The idea of a smart home sounds promising enough -- who doesn't want a house full of automated gadgets, from light switches to appliances to heating systems, that know exactly when to turn on, turn ...

I was 5 or 6 when I got my first sense of the joys of computer programming. This was in the early 1980s, when few people had a computer. One day, my dad brought home a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, one of the ...