A good example of something that would be better solved through education. The cost in usability and complication just doesn't seem worth it. The time sorting out the occasional problem that might arise from having "SELECT *..." is surely a smaller cost than maintaining and living with the above solution.

"SELECT *.." is always useful when exploring databases, I think most DBAs/Developers would find it very painful to not be able to have a quick look at the data!

Edit:

The point is that "*" changes. This can be bad if other processes expect a fixed dataset. Adding a field to a table suddenly breaks x, y and z. But like I said above, the times this has tripped me up and the time it takes to resolve are so minimal that it is not really a worry. Although perhaps it depends on the nature of your system? And as below, using * also sends more data than may be necessary.