Running openwrt on my router and hating advertisements, I decided to look into dnsmasq's possibilities. And indeed it supports hard binding of addresses to Domain names.

adding to dnsmasq.conf, and putting a file generated by http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/ in there (as ablock.conf) quite securely blocks all ads on my network (and from basic testing, it seems that even ads at the beginning of flash videos are filtered out. YAY!).

I know using /etc/hosts...

That was the argument used by my grandfather when I told him to reboot...into Archlinux if he wanted to work efficiently. "What doesn't Linux have?" was my natural response. "Linux doesn't have my documents, Linux doesn't have the software for my Kodak digital camera, and for my pulse monitoring device" I admit I had to concede the last point. Try explaining the difference between storing/accessing data and running a program : in both cases its just a click on an icon. So Linux...

Eyecandy, some might claim it useless; I say sure it is, but it sure is nice... Take an old PC : Athlon 1gHz, 320MB RAM, and a Radeon 9200SE, try running windows with eyecandy on it (Vista? no way; XP possible but quickly bloated). Now I take Linux, install compiz-fusion and fire away those nice effects... PC still as responsive as ever, GNOME still as nice (even nicer) and an overall wobbly experience.

Well, I got my hands on my old computer, and Gentoo was still installed.a little emerge --sync, and DB was updated, then a little emerge -u world and no computer for 3 days. but passed from gnome 2.14 to gnome 2.16, and many other upgrades.
After a bit of troubleshooting, its working like charm again.

A little more tweaking, and Beryl is here!!!! Those raindrops are really funny, and the wiper, LOL.