Rather than using the Phone to do the monitoring and polling, I'd consider using a service on the network at work and then make your phone a client of this service.
An example would be to use Nagios to do the monitoring and then use one of the countless Nagios Clients available to read the monitoring state from the service. You'll get the added bonus of knowing what happens if your Network coverage goes away to fill in the blanks after the event and be able to escalate to someone else if you're not available.

over 3 months uptime....So no Windows Updates then?

for what its worth, solve it from the command line in bash with the following.
wget -qO - http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/jsp/forms/generateCaptcha.jsp |grep "</b></span></td>" |sed -e s/\<b\>//g |sed s/\</" "/g |awk '{print $1}'
(Yes its a bit messy but what do you want for 5 mins work.)

Anyone else want to have a go? (in perl maybe?)

When it comes to "for profit" companies: If you're not paying for anything then chances are, you're whats for sale.

Yeah, That sounds like the one. About 12 months ago a bunch of PDP-8 machines still in original packaging came up for auction around the place that were perfect for hobbyists and collectors.
I think I remember reading that Steve Gibson of GRC purchase a handful or so.

Wasn't this like a system they used before GPS that was still in minimal use until recently?
I vaguely remember they still had PDP-8's still in storage as replacement parts

Although its a bit old and things may have changed since then, this article shows how basic the detection is (video within):
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2010/06/18/apple-secretly-updates-mac-malware-protection/

Keep in mind its sophos's own site/blog so there's a definite conflict of interest potential.

Here's the rest over at apples site:
http://configuration.apple.com/configurations/macosx/xprotect/1/clientConfiguration.plist

Just search for defender

Why can't they just use something unique to mix it with an email address like, oh I don't know, The console ID directly pulled from the hardware.

One assumes an attacker can't steal those in bulk easily. (artificially created replay attack possibly?)

They seem to be pretty good at finding it to use against George Hotz (yes I know it turned out to be the previous owner but it shows they know the mappings).

I see Fox News did a fantastic job on spelling in their link.
usama-bin-laden-dead-say-sources

almost 10 years and they didn't get it right.....sigh

There was a lot of similar contention about the commodore 64 app a while ago. They had to cut significant bits out, such as the commodore basic interface before they would approve it.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/commodore-64/id305504539?mt=8

seems recently the the commodore basic interface has come back anyway, although I'm not sure if there are any restrictions.

# slater86 likes Facebook's Status

Something similar to this?
http://xkcd.com/413/

Haven't I seen this before somewhere?

http://www.zeldawiki.org/Sage

Kinda sounds the same as people foolishly relying on switches (as opposed to hubs) for keeping malicious users from sniffing username/password combos going by. Just use ssl over the top and you're good to go still. Multiple layer is for a reason.