« This voter probably is not undecided… | Home | Recent Comments | Categories | Todd Akin, GOP Senate candidate: ‘Legitimate rape’ rarely causes pregnancy »
You can’t block Facebook using Windows 8′s hosts file
[Quote]:
While you can still add any host you want to the hosts file and map it to an IP, you will notice that some of the mappings will get reset once you open an Internet browser. If you only save, close and re-open the hosts file you will still see the new mappings in the the file, but once you open a web browser, some of them are removed automatically from the hosts file.
Two of the sites that you can’t block using the hosts file are facebook.com and ad.doubleclick.net, the former the most popular social networking site, the second a popular ad serving domain.
Anybody have Windows 8 installed and to try this?
This voter probably is not undecided…
Heat Shield, Meet Mars
[Quote]:
This sequence of images shows the heat shield from NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory hitting the ground on Mars and raising a cloud of dust. The images were taken by the Mars Descent Imager on the mission’s Curiosity rover while the rover was still suspended on a parachute, after the spacecraft had jettisoned the heat shield.A dark spot, the shadow of the heat shield, enters the scene from lower left, moving toward the center. The bright heat shield itself is also apparent just before the shadow and hardware meet in the impact on the surface. The area of ground visible in the images is about six-tenths of a mile (1 kilometer) across. The frames shown here are cropped portions of full-frame images from the Mars Descent Imager.
The sequence includes 25 frames, repeated in five run-throughs for this presentation. The action is full speed in the first, fourth and fifth run-throughs. It is one-half and one-eighth speeds in the second and third run-throughs.
kitten vs TWO scary things (котенок против ДВУХ неведомых хреней)
|
Out of all the rocks on Mars
[Quote]:
The Curiosity rover is preparing to use its rock vaporizing laser for the first time, on a rock labelled as N165. Rock N165 has a twitter account. People are chatting to it.
Phone book publisher tries to silence critic with legal bullying
[Quote]:
Phone bookEverybody in the Netherlands still receives the paper phone guide once every year, whether they want to or not, even though in these days of Google and the Internet it is nothing but a vehicle for advertisements.
To help stop this form of harassment, a guy called Alexander Klöpping has registered a URL called sterftelefoongidssterf.nl (diephonebookdie) which redirects to the phone book cancellation form. In other words, if you want the phone book to be eliminated (‘die’) from your life, follow that link. (Actually don’t follow it, De Telefoongids are known to ignore your cancellation request anyway.)
Last Monday Klöpping received a threatening e-mail by the publishers of the phone book, a subsidiary of European Directories, that tells him he is engaged in trademark violation and that he must cease and desist.
|
Limousine Horse
And Now Facebook’s Bankers Are Divvying Up The $100 Million They Made Shorting Facebook’s Stock
[Quote]:
Wall Street bankers were paid extremely handsomely to sell the $16 billion of stock they sold on the Facebook IPO. Specifically, they were paid $176 million in fees.(Investors who bought Facebook’s stock on the IPO, meanwhile, have since lost $8 billion).
But that was only the beginning.
Right now, reports Lynn Cowan of the Wall Street Journal, while Facebook investors digest the fact that the stock has now dropped to $19 from an IPO price of $38, Facebook’s bankers are divvying up another $100 million they made on the Facebook stock, this time in a much less visible fashion.
How did the bankers make this second bonanza?
By shorting Facebook’s stock.
(and the fun part is: this is by design, and expected. It’s called a Green Shoe, based on the first company IPO they did this on)
|
Stride Mintacular
|
Non-voters prefer Obama
[Quote]:
But what about the nearly 40% of adult American citizens (both registered and unregistered) who choose not to vote? That’s 80 million people who are eligible to vote but can’t be bothered. What do they think? Do they even know who is running? Why don’t they vote?
In a ground-breaking study, Suffolk University ran a poll of American adults and then selected out the unlikely voters, rather than the likely voters, for analysis. They are not a politically aware bunch: 61% could not name the current Vice President. Also noteworthy is that 59% said they don’t pay attention to politics because nothing ever gets done. It is just a bunch of empty promises. Of these nonvoters, 55% view President Obama favorably while only 25% view Mitt Romney favorably. Clearly, Obama doesn’t have to convince them he is the better candidate. He only has to convince them that he could make a difference in their lives.
The top reason for not voting is that they have no time. The recent spate of state laws passed by Republican-controlled legislatures to reduce early voting, require voter ID cards, and create other barriers to voting are all designed to discourage these 80 million people from voting. They know that if this huge group starts voting in large numbers, they are doomed, so the motto here is: “Let sleeping dogs lie.”
|
Bill Gates invests in solar-powered toilet
US billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates is investing in a solar-powered toilet for the developing world that will use little or no water.
The need for a new type of toilet is an important part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s push to improve health in the developing world, officials familiar with the project said.
Now that is a good use of all that money I’ve spent on Microsoft products over the last 20 years.
|
To correct the misinformation:
turning off Windows Defender, which basically is Microsoft Security Essentials, in Windows 8 will resolve the issue. It appears that the program has been designed to protect some hosts from being added to the Windows hosts file. To turn off Windows Defender press the Windows key, type Windows Defender and hit enter. This launches the program. Switch to Settings here and select Administrator on the left. Locate Turn on Windows Defender and uncheck the preference and click save changes afterwards.
If you do not want to disable Windows Defender completely, you can alternatively add the hosts file to the list of excluded files and processes. You do that with a on Settings > Excluded files and locations. This basically blocks Windows Defender from scanning or manipulating the hosts file in the operating system.
Sounds like a bug if this is the only way it can distinguish FB from malware.