A few years ago a lot of people tried to promote a universal consumer electronics bus, they had a mess of perfectly usable standards for communicating between various appliances etc. It would have been a great thing for us as many devices would have been remotely readable and controllable.
But guess who, the lawyers decided there would be too much liability fuss between manufacturers and vendors of third party equipment, so the idea died. If all the promises of internet accessible appliances ever happen, it might really help, but I ain't holdin my breath. Tom
