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You can always set up a tunnel broker if you want to play around with IPv6. It's ugly and messy, but it gets you on the network. I've been using this very service for over two years now and have never had a problem with it. As far as supported devices, I have an original 2G iPhone, a Nintendo Wii, an ancient Sharp Zarius, and a pair of TiVos that don't support IPv6, but everything else was able to autoconfigure an address and use it right away.

Also, it is entirely possible to run a pure IPv6 network today though a combination of DNS and packet translation. Basically, your IPv6 only hosts do a name lookup for a host using the local DNS server. The server queries but only finds a A record, which it then translates into a AAAA record by appending a well known prefix and returns that to the host. That host then opens a socket to the IPv6 address specified and sends the packet through a static NAT setup on your gateway to translate the packets back to IPv4, and also translate return packets to IPv6. It sounds esoteric, but this setup works (I use it in an IPv6 only test environment) and isn't hard to configure at all if you're using a Linux gateway. I've been using the Trick or Treat Daemon for DNS conversions and Tayga for the IP packet translation.

dhcp6 is evil. just enable route advertisements, the way it's meant to be.

http://www.litech.org/radvd/

or companies that want a large network of sensors in their factory without having to deal with private IP routing hell

Exactly the reason that a current customer of mine is rolling out IPv6 across the national enterprise. With a little help from ptrtd, troubleshooting at corporate headquarters can even talk specifically to equipment that doesn't speak IPv4.

It is true that IPv6 was not designed with old-school networking geeks in mind - I share your concern about IPv6 addresses being difficult to remember.

Please explain what you mean; I've found that IPv6 networking tends mostly to eliminate the nightmarish hassles that IPv4 had (classful addressing FTW), and remembering addresses isn't hard once you get used to the scheme. You have a 48-bit prefix that you simply know (and that always starts with 2001:), you have 16 subnet bits that you can organize in a meaningful and standardized way, and the 64 host bits... if you need to connect without DNS, assign a static short address.

You can use IPv6 _now_ with 6to4 or Teredo.

It's quite simple, actually. You can start IPv6 on your network in about 1 hour (including stateless autoconfiguration setup).

First, follow this tutorial: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+IPv6-HOWTO/conf-ipv6-in-ipv4-point-to-point-tunnels.html (I suggest the 'deprecated' method, because it actually works fine :) ).

Then install radvd ( http://www.litech.org/radvd/ ), don't forget to turn on IPv6 routing and you're set!

Being able to SSH directly into every machine on my network is UBER-COOL.

For someone who accuses me of being 'silly' (what are you, twelve?), you completely avoided my point: this is still a government-mandated change. I couldn't even begin to predict how much damage Microsoft would do to their relationship with the government if they acted the way you're 'predicting'. It is not Microsoft saying how a computer should operate, as pointed out in the article it is the current administration who wants limits on what will run and what won't.

As for your 'advantages of free software': Too easy.

First, it's easy to tell what works and upgrades are already painless.

Ubuntu and nVidia drivers. Not all upgrades are painless, because you can't foresee everything. Developers are human, not robots. There are plenty of instances where upgrades break something important.

Second, if something does not work, it will be fixed quickly.

From linked article:

RHEL Linux average time to fix any class of vulnerability: 58 days.
Microsoft windows average time to fix any class of vulnerability: 13 days.

Third, and most importantly, the software does not have "owners" who want to mess with other software "owners".

Tell that to Gentoo users that have had several developers quit over the last few months due to differences of opinion. A lack of ownership can actually negatively impact development when there are conflicts that can't be resolved due to a lack of a resolution path.

Check out Spook an open source, highly customizable or embeddible streaming server. It is best paired with a firewire camera, but those can be had easily for $100; I love my UniBrain Fire-i camera. There is also a Freshmeat page on the project.

Spook is a linux Video Streamer applicaiton. He goes in to and the in's and out's of the applicaiton, there is an active though quiet lately Mailing list that may answer many questions. The developer is also responsive to email when he he isn't compltetely swamped with other deadlines.
There is also a Fredhmeat page about the project.

Spook is a linux Video Streamer applicaiton. He goes in to and the in's and out's of the applicaiton, there is an active though quiet lately Mailing list that may answer many questions. The developer is also responsive to email when he he isn't compltetely swamped with other deadlines.
There is also a Fredhmeat page about the project.

Spook is a linux Video Streamer applicaiton. He goes in to and the in's and out's of the applicaiton, there is an active though quiet lately Mailing list that may answer many questions. The developer is also responsive to email when he he isn't compltetely swamped with other deadlines.
There is also a Fredhmeat page about the project.

No need - your IPv6-enabled DSL/cable modem will contain a Router Advertisement Daemon that takes care off all that for you.

I'll throw in with the Firewire crowd. IIDC cams are the way to go for compatibility and performance. The IIDC device class is standardized so the same kernel module works with any Fireware cam.

As far as image quality, the best cam I've seen (for a reasonable price) is the Unibrain Fire-i. It works better in low-light situations than any other webcam I've tried.

I've posted a bit of general information on webcam hardware on my webpage, if you want an introduction to the different options you have under Linux. It's a bit dated but mostly still relevant.

Spook seems to be what they are looking for. It takes input from a Firewire camera or Video4Linux source, and converts it into MPEG4 or JPEG streams.
It's under active developement.