to worry”

(What he meant was, there is no need to suspect H1N1)

“......It looks like all the viruses are on a spree… did you notice that kid waiting outside? He has chickenpox; so I asked them to leave immediately..... This is not the season for that virus”

Yes, I noticed him asking me to sit in his consulting room and going outside (to attend that kid first)

“Oh, that’s interesting…usually that comes during summer..but its OK, my son already had chickenpox when he was small” I responded

“Yes, I know”

(True, but I did not expect him to remember that. So this guy has good memory, huh !)

So, how do these docs distinguish between a viral and bacterial infection?

If it is something like chickenpox, rabies (both viral), tuberculosis, syphilis (both bacterial) etc its easy for them.But what about a cold like symptom? A cough? Sore throat? Fever?

In reality, what matters is their experience (or gut feeling) if the patient visits the doc at a very early stage. Because without doing any test, they cant simply say its viral or bacterial, in the early stage. (that is one reason why they ask ‘when did it start?’…if our complaint was a cold with nasal discharge and suffering since 10 days or so, doc might rule out virus. Usually, virus infections won’t stay for more than a week. Our body will fight it out, if it can, within that period – I am talking about common cold and seasonal flu. But a bacterial infection can be chronic/ lengthy).

How can they confirm? Testing for a virus is a costly affair (plus there are very few virology labs compared to the regular labs) so what they do is checking whether its bacterial or not, if at all they want to test (usually the docs don’t suggest a test for seasonal diseases; at least my doc). Here, what they do a culture test (means taking a sample and keeping it in nutrient medium to observe whether there is bacterial multiplication. If it is positive, they conclude that its bacterial; if negative they assume that its viral).

But sometimes a viral cold can lead to bacterial infection (depends on many factors like a person's immunity, contact with infected person or surfaces etc). I have personally experienced this. This can be noticed by the color change in the nasal discharge. That is one reason why a doc sometimes prescribe an anti-biotic for a flu or cold, even though it has no direct impact on a virus. Usually, viral infections are fought out by our body using its immunity mechanism.

How do these infections differ and what is the difference between an antibiotic and antiviral?

Though it’s a silly answer, bacterial infections are caused by bacteria and viral infections are caused by virus. But the style of their attack is very different.

Virus is not a living organism and hence we can not kill them using a drug. Virus need a living host cell for their existence. They are just a shell made up of some proteins and organic compounds (means a compound which has carbon atom). Inside the shell, there is some genetic material (eg. materials found inside a nucleus) like DNA or RNA (explaining DNA and RNA is out of scope of this particular blog). They can’t reproduce themselves and hence they hijack our cells and ‘command’ them to produce their replica (virus). Usually they use up our cell and its resources, kills it, detach from the cell and moves on. One technique used in anti-viral drug is that it interferes with this detaching process in such a way that the virus can not detach. Thus we can control them.

But a bacterium is a living cell and hence it can reproduce by division. So they can survive even in non living environment (like a cell phone or door knob) for a long time and even multiply. They produce toxins and this will damage the cells that are infected by them. Since they are living, they can be killed and that is what an antibiotic do.

Its just one ‘aaaaaachum’ but there is a wonderful script behind this story…

419 Scam, Nigerian Bank Scam, Advance Fee Fraud, Russian Scam, Love Scam, Lottery Scam and so on

Most of us might have received at least one ‘419’ scam spam mail. The number 419 is related to some section related to Nigerian Criminal Code (said to be chapter 38, I don’t know). In practical sense, this section deals with obtaining wealth by cheating.


The typical mail tells that somebody died leaving millions of USD in a bank and asking our help to get it legally on a sharing basis (subject like might look like ‘need your assistance’). What happens we reply? They will ask us to send some money for legal consultation or to pay the attorney or something like that. This scam is also known as ‘Advance Money Scam’.


What if we send the money? Well, they will update us about the progress and ask us to send more money and this goes on and on.


The scam is said to be originated in African countries and even today most of the criminals involved in such scams are from Africa (mainly Nigeria). Recently one of them got arrested while visiting India (he successfully cheated some people here).


