Wow... FOSS fanboys seem to think everything is bad unless it conforms to their way of thinking.

H.264 was a group of companies wanting to find a common standard they could all work towards. They found that many of the important concepts were patented, so they all agreed to license those patents, and make them super cheap for people to use.

Open Source? Sure, nice that it doesn't conflict with anyones copyrights. But, if it implements the same processes as the patented parts of h.264, it is in violation of those patents. I've looked, and I don't believe it's possible that they have an implementation that doesn't infringe on the patents.

Contribute code to H.264? Sure, anyone can write code to implement it, and share it if they want.

Use it in your software? Sure, for most uses, it's free, and you don't need to worry about patent infringement cases later.
Yes, large-scale use is an issue, but from what I see, that's for people that write encoders or distribution systems, not for the common case of decoders.\

H.264 is a published, standard, specification, like that for C, C++, Posix, etc. You can write software that conforms or not, up to you.
If you write software that infringes on patents, it doesn't matter if you looked at h.264 or not, the patents were already there before that standard existed. You still need to get a license or conform to license requirements.

p.s. Google doesn't indemnify you for patent infringement if you use WebM... If you get sued, it's up to you to prove WebM doesn't infringe.

Except it is very likey that WebM infriges the very same patents that MPEG-LA is licensing. Just becuse WebM was developed without looking at closed-source code, that doesn't absolve it from patents.

By open source, you mean GPL? Yes, GPL forbids usng patented ideas, but not all open-souce liceneses do.

Actually, it looks like ISPs might go with dynamic prefixes, because it's easier for their routing as the network grows.

Back to the same situation as dynamic IPv4, as far as privacy.

But I would so much more like a static prefix, so I can access my home when I'm travelling.

IPv4 is just as much a "privacy nightmare"... You need a publicly addressable IPv4 address somewhere to receive packets from the internet. These addresses can be traced back to you. Sure, dynamic IP addresses change, but on broadband, they change rarely. And businesses have static IP addresses.

IPv6 at least has the benefit that people can't guess IP addresses on your local network (64-bits of device ID is a huge space). And with privacy enhanced IPv6 addresses, people can't get your permanent IP address at all

Privacy enhanced IPv6 addresses use a random number for the last 64-bits, and change constantly. They are used for outbound connections only, but prevent the site you are connecting to from remembering your IP address for future attacks.

But in the end, you must have a routable prefix (IPv6) or public IPv4 address associated with any connection, otherwise routing fails. And yes, that gives up some privacy, especially for home users, where you can trace activity back to specific people. rather that just "someone in this company".

Servers usually get a device number assigned manually, rather than using MAC address of the lan adapter (otherwise, a failed LAN adapter causes you real problems!).

So the last 64-bits is usually a small number, such as 1, 2, 3 etc.
that makes the IPv6 address a lot easier: 2001:db8:85a3::1

It's pretty easy to memorize your own prefix, so for machines on your own network, it isn't a problem

No, that isn't true at all. Two ways that solve this issue:

1) Use private address space for the IPv4 address, and have carrier-grade NAT.
2) IPv6 only hosts, connecting to a protocol conversion NAT that translates IPv6 addresses to IPv4 (again, at the carrier).

Either means P2P connections will have to be over the IPv6 link.

Giving people a private IPv4 isn't so bad if they also have a real public IPv6 block.

Sure, it will break all the P2P traffic that relies on IPv4-only, but that will quickly force those services to support IPv6.

And it never will be until we really rely on it, which won't happen until we run out of IPv4 addresses.

The trick is to handle the case where you CANT get an IPv4 address. Dual stack normally assumes you can get one IPv4 address along with your block of IPv6 addresses.

The solution is probably carrier-grade NAT for IPv4 (so you only get a private IPv4 address) with dual-stack. But that has it's own problems.

How can you route packets to the location the cell phone is currently roaming at?

A single IPv6 subnet has room for every network interface ever built, or will be built in the next decade. And that's only ONE /64 subnet.

DD-WRT or OpenWRT firmware supports IPv6, so you can often convert your older router to one that supports IPv6.

All modern versions of Windows (desktop or server) fully support IPv6. I have it, I use it, and it works. Of course, it works for my Linux and Mac boxes too.

You don't understand IPv6 well.. It has an option for pricacy-enhanced "temporary" IPv6 addresses to be used for outbound connections. Windows has this on by default, most linuxes seem to require you to turn it on.

When it is on, a randomly generated short-term IPv6 address is generated when you make an outbound connection. This IP address lives for a short while (until the connection is closed or a few hours, whichever comes later). Windows uses a new one for each new outbound connection (you can have thousands of IPv6 addresses at the same time.

However, if you are worried about your home internet, it doesn't help much. You need either a traceable IPv4 address, or a traceable IPv6 routing prefix, so packets can get to you. They can't tell which machine on your network generated the traffic, but they do know it was from your network.