I consider them both equal:

No stealing my information to begin with... and no making me pay for you to steal my information either! It's not one "over" the other.. it's additional ammo to load the firing squad with. It's like salt on the injury type of thing.

still it's worth voting for the bug and discussing the issue. there'll be consumers who buy new n900 with pre-installed pr1.2. there may even be a new firmware following pr1.2 for us. in both cases i don't want to see this bug again. a pr1.2.0.1 for new devices needs to fix this... and it needs to be fixed for each and every future update.

probably, because i share your opinion on this (price is hardly the issue here) and i'm always in the minority.

odd, which networks charge for these service msgs?
All nokia handsets now do this regardless of os. Its quite a handy knowing when updates are available etc. It only gives basic tips to basic handsets as far as i know.

Surely it is part of Nokia's package you buy into with a phone? I see no privacy breaches really as airtime operators swap info with the manufacturers anyway.

Some operators here in Canada charge for incoming text messages, and I'm pretty sure most operators (at least in Canada and probably the US, and probably others) charge for outgoing texts unless you have some texting plan. I get 50 outgoing texts a month and don't even come close to using all of them, so it's not the text charge I'm concerned about...

the last nokia handset i bought (3720 classic) did not do this. none of the nokia phones i bought before did. also the n900 didn't before pr1.2. so it's of course not as usual as you say. - if it's a handy feature, i want to be told about it and activate it myself. besides, if it only tells you about updates, why would you need it on a maemo device? we get the orange icon, anyway.

as for the "nokia package you buy into": you usually don't. i got my n900 from my carrier. no nokia package. i accepted a lot of terms and conditions from my carrier to get the n900 for €250,-. "my nokia" was not part of the deal.

I didn't realize there were a number of people still hanging back. I hung back for 2 days before giving up. All this post-factum talk, it slipped my mind.

Well, if it's the cost you're bothered by (I know it's not), I'm sure it's not much. If I had known, I'd borrow a SIM card from someone who gets a lot of messages, or uses a disposable SIM. Or, buy a pre-pay. Out here you can get one for like 10$ if you're really cheap. That comes to 100 times the cost of the SMS, but no number publishing.

I assume you have the option of copying the "done" file from one of the phones that have already sent the message (in your country/zone), nuking the package before it sends, or, in extremis (but free) call the provider and ask them to suspend SMS service for 24 hours until the darned message expires (if sent).

I also assume one could modify the target number in the said file to point to yourself, that way it gets delivered. You can even send yourself tips about new versions!

Yes, yes it is. I didn't suggest stopping, I was just ... well, ranting apparently. Well, I'm sure whoever is at the other end of the bug knows full well the price of the message is precisely nothing, it's the principle of the thing. And the bad, bad publicity this gets them.

Nokia needs bad publicity now like skull vents. I still can't believe anyone gave this idea the green light. Who's that naive?

ETA:
I got the package from Nokia for full 600E price (ouch) and I never got anything like that. Also, there's nothing on the cover, and once you crack open the box you get still nothing, just the phone, charger, adapter, cable, headphones and extra plugs, screen wipe, etc. No manual, no warning, nothing.

You can't justify acceptance after the fact. This reminds me on some guy's rant "One of these days I'm gonna put a brick through Sony's window. On that brick will be a paper that says <by accepting this brick through your window, you accept full responsibility ...>".

They certainly don't in the UK! That's just crying out for a DPA/ICO investigation.

Well it definetly is usual now, certainly every handset from nokia sold in the last say two months automatically opts in to 'my nokia', well ones of which i have sold. This just lead me to beleive that it was now common practice now.
I certainly think they should have kept the opt out option, though i don't see this is the extreme issue that people may be making out.

Did you read the message from the guy who gets messages at all hours of the day and night regarding serious matters at work? Maybe he is using an n900 for this precisely because it is one of the very few phones that can actually be used to fix a wide variety of problems involving computers from almost anywhere in the world. It may not be as grave as a telemarketer calling a diplomatic hotline reserved for imminent nuclear war, but no one required to receive emergency messages should have to endure junk messages or calls.

I suppose that you think pickpockets are not much of a problem if they don't take much and tell you first.

well, i described a way (technically two) to prevent that kind of stuff.
since i read beforehand something about pr1.2 calling home, i did the upgrade w/o sim and before putting back the sim, i investigated.

for details see further back in the thread, but basically it boils down to two scenarios:
- at the start of the gui, a script runs that checks for the existence of a certain empty file -- if it isn't there, my nokia hasn't bothered you and you should be bothered now. according to the scripts comments, the binary doing the bothering checks the file, too (script tries to speed up the check)
thus: disable the script, create the file
- the package (cherry) owning script and binary can not be uninstalled (easily) due to the usual incompetence on nokia's part (although, with ideas like the issue at hand, it's more like deliberate hogtying of users). but you can remove its contents, thus the bothering fails.