I don't think this is meant for cell phones, as the spec says: "This document addresses: The Machine-to-Machine use cases as described in GSMA ‘Embedded SIM Task Force Requirements and Use Cases’ Version 1.0 [1]. This solution is not intended to apply to traditional consumer telecommunication devices as they are not concerned with the problem statement above."

It is my experience that most people I interact with on a daily basis do not know about even the existence of H. pylori much less its role as the casual agent of most ulcers. Perhaps I should have expected differently from the more informed Slashdot crowd, but alas it is too late now. Either way it was not my intent to be pedantic, but rather to inform, so I apologize if I came off as "putting you in your place". It was not my intent to do so.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it now known that most ulcers are caused by Helicobacter Pylori infection rather than being stress induced? Stress may have exacerbated the symptoms but I'd wager this nasty microbe was what caused it.

Check out the history section in the above link for the awesome story of how the guy who discovered the link between H. Pylori and ulcers got people to take his results seriously. Its one of my favorites.

You are absolutely correct. My current physics professor is a brilliant physicist, probably one of the smartest men I have ever interacted with. Unfortunately for me (and the rest of the class, as our test averages show) he is incapable of teaching us physics. The number of people who actually attend his lectures has decreased by at least 50% since the first day of class as more people discover they can learn more effectively by utilizing online resources and just brute-forcing the concepts rather than wasting 10 hours a week in his lectures.

Other classes I feel completely justified in skipping are courses where the professor provides you their lecture notes, and then during lecture they proceed to read them back to you verbatim. One of my classes this semester does this AND has informal forced attendance through "participation points" that you get through answering questions in class using electronic "clickers". I refuse to attend since it is a waste of my time (I currently have a 100% in the course), yet I will lose a good chunk of points because I value my time.

Forced attendance is stupid unless there is a good reason for doing it (grants and other such things other people have noted). I am an adult, and I should be allowed to decide whether it is worth my time to attend the professor's lecture. If I choose not to, I will have to face the potential consequences. But it should be my choice. I don't want to pay thousands of dollars to be treated like a child.

I am aware of this, and never said that I was against the reforms they suggested. In fact I think a lot of them are desperately needed. The problem I see though, is that no attention is given to the non-government entities that are amassing information on us. If some of these same entities are the ones pushing legislation for privacy reform, they are of course going to keep their corporate self-interest in mind. If the privacy reforms regarding the government are passed, who is going to go back and say that we need to limit what corporations themselves can collect? By getting involved they can work to protect their interests in any potential privacy reforms.

And like I said in another post, a lot of people lack awareness of how much information is being collected. How is a typical technologically-ignorant grandmother to know about tracking cookies, google analytics and other such things? How would they even know if their information was not being adequately protected? They probably wouldn't.

Here on slashdot most of us are aware of the information that the corporations are collecting on us (to some degree) and we have the means to limit this through our internet experience. Most of the people who are new to the internet don't know know about google's extensive data collection, they have no idea how much of their information is being collected by marketing companies, they don't know that it is being indexed by other sites and that even if they delete it there is a good chance it is stored somewhere. They are simply incapable of the informed consent required to "volunteer" such information.

The companies who are collecting data aren't informing you that they are doing it, they aren't telling you what it will be used for, and you rarely have a chance to challenge it. It might be hidden in their EULA or Terms of Service, but those are often written in legalese and in such length that a vast majority of people just check the box and accept it. I do it myself, and I do care about what information is being collected about me. I personally know what is going on behind the scenes, but how can one expect the grandmother who logs into facebook to play farmville and interact with her family to?

The government can compel you to give up information sure, but at least you are aware of what information is being collected and why you are being compelled to furnish it. Your point about the government being able to compel others to give up your information against your will is spot on, and I feel that a lot of the ideas proposed by this coalition are actually good in protecting us from the government. Just incomplete since we also need to have tougher privacy laws in regard to corporations too.

And sadly you are correct about the difficulty in getting such legislation passed. The lack of knowledge about how much data is really being collected about people online among the general public is one of the root causes of this whole mess. If people knew about what was going on, and what they could do to prevent it, such legislation would probably be pointless. Unfortunately that is just a dream at this point, as people who don't know enough about computers and the internet to protect themselves keep flooding onto the internet.

The fact that a handful of these corporations are anywhere near privacy reform legislation makes me nervous. I think a quote from a NY Times article explains why.

...AT&T, Google and Microsoft, and advocacy groups from across the political spectrum said Tuesday that it would push Congress to strengthen online privacy laws to protect private digital information from government access.

They want to protect our information from the government, but what about themselves? Some of their very business models depends on people giving their information to the company (Google). Such a coalition is not likely to recommend privacy laws that also apply to their own corporations, so any privacy reform spearheaded by these members will be incomplete and potentially damaging.

On their principles page they only make mention of limiting the government's access to information, and don't even reference anything about corporations. While I applaud their attempt to limit government access to our private information, their (understandable) bias in favor of their corporate needs kind of limits this effort in my opinion. I am more concerned about the amount of data that google and other such companies have about me at this point.

Any privacy legislation needs to restrict the amount and kinds of information these companies can collect about us in order to really protect privacy on the internet, since the internet is really more the domain of corporations than the federal government.

Committing a federal offense is not the form of protest required here. It's a good way to get arrested and go to jail, sure. But the only "effective" protest would be for U.S. citizens to send letters to their congressmen asking that the laws be updated or otherwise amended to account for free software or applications non-related to national security or industry. But we all know the chance of that happening with the state of our current legislature is slim to none. They are too busy bickering about healthcare to get anything else done.

potential evils*. Damn it. Thats what I get for posting while multitasking

As much as I agree with your sentiment, SF has to abide by the laws of the country they reside in. It doesn't matter if they agree with them or not. As a US citizen I consider the laws outdated and out of touch with today's technology but they are still the laws.

Do they respect the laws of the United States and block some people from the content hosted there or do they ignore the laws and risk having their sites shut down, blocking content to everyone? Its a bad situation overall, but SF has made the right decision and chosen the lesser of two potential.

The United States' outdated and draconian export restriction laws are the real enemy here, not SF.

same as the old boss. I hope the media companies aren't the new big oil companies when it comes to government connections. Either way, it looks like all of Obama's promises about not being under the influence of lobbyists are going to be empty ones.

Hm, according to my scanner it would be.. Over Nine Thousand!!!!