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I don’t understand the idea of putting all these appliances on the internet. It is just asking for more trouble than most people could ever imagine.

Now, I can see utility of having some stuff controllable locally. For instance, I have a music server that I built that is hooked up to my stereo system. It has a webserver on it that allows me to pick up my phone, click on a link, and control the player, by pausing, backing up, or skipping to the next tune. I can’t control it when I’m at Starbucks. What would be the point of that? It’s only available when I’m actually at home. I also have an ‘app’ that can connect to the stereo to control volume, input, output and other stuff from my phone. That also cannot be reached through the internet. If I’m at home on my local network, I can control all that stuff.

My heat/air system, apparently has network capability. I would think it would be really cool for me to be able to have similar kind of control that I have with my stereo. Unfortunately, it wants to connect out to the internet to function. I really have no desire of controlling my AC unless I’m at home. If I did, I’d open a pinhole on my firewall, and set things up with port forwarding, so I could enable it when I’m on vacation or something, but otherwise, it should be available only internally.

Making your coffeemaker, or printer available to the outside world is just asking for trouble. The number of printers available on the internet is astounding. An evil person might direct some kiddie porn to a printer owned by his enemy, then call the authorities with an anonymous tip about it.