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Bar In UK Uses Faraday Cage To Block Mobile Phone Signals (telegraph.co.uk)
Reader Bruce66423 writes: A cocktail bar owner has installed a Faraday cage in his walls to prevent mobile phone signals entering the building. Steve Tyler of the Gin Tub, in Hove, East Sussex, is hoping customers will be encouraged to talk to each other rather than looking at their screens. He has installed metal mesh in the walls and ceiling of the bar which absorbs and redistributes the electromagnetic signals from phones and wireless devices to prevent them entering the interior of the building. The effect was discovered in 1836 by scientist Michael Faraday and is often used in power plants or other highly charged environments to prevent shocks or interference with other electronic equipment. Some wallets are now cloaked in a similar flexible mesh to prevent data and credit card theft. Mr Tyler said he wanted to force "people to interact in the real world" and remember how to socialise. "I just wanted people to enjoy a night out in my bar, without being interrupted by their phones," he said. "So rather than asking them not to use their phones, I stopped the phones working. I want you to enjoy the experience of going out."
Good thing you have a choice whether to give them business, or not.
But something tells me the typical Slashdotter will still have a knee-jerk complaint about it.
"Get off my lawn."
"I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
So really he's just made an old fashioned metal plaster lathing style building. No need to invite any kind of anti-cell phone angst.
Here come the unthinking complaints from isolated individuals who think "being connected" means staring at the electronic device in their hands - and literally being oblivious to the real world around them.
Its only illegal because its usually accomplished jammers which would fall under FTC rules around spectrum use. A faraday cage is passive.
They are literally a 3 second walk from one of several doors at any given time. I'm sure they'll be fine.
I know! It'll be like the dark ages back in 1995 again. People died man. People died.
Just hope there is no incident that happens where some really needs to make a call.
As long as people are aware of the situation then what's the problem??
I can drive 5 miles off the freeway around here and not have any cell service. Should I be scared to go there because I might really need to make a call?
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You can do the same thing if you insulate your house with foil-faced insulation, use aluminized tape in the joints, and e-Glass on your windows. Don't
forget the ceiling and floor. The floor should be a screen because moisture in the floor will rot it. Joints are very critical everywhere. Small gaps in
the window mechanism, sliders and frames are an issue also. Conductive paint is a help. I have a house similar to those specs --inadvertently-- and
my AT&T cell tower is 5 bars outside on the porch, and 0 to 1 bar inside. E-Glass is particularly opaque to radio signals. In a non-foil building, the
stronger signals are not inside the window, but to the side of the window.
For the next guy at that location?
Will hopefully reduce/stop the number of mobile screens turning on & off in front of me.
I went to Buffalo, NY to visit family recently and a restaurant we went to tried encouraging people to put away their phones and talk. Instead of installing a Faraday cage, though, they put a basket (of the type they serve bread in) on the table. Everyone's phones went in and stayed there. If we kept our phones there during the entire meal, we got 10% off our check. (We kept our phones there and had fun taking "mental photos" of the kids instead of cell phone photos.)
I much prefer this system. It gives you an incentive to keep from looking at your phone without actively blocking your phone from being used. In case of an emergency, your phone is right there for you to use, but most times it'll just stay in the basket until after dinner is over.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Does that mean I can sue the city when I miss an important call while in a parking deck? Get real, mate. There's nothing to stop this guy from saying "get off my lawn". Passive blocking is his prerogative. If you don't want to lose contact, drink somewhere else.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
I think the implication here is that he would rather people like you go somewhere else. Nothing worse than someone loudly yapping on the phone at the bar. This place is aiming to become a refuge for people like us, against people like you.
It's an documentary detailing several very old Irish pubs, and while they don't mention a Faraday Cage, they bring up how the classic "Pub" concept is starting to fade because so many people are wrapped up in the Internet and electronics that they simply don't know how to just sit and converse.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
The bar owner is not obligated to use building materials that are transparent to radio waves.
How do you figure? The bar is presumably private property and there is no law that I'm aware of that prevents anyone from shielding their property from RF. In some cases some building design can do this anyways. I've been in large buildings with metallized windows that effectively did something similar. I honestly can't think of any laws this would break.
https://www.fsf.org/associate/support_freedom
I'm sure the bar has a phone you can use in emergencies. Heck, the bar tender might already be on the phone by the time you ask them for emergency services.
And that phone may even be available for regular customer use if they need call home to talk to the sitter or something as a courtesy (not even a payphone).
If you're desperate to use your phone, you could always do the polite thing and step outside too..
So really he's just made an old fashioned metal plaster lathing style building. No need to invite any kind of anti-cell phone angst.
