In all seriousness...
Anyone NOT using the MVPS hosts file is exposing themselves to a LOT more risk than those who are. As a leading-edge security software company Avast should be well aware of that, and should in fact embrace the concept - not make software that's incompatible with it!
With the ability to drop load new software at any time, why wasn't this fixed hours after the latest MPVS hosts file was released (assuming that's the version that broke it)?
The question takes on even more significance if Avast actually released AvastEmUpdate with an inherent incompatibility with the existing hosts file at the time (I don't know whether this was true). I do know the latest hosts file was released on December 6 - two weeks ago.
I'm sorry to be blunt, but 20 years experience and 200 million trusting users don't count for much if you screw up in a way a high school programmer could avoid - then LEAVE it screwed up even with a state-of-the-art cloud-integrated software update system.
I'm not at all happy to have to move aside the hosts file to facilitate Avast's software updates, and it again makes me wonder whether Avast! should be my security software of choice. This needs to be fixed! Hell, why isn't it already fixed since yesterday afternoon, when I first reported the problem was a conflict with the hosts file?
-Noel