.NET? .Not!

Remember the wave of dot-bomb failures? You ain’t seen nothing yet.

• By Em C. Pea
• February 01, 2002

I looked at the calendar and realized two things: First, Valentine’s Day is upon us again. (Sorry, Auntie is taken). Second, Mr. Bill is giving us his token of love in the form of the Visual Studio .NET, due to ship Feb. 13. As exciting as this is, Auntie wants you all to promise to take your sweeties out to dinner on the 14th—the new toys will still be there when you get back.

Along with VS .NET, of course, we’re going to see a bunch of new Web services launch from a variety of vendors. Web services actually let you manipulate objects over the Internet, without those pesky firewalls getting in the way. Isn’t that keen? Now it’ll be even harder to keep the drones from getting to sites they shouldn’t visit during working hours. You can’t hardly block port 80, can you? But I digress. Here at Casa de Pea, I spend much of my time keeping in touch with the industry, and I’ve been deluged with hot tips about Web services to come. Here’s my personal list of “Web Services That Will Not Get My Investment Dollars.”

MyServant.NET: If you’ve already gone the X10 route and automated your home, this is the next logical step. With the MyServant.NET Web service, you can instantiate an object in Schenectady to represent the light bulb in your garage and then send it commands to turn on and off. The system interacts with your X10 controller by using a satellite to beam commands to a specially equipped wireless PDA that you plug into the system. You’d just better hope your Internet connection doesn’t go down while you’re trying to turn the lights on.

DMV.NET: Sign in with your Microsoft Passport to renew your driver’s license! At least, that’s the theory. When I tried to test the service, all I got were timeout errors. (Not too much unlike the real DMV, now that Auntie thinks of it.)

MyStars.NET: With this service, your SOAP request for a date with any of the top 50 leading men and ladies in Hollywood is automatically translated into a fan letter and faxed to the appropriate agent. The stars will personally write their answers (yeah, right), which will then be keypunched in by offshore operators. The last time I looked, there were something like 83 million requests of you, so don’t count on a last-minute Valentine’s date with Jennifer Aniston.

Mattress.NET: Don’t stuff your cash beneath your mattress any more! Attach a U.S. Treasury-approved paper shredded directly to the USB port on your computer and feed the money in. It’ll be translated to an electronic funds transfer message and stored on Microsoft’s “Hailstorm” servers. You can then see a simulated picture of your safely stored cash on any Web browser whenever you want to check on it.

DDOS.NET: Never let it be said that the Black Hat community is behind the technology curve. Once you install the DDOS.NET client, it can be turned into a zombie ready to bombard CNN or the White House with packets with a click.

My Grocery List.NET: With this Web service, you can add items to your grocery list any time you think of them. Then you’ll have anytime, anywhere access to the list while shopping. Well, at least, you’ll have access once every shopping cart in the country is equipped with a wireless Web browser. Uh, yeah.

MCP.NET: Finally, it’s the advancement you’ve all been waiting for. Point your Web browser at the MCP.NET site and you’ll be able to take certification exams in the privacy of your own home. Of course, you have to install the right hardware: a credit card terminal to take your money, biometric retina and fingerprint sensors to identify yourself, and of course a Webcam so that the test proctors can keep an eye on you. That’s not a problem, is it?