While I agree with you completely, I would argue that this is actually a legal feature, not a bug.

Of course, you can very well end up with the conditions the original law wanted to impose. -OR- you might not. If there are some useful things in very bad laws (as is often the case), we can, as a society, try implementing these features piecemeal and see how they work out before making them all mandatory.

Although again, I do agree wholly, and I do not think this idea has any redeeming qualities whatever. Especially since it is essentially a "foot in the door," and from there is likely to only get worse.

As one of your "luddites," I can only greet this idea with utmost enthusiasm. I have owned a TV for less than 3 weeks. It's so old, it's a CRT. It's so old, the inputs are coax or component. It's so old, I'd really like to have a newfangled TV for free. Where do I sign up?

WRT walking, one thing I never understand is why so few people do it. I live just shy of two miles from where I work -- it's a 28 minute walk at a good pace, 36 minutes if not.

I have no car to break down on me, no tyres to go flat, a very reasonable commute time (lots of people spend more time driving than I do walking to get to work), no car payments, no auto insurance, no gasoline expenses.

Sure, I have a driver's license, but why on earth would I want to incur all the extra costs of actually using it? If I really have that far to go, I can catch a bus, call a cab, call a friend, or have whatever it is that I'm buying delivered to my doorstep.

This is why I assume that passwords are a flawed method of authentication (seriously, 11 characters is a lot to have to type!) all for five minutes of security. I just use the same password everywhere: 12345.

And for a second there, I was expecting your comment to be something about bananaphones.