Existing users won't be affected much: what works for them now will work for the foreseeable future. But that smartphone you're going to buy a year or so down the road -- it's quite possible that it will be IPv6-only on the cellular-radio side (3G or whatever the provider uses for data).

Why? Existing mobile data networks are a mess, addressing-wise. There aren't enough public IPv4 addresses to go around, so you get a private one. Not only it's NATed to hell and back, there is a chance that it will clash with the address received on the WiFi interface when you're connected to your home or office network. So you get creative solutions like using bogons... Shudder.

It's so much easier with IPv6. No possible address clashes. No need for gross kludges. Yes, NAT64/DNS64 is necessary if your destination is IPv4-only, but that is actually a nice carrot for web sites and content providers: "enbale IPv6 on your customer-facing servers and our users will reach you directly, without workarounds".

So IMO the IPv4 exhaustion will affect end users rather soon, just not necessarily in the way that will be visible to them.

Multiple orgasms ahoy.

More precisely: if the DNS has both v6 (AAAA) and v4 (A) records for the site's name, and the client prefers v6 connectivity over v4, and a v6 connection can't be established for some reason, the site will appear to be broken. Most large sites have measured this kind of brokenness, but haven't published their methodology nor results; there is an exception, but it's limited to Scandinavian users. It is nevertheless a very interesting analysis, which basically suggests that eliminating just two sources of brokenness (OS X < 10.6.5 and Opera < 10.50) would practically eliminate client loss.

Verizon already has this, times 40: see their presentation at the Google IPv6 Implementor's Conference (p.3). They're not too happy about it.

So, what about 4G, which is supposed to be IP end-to-end? More NAT and proxies? I don't think so. IPv6 is the only sane solution for that, and if anyone can push for its adoption, it will be the large mobile operators.

Make it 15 years: RFC 1883, the first IPv6 specification, was published in December 1995.

Ahhh... This is the essence of what occasionally makes Slashdot great. An unexpectedly expert post (and beautifully written, the sound you heard was that of a million grammar Nazis shrieking in frustration after scouring the text, not finding anything to complain about, and falling silent), followed by what I can only call "respectful irreverence". Splendid.

I thought so too, and then saw this. There is always a bigger idiot.

Look up American Airlines Flight 444. It's the reason for the A in "Unabomber", you know.

Opera Mini for other phones is a Java (J2ME) application. The one for the iPhone is Obj-C. There is no way to go from one to the other without a lot of effort.

Oh the hyperbole. 50 years ago (53 for you nitpickers) Shippingport came online. You know, "the first fully civilian nuclear reactor." Nuclear power industry was just starting to appear, and the "regulatory and political environment" was anything but inimical to it. Rather gung-ho, in fact.

The past 30 years instead of 50? Probably. But not without good reason. An industry mired in secrecy and obfuscation stemming from its military origins, where screw-ups can happen and are serious -- potentially disastrous -- if they do, does not inspire confidence. Neither does pooh-poohing genuine concerns. "Waste? Oh, that's easy, we'll just reprocess it!" Sure. Hanford did that for years. Recovered tons of weapons fuel, ended up with additional megatons of extremely nasty waste. (Ditto Sellafield in the UK and La Hague in France.) There are better ways to do it for civilian use, and actinide burners may be one of them, which is why they should be built and studied; but they -- and all other things nuclear -- should not be presented as a silver bullet, in an arrogant and condescending tone.

Some may get an impression that I am too opposed to nuclear power. Not in the least. IMO, nuclear is the only sufficiently plentiful energy supply which we can comfortably use for the next thousand years, and is not geographically or otherwise limited like solar or wind. But it is not without risks, and while those risks should not be overstated (like the shrillest environmentalists do), they should not be swept under the carpet, either.

That works only if you have already entered the number (expression, &c) on the stack (i.e., the command line is not active.) True x<>y works even if you're still in the command line, and it's unambiguously labeled on the keyboard. I dearly love my 48SX, but for pure number crunching any old RPN calculator (like the 11C mentioned above) is faster to use. Btw, "right cursor for swap" started with the 48SX, and on its keyboard it's quite obvious why: SWAP is right above the right arrow, left-shifted.

Well, of course, they perform better on the actual job. These are people who are fairly adaptable to any corporate culture. In fact, most people are adaptable enough that they can fit into your corporate culture. You would easily find the outliers just by talking face to face with them for about 15 minutes rather than putting them through a humiliating test.

Now, I know I'm just an anecdote, but I have been witness to many ways that hospitals make this quite difficult, HIPAA or otherwise. My wife and I have moved a number of times in the past few years, and we've seen all sorts of tricks.

One hospital would not give us her records until we showed up in person and paid a number of random fees. They refused to simply send on her records to our new hospital. When we later wanted to have a specialty procedure done in Boston, the new hospital only sent insufficient fragments of the records to Boston.

We've even had such extremes as a doctor personally taking certain records and storing them at his home as he wanted to do some "extra research". It came as a surprise to us when these records were "unavailable" when it came time for us to move.

We're both privacy advocates, but we also agree that this is a change that is essential to the healthcare industry (and was one of our major reasons for supporting Obama). It's certainly about time.

Not only that, the Fujitsu-Siemens joint venture is reportedly breaking apart. What that means for the future of FS laptops remains to be seen. I for one would be wary of that kind of deal.