Here in the Netherlands our largest cable providers (Ziggo and UPC) also turned every home cable modem into a public hotspot about a year or two ago. All customers are given an account to use the hotspot network anywhere in the country. It can be pretty handy if you are with a laptop in a city and need internet access. Your laptop will get get a connection and away you go. They are on separate IP space, and don't affect your usable bandwidth or throughput as they are lower priority traffic than your own subscription traffic. While this functionality is opt out rather than opt in, you can just login to the console of your cable modem and disable it as desired. When you opt out like that however you also lose the access to use hotspot network entirely. The cost of using the network is to participate. The only thing that I see wrong with it is that it is an opt out system rather than an opt in. But I can also see that something like this wouldn't reach the "critical mass" to make it all work otherwise.

For the curious, it takes approximately 4 layers of aluminum foil to block a scanner from activating the RFID signal when your Al lined wallet is point blank from a standard scanner.

(After receiving an RFID enabled ID card here in the Netherlands last year, I tested it on our office copy/scanner RFID reader, and then simply lined my wallet with double the number of layers it took to block the signal. Works like a charm!)

With recent news about certain Android apps sending private information to whomever created it, I have recently installed DroidWall to filter access (e.g. - Battery meter apps!? Puh-leez!) to my phone's data connection.

If some app expects me to allow a data connection just to prove I am not a thief, sorry, I won't be buying it! And yes, I do purchase apps that I consider worthy.

And what happens if someone is abroad? Would they have to pay $20 in roaming charges to play some bubble bobble game for an hour while waiting in some airport?

Where do you suggest they go to get "proper training" for a motorized office chair? ;-)

Since they were using it on the streets, they could start by getting a driving license like everyone else that operates a motorized method of transport in public.

Now I am not sure about this, but I think in Germany you can't get a drivers license until you are 18 (and they were 17). Ironically, it probably would be safer for these guys to be driving a car on the streets than that contraption they built.

I am all for inventing things like that and having fun with it - but on private property where they can only hurt themselves and their own property not other people if something happens to go wrong.