I guess what parent meant was that using some &quot;smart&quot; stuff locally (same room, same house, same LAN) can be useful.<p>To put your example in the perspective : how much useful would it be to operate the TV remote over the internet ? Yeah, it sounds cool that I&#x27;ve set the TV to channel 5, but I&#x27;m not there to watch it anyway, so it&#x27;s kinda useless. Only thing that is now possible is some other people jerking around with the remote.