No, this is why Al Gore invented the Internets.
This isn't really a hack in the sense that I thought of something clever to do, but it amuses me nonetheless. One of my many squeezeboxes is in the bedroom, and it has its own remote control of course, but I can't read the screen from the bed without putting my glasses on. Obviously I could move the squeezebox, or the bed, or I could put my glasses on.
But why do that when there is a less obvious solution: I can forward a port so that the server that controls the squeezeboxes is reachable from the Internet. Then I can use the Blackberry which is always close by. So I can now change the volume or play a CD by sending commands up through T-Mobile, across the internets, to my ISP, down the DSL, through the NAT router, to the slimserver machine in the closet, across the ethernet to the squeezebox which is eight feet away. This works better than you would expect; the total round trip from me pressing a button to hearing its effect is about half a second.
Even more important, I now carry this power in my pants wherever I go, so if I suddenly need to play Cowboy Bebop in my living room while I am in the airport in Chicago, I can do so. Booya!
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