Comment Re:AdBlock's useless (Score 1) 160
Pray tell us how to use hosts files through a proxy server.
It's the proxy server that looks up the host names, not your local resolver.
Also, how well does it work with wildcards? There are ad companies that use thousands of random hosts, of the form 47db.adcompany.com, 1a74.adcompany.com, 357f.adcompany.com. With a hosts file, you have to fill out every single possible entry ahead of time, because it doesn't take a wildcard like *.adcompany.com.
Nor does it block IP addresses. How would you use a hosts file to block http://61.174.51.194/ ?
Never mind that big hosts files slow down the system, because it is traversed linearly, not through a hash like better resolve (and blocking) mechanisms.
Using hosts files was viable up until the late 80s, but now it is a joke.