Sadly, this does bring up a very valid point. A lot of 'peripheral' network equipment tends to get addressed by address directly (more out of habit and laziness on the IT admin part than anything, but one shouldn't underestimate that!). I work as a software developer in the MFP (think: networked office printer/scanner/fax/copier devices) industry. By customer request, all the software I create tends to show your list of devices by IP address first. Of course, both my software and the devices it works with fully support both DNS and IPv6, so typing a hostname or IPv6 address will work, but if the customers don't set the devices up to USE these functions, we can't exactly force them.

Of course, the 'local network' world can probably stick to IPv4 for a fair bit longer (or theoretically indefinitely) while the connections out then make use of IPv6; however as more people hear buzzwords like 'cloud', more and more previously 'internal' things are going to start having connections to the outside and there's a big potential for mess.

Now, why don't people just happily type in IPv6 addresses? They're too hard to remember as the parent points out. Well, why don't they use DNS? Because doing so requires a DNS server (fine in bigger offices, but a bit overkill for a 10 person shop with only a couple of devices)

Adding octets to the IPv4 format as the parent suggests would've been a much 'easier' transition for most people. Sure there's a lot that would need to have been considered, but it's probably not dissimilar to the amount required for consideration with the current IPv6 way of doing things.

And yes, I'm aware one could theoretically write a complete IPv6 address with dotted quad style notation, but if no-one else does and the majority of software didn't support it, then doing so would be a bit dumb.

On /. users have both numeric and symbolic IDs, and, as far as users concerned, it is the second which is primary.

There are lots of big companies with hardly any servers. I work for a multibillion dollar company that has about 150 physical servers. We don't sell bits, so the servers are there to keep the factories and administrative stuff running.

...Social Security is funded by employees as part of their paychecks...

The quote above is a so retarded point of view I'm embarrassed if not shocked. Social Security is nothing you SPEND money on, you INVEST it. The NASA on the other hand is a money sink, regardless what benefits you might se in it.

In a word? Vectors.

I cannot believe the idoiocrity - why not sell the International Space Station to the highest bidder!

Oh jeez, I cannot believe the "idoiocrity" of this statement. And when the company inevitably goes out of business after racking up billions of debts, who will pay for the safe de-orbit of the ISS? Oh, right. The people who "sold" it.