The Calorie Lie

Disclaimer: The following post is a thought exercise. It is not intended to provide medical or nutritional advice. In general, you should probably not believe anything you read in this post unless you have verified it with your own doctor or to your own satisfaction.

The premise:
Calories as a measurement in food means very little to the point of almost nothing.

The caveat:
This doesn't mean that you can eat as many calories as you want. This means that calories aren't the number you're looking for to control weight.

What's a calorie?
Basically, it's the amount of heat required to raise one kilogram of water one degree Celsius (or its equivalent value of food when converted to energy in the body.)

Why is that considered important to diet?
Here's the problem. A person is considered to "consume" calories. A person doesn't consume calories. A person consumes fat, fiber, protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, etc. Calories are merely a byproduct (or measurement) of the consumption. Calories burned can tell you how much time/effort it takes to convert the amount of fat, fiber, protein, carbohydrate, vitamins, minerals, etc into heat (supposedly, therefore not into fat). In essence, you aren't burning calories. You are converting food into heat/energy. How much heat it would take to do that ... that is calories.

What's the point?
In short, there are probably two numbers that make any difference to diet (weight loss): Carbohydrates (minus fiber content) and Fat. Keeping both numbers low (carbohydrates minus fiber in the 40-50g range per meal, for instance) would substantially reduce calorie count anyway (which, if one is counting calories, this would be bonus.) Following along, it's easy to see that raw fruits and vegetables (not grains like corn and wheat) are an easy accompaniment that can fill the "hunger" void without adding to the fat and carbohydrates numbers.

Bypass transparent squid proxy smoothwall

vi /etc/rc.d/rc.firewall.up

find #squid
before #squid, use the following (all one line, ie RETURN is after -j on the same line):

/sbin/iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i $GREEN_DEV -p tcp --dport 80 -d yourBypassProxyDomainHere.com -j RETURN

save and exit

Run this to restart iptables

/etc/rc.d/rc.netaddress.down; /etc/rc.d/rc.netaddress.up

done.

OK, *I* wasn't done, because I'm using Full Firewall Control addon, which basically negates anything done in rc.firewall.up (the source code for FFC itself says flush iptables before parsing FFC list.)
So, to bypass proxy for specific addresses in smoothwall via Full Firewall Control, ping the [domain to bypass dansguardian] to get the ip, and set it up as GREEN from anywhere, port 80, to RED (ip address of bypass domain) method TCP Allow. Funny, that seems easier than I'd have thought.

DNS Blackhole.conf update

This information is probably 2-3 years old by the time you see this, but I'm recording it for posterity.

In Smoothwall 2, there's an application that updates /etc/blackhole.conf, but it hasn't done that in a while because the old site www.bleedingthreats.net doesn't provide spyware blacklists updates.

A replacement can be found from malwaredomains.

Simply edit:
/usr/local/bin/blackhole.pl

Change $host entry to www.malwaredomains.com
change $get entry to /files/spywaredomains.zones

That's all.

DNS lookups failed for a specific site

I've been using Sprint Embarq CenturyLink DNS IPs for my business network (Windows Server, but it's the provider fault, not the server config):
204.117.214.10 199.2.252.10 and they failed resolving my own (personal) domain. My DNS settings of my server forward there, and I really didn't *want* to change to higher, but it seemed to do a better job choosing a higher level DNS: one of 4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3, 4.2.2.4, 4.2.2.5, 4.2.2.6 (or I could probably have tried OpenDNS...)

Props to EddieOnEverything for his post.

ComboFix *not* currently down

You can google this, but essentially, it appears that a certain rootkit *might* cause combofix to delete all system files. You shouldn't use combofix.exe until it reappears on bleepingcomputer.com. Also, please don't attempt to host combofix.exe yourself.

I'm posting as a service because I've suggested using combofix in the past. I have no other association with sUBs or combofix or bleeping computer.

Updated 10/16/09 14:25:
There has been released a BETA that apparently doesn't do the bad things... I suggest following BleepinComputer for updated info.

Updated 12/28/09 18:05:
Apparently, combofix has been erm... fixed. Thanks for stopping by.

Windows 7 x64 RDP connection fails to 32 bit XP or 2000

Problem: RDP/Terminal service connection hangs when connecting Windows 7 64 bit to windows XP 32 bit or Windows 2000 Terminal Services.
Quick answer: turn off audio forwarding in the Windows 7 64 bit RDP client under "experience".

A global warming rant

Read: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/copenhagen/article6956783.ece
And yet, nobody actually tells us what it will take to increase the arctic ice. Given that CO₂ is a lagging indicator (some say it's a feedback to global warming. Nobody explains why it's not simply a by-product.)

I think they're saying if the entire world shuts down for a few years we could get the ice back. But I thought the CO₂ was there for 3000 years? I submit that anything that will happen in 5-10 years is going to happen regardless of whatever is accomplished at Copenhagen. It will take that long before most things get implemented and/or effective. And then what? What if the earth is simply doing what it is doing to get rid of humanity? Won't that simply fix its own problem?

ThinkGeek :: Scrolling LED Name Badge II

ThinkGeek :: Scrolling LED Name Badge II

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This scrolling LED badge was a hit at a recent Christmas Party. Be sure to store multiple messages (up to 6) before heading out!