Not my point, just not trying to write a dissertation here. My point is the provider's of web based services need to get on IPv6 dual stack, until a large number of these providers offer their services natively through IPv6 we will have a huge scalability problem with translation. Until that happens consumers do not *need* IPv6. It's a pretty massive investment to replace the consumer footprint especially with consumers not exactly happy to pay a premium, businesses will do it because they are willing to make an investment to reach the broadest number of users.

Option 4- ISP's continue to upgrade their backbone and edge to support IPv6 and sell the service to business customers to cover the costs while rolling it out in consumer markets as the opportunities arise or the need is highest.

From a link on the website you posted- The following vendors have been approved to offer TIC compliant MTIPS services through the Networx contract: AT&T, CenturyLink (formerly Qwest), Sprint, Verizon Business. Last I checked AT&T, CL and Verizon all offer IPv6/4 dual stack DIA, I don't know about Spint's offering but that's 3 options. In any case, no one is saying its easy but it is a good first step for the government to mandate this stuff, no one really took it seriously until they said all IPv6 hardware and software they bought had to be compliant (loosely quoted), then every company that wanted to do business with the government took it seriously.

Its being deployed as dual stack, and where folks have IPv6 only I understand that the providers have 6to4 translation devices. This will not scale, however my point is as a consumer you don't have a need for IPv6 addresses unless there is a service that is only available on IPv6 that you need to reach, I do not know of any significant services that we IPv4 only users are missing out on so I can't see why it would be needed as a consumer at this point. I have yet to be told by a provider that I can't get IPv6 for a business DIA circuit.

As a consumer you do not need IPv6 unless your provider does not have IPv4 addresses to assign to you, as a service provider or Internet based company (or in this case a government agency) you do need IPv6 so that customers who only have IPv6 connections can reach you. Most business class ISP's I have dealt with are IPv6 dual-stack capable, so this is not an ISP issue. The government is doing what other companies are doing and trying to get this working now before it becomes an issue for the future. There is no blame to pass around unless an organization is putting their heads in the sand and ignoring it.

I missed the 'ball' in your options... humans make mistakes ;) I thought you were going for the morality choice here, but I see you intended it to be a question of can it make the correct choice when there is an obvious one to humans. I think there are many ways to accomplish this, object recognition could certainly distinguish a living creature v. an inanimate one and also distinguish the smaller ball vs. the larger tree and fast moving car. Cameras and infrared can be used to distinguish objects along with other sensors and code can be written with logic to make good decisions, I doubt this is going to be the technical equivalent of a bunch of 2 ton Roombas driving around.

I don't understand your point here, are you saying there is a correct answer? which one is it? should the computer driven car assume the life of the child is worth more than the combined lives of both car's passengers? should it consider the lives of its own passengers as having less meaning than that of the child? or should it check the speed at which the two cars are moving v. the distance to the tree v. the distance to the child and make a choice that would have the least impact force? What choice would you make in this situation? What choice would you make if you had your kid in the car? What choice would you make if the oncoming car had a kid in it? What choice would you make if the person in the road was an adult? How many of these do you think you could process in your brain and convert to action in time before the time to make a decision elapsed? I struggle with this idea of machines making decisions v. humans, but humans make selfish decisions all the time that are not necessarily better or worse than the more pragmatic choice a computer may make in this case which I would guess would be to hit an object at the least amount of impact as possible. But of course all this software is written by humans, humans that would be managed and regulated by bureaucracies, so who knows what stupid decisions points would eventually be factored in and dictated by the many lawsuits.

I think the point of the self-driving car is for congested roads like freeways. I am not too keen on trusting software to drive my car even on a freeway, but I could change my mind if it meant a faster commute. I could see where a system is initiated prior to entering the freeway, auto-driven cars get a lane like the HOV and send out a signal to receivers on the road identifying it as being auto-driven and permitted in the lane, once the vehicle leaves the freeway the driver could switch back to manual mode. Likely this would expand to highways as well but I think the return is diminished when you go from multi-lane freeways to one or two lane roads, IMO its primarily the people who cannot merge at speed that cause the freeway backups. I cannot imagine ever trusting a software program to drive me through canyons and cliffs, besides driving canyons and cliffs are fun. You want to test your accident avoidance software and impress me, log thousands of miles on our Cali freeways without an accident driving a motorcycle, then I'll be impressed.

cross-country bacon trading guy abandons trek, buys whole country.

Hey Spoogestain! I got nothin, just figured if we were going to start name calling I'd get my $.02 in.

I tried to RTFA but I nodded off, where's the bacon guy... has he made to Cali yet?

You got it right but you could have just used one sarcastic example of the over simplified idiocy of some Public Health arguments: - Women have babies that can lead to them becoming sources of communicable diseases or even worse, murderers, we should enact a law that vaccinates all women from having children in the name of 'Public Health'. Yeah thats what we need, more nanny laws like Vermont wants to enact. Biology isn't a one size fits all science, try giving everyone a dose of pencillin the wonder drug and see what the results are. If people are so worried about the potential disease riddled children affecting theirs, get yours vaccinated... problem solved. But no that's not good enough we have to enact laws to tell everyone how they should live, eat, breathe, love, cough, fart.....

Sadly people just don't value a good extortion scheme like they used to... it's a all pyramid, ponsey, and usury now. Clearly there is value here just like blackmail, if you have secrets to hide doesn't it add value to them if I charge you to keep them??

Transactions = $0 E-mail = Full Boss = Pissed Wanna get away?!?!