I've a lot of devices I'd like to control remotely, or at least monitor automatically. The aquarium is a good example, the webcam is probably over the top, but it'd be nice if something could email me before the fish died. Or the plants in my garden. Or if the VCR could mail me if I forgot to remove the rental videos.
I can't think of any good reasons to have a webcam *anywhere*, but some small interfaces all over the place would be nice. I'd also like TCP/IP in my mains power, with small active nodes in every lightbulb and power switch. It could tell me if a globe has burned out, and I could use it to switch them on and off. I could use caller ID on the phone to synchronize the clocks in my house, on my VCR, on my computer etc.
Lots of uses for small, light, *cheap* machine interaction, once you start thinking small.
It seems to me that the whole point of using HTTP instead of any other protocol, is that organizations are blocking off access to all ports but port 80. The point of this is that you cannot do (much) harm using only a webserver on the other end. Now, using SOAP, you can tunnel any service through HTTP, and bypass all that security. In effect, all the available ports get compressed into one.
How long before the network admins realize this and start filtering that access?
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emacs
Take On Me
by
A-Ha
I've a lot of devices I'd like to control remotely, or at least monitor automatically. The aquarium is a good example, the webcam is probably over the top, but it'd be nice if something could email me before the fish died. Or the plants in my garden. Or if the VCR could mail me if I forgot to remove the rental videos.
I can't think of any good reasons to have a webcam *anywhere*, but some small interfaces all over the place would be nice. I'd also like TCP/IP in my mains power, with small active nodes in every lightbulb and power switch. It could tell me if a globe has burned out, and I could use it to switch them on and off. I could use caller ID on the phone to synchronize the clocks in my house, on my VCR, on my computer etc.
Lots of uses for small, light, *cheap* machine interaction, once you start thinking small.
It seems to me that the whole point of using HTTP instead of any other protocol, is that organizations are blocking off access to all ports but port 80. The point of this is that you cannot do (much) harm using only a webserver on the other end.
Now, using SOAP, you can tunnel any service through HTTP, and bypass all that security. In effect, all the available ports get compressed into one.
How long before the network admins realize this and start filtering that access?