Another flavor is ‘Love Scam’. Here we might get a mail from our opposite sex saying they have fallen love with us. If we reply, they plan their next step accordingly. They collect our mail id mostly from social network or dating sites. Many people we add up are fakes (though they have their pics and every detail. If we do a google, we can find out some of the sample pictures they commonly use). Another version of this cheating is the ‘You have won a lottery’ mail.


The other day, I signed up for a penpal site and the very next day, I got a mail which read:



HelloMy name is Miss Rose am 24yr old . I saw your profile today on allpenpals.com and it really acttract me alot i believe that you are the man i have been looking for to share my love; How is your health? i hope all is well with you. I believe that we can move from here ; but remember that distance;age and colour dose not matter what matters is the true love and understanding; in my next e-mail i shall include my pictuer; i been waithing for your reply mail me with this mail address (rose.frank83@yahoo.co.uk) for further introduction.Bye hopeing to hear from you soon. pLs contact me with this mail (rose.frank83@yahoo.co.uk)

I wanted to test how they respond if I reply. So, I said 'If you mean a friendship, you are welcome'. Within 6 hours, I got a reply:

(I came to know that irrespective of the reply we give, they sends same reply with one of the pic they use for this purpose)

My Dear,I am more than happy in your reply to my mail.How was your day today? .Mine a little hot over here in Dakar Senegal.My name is Miss Rose (24years) single and never married, i am from monrovia in west Africa and presently i am residing in the refugee camp here in Dakar Senegal as a result of the civil war that was fought in my country last three years.My late father Dr FRANK BENSON was the chairman managing director of(FRANK BENSON INDUSTRIAL COMPANY LTD),in MONROVIA the capital of my country,and he was also the personal advicer to the former head of state before the rebels attacked our house one early morning and killed my mother and my father in a cold blood.It was only me that is alive now and i managed to make my way to a nearby country Senegal where i am living now as a refugee.I would like to know more about you.Your likes and dislikes,your hobbies and what you are doing presently.I will tell you more about myself in my next mail.I have Attached my picture in my mail bye and have a nice day.Hopeing to hear from you soonest. Miss Rose.

(I traced the mail and it originated from Senegal; or they successfully changed the IP)



Miss Rose !!!

For which I replied:

‘Good try, but you got the wrong guy’, the result was…

The next mail was from one Ms.Gloria Pattugalan from Philippines !. This was a real surprise for me and could be a pure coincidence. I hardly think that those criminals know of my Philippine connections. But this time the mail originated from Czech Republic.


The mail reads as follows:

Hello,My name is Ms.Gloria Pattugalan, daughter of Late Judge Nathaniel Pattugalan of Philippines. My father survived an attempt murder in life on the 27th of October 2005. And was killed 19th of January 2007.Since the first attempt till date his murderers have not been identified .I am afraid of my life because i believe his death has to do with the government or politicians because my father was against corruption.After the first attempt on my father's life, he went to secure US$3 Million outside the country.I would want you to assist me retrieve this money,so that i will come to live a new life in your country.Yours sincerelyGloria Pattugalan


This time I wish to reply :


“NO NO, wait, don’t come to my country, with USD $3 million, we can buy a small private island in Philippines with nice white sand beach and then we live happily ever after…”


The first thing one should do if one gets such a mail is to mark it as Spam and ignore it. If got accidently opened, just delete the mail. Or if you want some time pass, give them some stupid reply (at your own risk since I don’t know what will happen to you if the other guy gets arrested one day and the police trace all the contacts [for police, your stupid answer could be ‘code words’])


What if somebody don’t want to ignore it but want to know more about it? One can get lots of information from here, including samples of most of the mails getting circulated:


http://www.419scam.org/

Content Filter

Which is an easy way to filter internet content to safeguard kids (for example) against porn etc?

There are some exclusive parental control software applications available for this purpose. And some internet security suites too provide such features. But we need to pay for the good ones. There are some free browser based filters too, which I think lacks flexibility.

So, is there any free and flexible application for this purpose?

I don’t know whether this is the best and you can’t filter individual words too, but still one can give OpenDNS a try.

OpenDNS is a DNS service. It is said to be fast and reliable too. (Why you need another DNS service? Sometimes our default DNS might fail to resolve addresses. For example we might have experienced a situation where our internet works but can not go to specific sites owned by yahoo, google, Microsoft etc. This could be because of DNS issue. With OpenDNS, there is no or less chance for such situations).

