Experiment
Did a quick test,
Turned off my router,
Rebooted into Windows XP (Wow looks dated compared to KDE 4.1!),
XP has miraculously found a BT Openworld conection and been issued an IP address!
Lets face it if you're a teenage lad moving betwen college, home, mcdonalds, starbucks etc, you're going to have the "any available network" / "automatically connect to non-preferred networks" combination set if only to make your life easier (strangely worded settings - must be American!).
If any of my neighbours had open connections, no doubt Windoze would have connected to the stronger signal.
If the most common OS in use across the world at the moment currently connects you automatically, I doubt if even the best in the CPS could claim you'd broken the computer misue act just by being connected to the router.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
