You know, Iljitsch van Beijnum posted here today, and it reminded me of a funny thing that keeps coming up if I speak to some people that took my how-to on securing your Mac serious. Iljitsch does a lot of articles on IPv6 over at Ars Technica and he’s written up quite a lot on it (in print too). Check out is website and his books.

For the uninitiated; we use IP numbers on a network as an address. The number space of IPv4 has shown to be too limited for our growth (if you want to read more into this, check this out).
IPv6 is, for the semi-geek, an extremely scary concept because it makes them feel like all their knowledge of networking will become obsolete. The ‘long and complex’ number system and all of it’s features (that are really, really much nicer to use than the old decimal ones once you get around it) are subject to much critique in any IPv6-related Slashdot post. Over and over again, it’s supposed ‘pitfalls’ are exposed. I was extremely surprised to find that when I spoke to some people that followed my how-to (which Iljitsch put on Ars Technica appropriately as “Make your Mac more secure (than you can stand)” ), that when I brought up using IPv6 with IPSec-enabled services is quite secure – more so than conventional IPv4, of course, they pointed me to my how-to, that told them to disable IPv6. I really slapped myself to the forehead when I heard that from more than three people who took it to the heart.

What I suggested is that you disable IPv6 if you don’t use it. IPv6 is pretty cool. It’s not a gaping security hole, but I touched on any hypothetical avenue for attack that you can take away from the default configuration. Who knows, there might be a zero-day exploit out there that does do nasty stuff but breaks if you disable IPv6 (which I strongly doubt – but it’s a quantum universe we live in). Please don’t hesitate to adopt IPv6 if you feel like learning about it. It’s knowledge that you will, no doubt, have to use in the future anyway.

So apparently, IPv6 has some identity issues. We really need to get rid of the negative image. KAME has been doing that well, as well as the “ASCII Star Wars in your terminal” server towel.blinkenlights.nl. However, let’s keep showing people that IPv6 isn’t all that scary, but i
t’s a great step into the future of our communication technologies. For that, a little icon.

Icon Designer is growing. Actually, it’s surpassing Cocoia with only four days out. It’s daily traffic is astounding. I should make a badge on the next update saying ‘pushing gigabytes of icons’. It’s tantalising to realise that this page might rake in more visits than the blog one day (and trust me, that’s a lot of traffic)It seems everything is exponential lately; the Vienna icon surpassed the Wireshark icon almost instantaneously, and is now catching up to the wildly popular Preview replacement.

A few people have been hurrying to get Timezones before I change the page – not to worry, I have extended it a few days to let the sales cool down a bit and then I’ll start charging the new amount of money for the download. Timezones 1.5 is coming fast, and it’s going to be set at this standard price because of the new functionality. I think all users will be glad to see a free update and the opportunity to buy new themes with each their own functions.

News has really been on a roll lately. With the iPhone ads airing (hey, I might not put it into the blog that much, but man, I’d love to get one of those, I’m a human / geek too you know) and the WWDC a week away, we’re in for a very exciting time. I’ve seen discussion heat up around the topic of a new look for the GUI in OS X 10.5 Leopard. Speculation? Sure, but it’s not like the iPhone has all the normal aqua widgets. We’ve seen a very interesting slider that has a new ‘style’ of metal. Loss of plastic gloss, anyone?

Wow, Apple’s really got sophisticated with this new style they’ve got going on. I mean, we’ve all seen the filter bars of Mail and Transmission fame take over the iPhone UI, but this little detail is surprising. This could hint to new UI features we might see in the next week. Only Steve knows.

On a side note, I did want to bring it all a bit closer to the average Mac user, so here’s a little screenshot of what’s been lying around my disk for a while but didn’t seem to get finished.

It’s a makeover kit for VLC. Not just any makeover kit, a complete interface makeover kit with iPhone widgets. Nice, isn’t it? Perhaps I’ll finish it some day.

There is a pack coming out soon to outline the end of the War on Bad Design. I’d say that with the site up soon and the clients I have got now, I can safely say the ‘war’ was is a grand success and has seen many victims of beautification. The pack will include ‘forces’ of land, sea, and air for your desktop pleasure – free of charge. This is but one icon of the set…