This is what company says about them:

“OpenDNS is the leading provider of free security and infrastructure services that make the Internet safer through integrated Web content filtering, anti-phishing and DNS. OpenDNS services enable consumers and network administrators to secure their networks from online threats, reduce costs and enforce Internet-use policies. OpenDNS is used today by millions of users and organizations around the world.”

OK, back to content filtering. OpenDNS offers a decent content filtering service. What we have to do is to route our data through their servers by changing our DNS settings. For that, all we need to do is visit

http://www.opendns.com/

and press ‘Start using OpenDNS. And Press ‘Computer’ in case what we want to configure is our computer (we can configure our mobile, router etc too). They provide very good assistance (plus they have a forum, video tutorial, support and blog too, in case we need more info). Just follow the instructions depending on your Operating System.

If we want to keep things permanent, we need to create an account (free), so that we can add our network and manage accordingly. Once it’s done, all we need to do is go to ‘Settings’ Tab and select the filtering level. It is better we use ‘Custom’ since we have the choice to decide what to filter and what not to filter. If we want to allow or block a particular site, that too is possible.
Once done, press ‘Apply’ and sign-out, its done !

But what if we are using Dynamic IP? That is, the IP that changes every time we switch off and switch on our modem? All we need to do is download a (free) Updater application provided by them and install it. This will take care of the rest by refreshing the IP address automatically.

Last, but not at all the least, READ THE PRIVACY POLICY before you use this service. Just like all other free sites, OpenDNS too collects your IP address. This too uses cookies and collects some basic information. And don’t forget to read the FAQ, when you get time.

Some fun/game applications available with some social networking sites get our consent (when we start using it) even to use the entire content we have with our profile including the photos we upload. So, make it a habit to read the Privacy policy when you are availing any service over internet, irrespective of what it is.

Note:

DNS- Domain Name System. Every site we visit has some numerical address like our street and door number. This is the Internet Protocol Address or IP address. (Here, protocol means a set of standardized communication rules using which data can be sent from one computer to another over internet). It is a difficult task to remember long numbers for every site and hence there is this Name resolving system. For example, when we type http://www.google.com in the browser’s address bar, our DNS server (all of us have one, provided by our Internet Service Provider) translates it into 74.125.19.103 (I think so; it can be a different number for you). If you want to find the IP address of any particular site, do the following, for windows users:

Press Start – Run

You will get a command window. Here, type:

Ping www.google.com (I mean the name of any site you want to check)

Then connection will be established and you can see a message like:

‘pinging www.google.com [74.125.19.103] …

The number we see in brackets is the IP address.

Type ‘exit’ without quotes to come out of the window

Understanding H1N1

The WHO declared swine flu as a pandemic (an epidemic that is geographically widespread; occurring throughout a region or even throughout the world). So far it is the pandemic of 2009.There was panic around the world. What is this H1N1?

I am NOT talking about the symptoms or treatments or precautions to be taken or what one should do or what one should not do or when to meet a doc or diagnose or treat the flu or anything like that. What I discuss here is some very basics about the virus that cause swine flu.

What is A(H1N1)?

That is the technical name given to a virus that cause flu or what is called ‘swine flu’. There are basically three categories of virus that can cause influenza or flu in humans and they are Influenzavirus A,B and C. The swine flu virus belong to Influenza A virus family (Orthomyxoviridae family, to be specific).

Why is it called swine flu?

Swine flu has three stages. This virus can cause flu in pigs. This flu can spread from pig to pig and that is the first stage. Then this flu virus enters into humans (and undergoes some modifications) who are taking care of these infected pigs and that is the second stage. At the third stage, virus spreads from to human to human and that is what we are facing now. As we can see, the roots points to pig and hence somebody named it swine flu. But the cause of infection is NOT eating (cooked) pork.

Why this virus is named H1N1? Or what dose those number mean?

H (or HA) stands for hemagglutinin and N stands for neuraminidase. These two are proteins found on the surface of the virus. The number was given on the basis of its form/type. So far, 16 variants of HA has been identified (H1 to H16). Same is the case with N. There are 9 types of neuraminidase (N1 to N9). Swine flu virus has H1 type of hemagglutinin and N1 type of neuraminidase (other than these two proteins, an Influenza A virus has 9 more proteins in them).

Why does H1N1 cause pneumonia?

Not just the H1N1 but the all the viruses that comes under Influenza A category are said to be pneumotropic. That means these viruses have some special affinity for lung tissues. That is the reason why some people developed pneumonia after getting infected by H1N1 flu virus. People who had earlier history of lung related diseases are more prone to develop pneumonia and not every one who gets infected by H1N1.

Finally, how serious is H1N1 infection?

A very healthy person might not require any antiviral medicine (like Tamiflu). A combination of rest and nutrition is what our body needs to fight it out in most of the cases. It is like any other seasonal flu and mortality ratio (about 1%) is not very high (or that is what I understand from the statistics given by W.H.O). In MANY of the death cases, it is said that, those died had some history of other illness (like pneumonia, high blood sugar, asthma, bronchitis, hypertension etc or people who are less immune – means who used to catch seasonal diseases almost all the time).

Yahoo Status Message - How to Delete

When we keep changing our status messages in yahoo messenger (version 9), it goes on and on and becomes a long drop-down list. It’s not easy clearing the list. So how do we do that?

This is how we can solve that, on a windows based system. We are going to play with windows registry so, be DOUBLE WARNED. Do not mess up anything, else the system may not even boot. But done carefully, there is nothing to worry.

Sign-out from yahoo messenger

Start-Run (or press windows key + R key).

Type ‘regedit’ (without quotes) and press Enter

Go to - HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Yahoo\pager\profiles

We can see the list of all the usernames that had been used to sign-in; select /expand yours

(Single) click on ‘Custom Msgs’

On the right hand side, we can see the list of current messages. There will be two entries each for every message (1_DND & 1_W, 2_DND & 2_W and so on). To delete a message, just delete the corresponding pair (look for the first digit) of entries (by selecting it and pressing Del button, and confirm it)

Exit from registry editor. Done

How to find Yahoo Avatar?

Is it possible to find the yahoo avatar/display image of someone who is not my contact?

Oh yeah… it doesn’t matter whether somebody is your contact or not. Yahoo is a socialist in this aspect. It should work if they don’t change the server. You can use any browser. Just type in the following URL.

http://img.msg.yahoo.com/avatar.php?yids=?(id you want to check)

That is, if the user id you want to check is ‘ yahoo25’, it should be:

http://img.msg.yahoo.com/avatar.php?yids=?yahoo25

Why Knuckle Pop?

“What is that sound we hear when we crack our knuckle?”

I remember my son asking me this, couple of years ago…

I had asked this very same question when I was a kid. That time, I got different answers. Some
said its bones sliding over…some said they don’t know…Some said its a bad habit…Some, told me that it would lead to arthritis and hence asked me to not to do that. But what is the reality?
Instead of telling what not it is, it is better we understand what it is. Simply put, that sound is coz of some gas bubble (mostly nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide) bursting.

Knuckle is a joint and just like any other joint its covered by a capsule form which is called synovial capsule. Inside this capsule there is some fluid called synovial fluid. The major function of this fluid is lubrication. There are many gases dissolved in this fluid. When we crack a knuckle, we stretch the capsule that creates a low pressure inside the joint which results in a vacuum and some already dissolved gas gets released. This vacuum then gets filled by these gases which then form a bubble and finally bursts (at the peak of we applying the pressure to crack) resulting into that funny sound. It take some time for the process of gas getting dissolved in the synovial fluid again and hence we cant crack a knuckle immediately.

Now the ‘what is not’ part. As I mentioned earlier, some people even told me its coz of the ends of two bones touching and slipping over and hence it will lead to arthritis. As far as the bones touching part is concerned, it is wrong. Will it lead to arthritis? As of now, we can’t say. Coz nobody has done a solid study which resulted in sufficient data to prove it. But the health pro people thinks that habitual knuckle cracking can lead to some damage to tendons or ligaments (this can further lead to arthritis, depending on many other factors like age, nature of work etc - a possibility, since that is the case with knee joints ).

I remember, when I was practicing Karate, during the warm-up stretches we used to interlink our fingers and stretch the hand forward resulting in knuckle cracking. Why we do this is coz this makes that joints little more lose and thus flexible. This is not believed to be harmful.

Keygen

How are keygens made?

Ok, applications which ask for a serial number knows which right ones are or which are wrong ones. That means there is some mechanism (a chunk of code) which compares the serial we enter with ‘something’. Here, what is important is that something, which is a valid key/serial.

There are applications like SoftICE (a debugger) which can be used to ‘open’ the application, (or the exe file) and see the code in assembly language. And it allows to keep a break point when this comparison is done. That is, when you enter the serial and when the application compares this with something, the control goes back to the SoftICE and one can see the code.

So, is it that easy? Nope. Many a times some number or alpha numeral is generated using some tough logic. So, it all depends on how well one can understand this part. Then the programmer uses his/her favorite programming language (mostly C (family), VB or Delphi) to code a keygen . Usually they make use of windows API/dll and link them dynamically to make the size of the keygen tiny.

WinZip Alternative

I get technical (computer related) questions from some of my friends and acquaintances, just like I ask about stuffs I don’t know but they know. Many a times it helped me understand some concepts better, or made me think, or sometimes it even demanded some research from my side. It can be useful to others also. So, I thought me blog a couple of them.

Q: I use WinZip evaluation copy.. Can you get me a serial? Is there any other software I can use?

A: It’s not a big deal to get a serial for your WinZip. Yes, there are many WinZip alternatives. If you are not specific about WinZip, I suggest you to ditch the idea of getting a serial and go for an alternative. Why don’t you try 7 Zip? It has three major advantages over WinZip.

It’s free.
It takes 80% less space (WinZip12 takes about 14 MB space where as 7 zip takes less than 3 MB).
Its open source.

If you want high compression rate, you can go for KGB Achiever. Its purpose is not to compress small text files and hence its not resource friendly.

Friends of Google Talk

If we want to chat with somebody who is using a Google Talk, do we need to install Google Talk?

No need.

The protocol used by GTalk is XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol). So, if any other IM client uses this protocol (in simple words, a protocol is a set of rules and regulations or dos and donts or hows and hownots that are considered as a standard by respective bodies, in connection with connection, communication and data transfer between two computers) they can be in touch with a GTalk user.

So, is there any other IM that uses XMPP? There are a lot. Jabber’s messaging technology is based on this. Thus we can use any Jabber client (like Psi…but there are a lot now since its open source.. Gajim, Jabbim, Miranda, Spark, Tkabber, Pandion, Exodus, Mchat, Jeti , Pidgin, etc etc). The iChat, which comes with Mac also uses XMPP.

(some of these IM clients (eg. Pidgin) support multi-protocol and hence thy are compatible with most of the IMs like Gtalk, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, AIM, etc)

Is there any advantage or disadvantage in using some other application to chat with a Google user? One major advantage of using an open source client is that its code is open and we can make sure that its not spying on us. Another advantage is the extra features many other clients offer. For example the Psi offers lots of emoticons and more status message options. If it is open source, nobody else is putting their head (server) into your affairs or sniffing your passwords.

The major disadvantage is that we can’t use voice chat. But that is still the case with Google Talk Labs edition too. So, if one is not into voice chat, there is choice.

SPIM

We all know what is a spam and we get at least one per day. But what is a SPIM?

Those who are after sending spam is not ready to spare even the Instant Messenger (IM - like yahoo, ICQ, MSN, Gtalk…) users. When we are online, we get unsolicited messages from persons we don’t know. This also is a kind of spam.

When a SPam is received in IM, it is called SPIM !

Naked Singularity

What happens when a measure (space time curvature as per general gravity theory or density of matter) of gravitational force becomes infinite?

Then we call it gravitational singularity. The best example to understand this (theory) is to consider a black hole. What is believed is, at the center of a black hole, the density is infinite. This is coz the mass is compressed to zero volume. So, this situation is a singularity. But we cant see any such thing since black holes wont allow even the light to escape. So, we can’t ‘see’ any such thing.

We have another theory. Here the singularity can be observed. I think this theory came into existence from a thought ‘can we see the collapse of an object to infinite density?’ . If somebody says NO with solid proof, then this theory will not exist. Since it’s not proved that way, the theory exists and such (observable) singularity is called Naked Singularity!