The construction may be retro, but the purpose obviously isn't, hence the invite by the bar owner himself...
That is a question for the courts
Did you even read TFA? Or is this just pure knee jerk. To quote:
Although electric jamming devices are illegal a Faraday cage is not.
"Unlike jammers, Faraday cages don’t proactively cause interference, although they do interfere with mobile reception,’ An Ofcom spokesman said.
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All this work and cost he went to and the digital addiction will likely win over. The bar will get a reputation for having horrible signal and people will find other bars that don't. Unless he has really awesome drinks and everything else to overcome the need for data. Even then, you'll see many people convening outside to get their information fix or make calls to the S/O. Worse, how will people be able to fake receiving phone calls to get out of creepy bar conversations?
Makes me wonder if his bar is sufficiently EMP-proof now.
@Whee
as its possible the guy sharking the pool players might have his laser go off by accident blowing up the land line.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Most countries electronic cell phone jammers are illegal that interfere with the RF spectrum. Faraday cages are localized, passive and legal.
I accomplished the same thing by buying a stucco house with a metal roof. The mesh in the stucco and the roof together do a pretty good simulation of a Faraday cage. They stop TV, FM, Cell, etc...
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
I have a high tech solution to this:
Use a 3d printer to create a sign that says "turn off your cell phones or your battery will suffer. You have been warned."
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
You can't hear shit in most pubs and bars over here, someone yapping loudly on the phone wouldn't really make a difference to me, people are so loud, I can't make out what anyone is saying.
The only pubs and bars that are quiet are unpopular ones.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
This is the UK, those lawsuits dont happen here because we have common fucking sense - you have no inherent human right to make or receive phone calls on private property, so there is no implicit consent needed. Faraday cage or not, missing someones death or your kid getting knocked down gives you no grounds to sue the property owner because you couldnt make or receive a phone call.
So having the ability to receive a call/text == loudly yapping... Gotcha.
What do they expect people to do? talk to each other offline?! -the people who started this are sick, demented fossils clinging to the dying ways of old farts.
I bet some millennials have already got into panic attacks and shock when they got no signal and missed their tinder hook-up or could no longer understand where they were because GPS was not working any more.
I'm launching a FB campaign against this barbaric treatment. Something must be done.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
As soon as one of his customers has a serious emergency while at the bar, and ends up missing their grandmother's death or their kid being hit by a car, it will be lawsuit time. I think it's a novel idea, but even in a less litigious country than the US, you'd have to have a sign outside the bar announcing the Faraday cage for entering to be considered implicit consent to have your wireless signal blocked. (I would think. I'm not a lawyer though.)
As someone who remembers a world before cell phones, I really get tired of this legal argument.
No government issues citizens a mandatory cell phone. Cellular service is also not legally mandated by any Fire Marshall for the purposes of certifying building occupancy, nor is it a requirement to establish and run a bar business.
And until they do, how about we FUCKING DROP this bullshit notion that you can sue someone for not having cellular capability 24 hours a day everywhere.
bars have telephones in first and second world countries.
you are really such a lazy fat fuck you couldn't get to where there is signal in 2 seconds?
you're confused. getting a call your kid or grandparent just died isn't an actionable emergency, just sad news. if there's an emergency, call 911 not your drunken relatrive at the pub. what's the percentage of time in your life you received an emergency call? 3/1000000000?
I'm sure the bar has a phone you can use in emergencies. Heck, the bar tender might already be on the phone by the time you ask them for emergency services.
Yeah but but but, what happens if a passing boat "accidentally" drops anchor on the cable?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I direct a Boy Scouts of America-accredited Cub Scout Day Camp. We operate our camp in an area with no cellular phone coverage. There are POTS phones, however, and we post a list of emergency phone numbers and directions to the nearest emergency phone in each program area.
I suspect this guy has a POTS or VOIP telephone somewhere in the bar. The prudent thing to do in a place of public accommodation where cellular telephone service is not available is to post a notice that a telephone is available for emergencies and state where it is. It's that simple. He probably already has a posted map to the fire exits in the main dining room/bar already, if fire safety regulations there are anything like what they are here.
I think if the guy were to post "EMERGENCY TELEPHONE BEHIND BAR - DIAL 911" (substitute whatever the dispatcher number is in the UK is) on the door underneath his business hours, he'd be doing his due.
I'm hardly ever on my phone, but I do need to be available for emergency calls, and that's why I have a phone in the first place. If I DO have to take a call, I tend to say "please excuse me, I have an important call" and then I go outside with my phone. I don't want those around me to hear me struggling to hear the caller and hushing their conversation, and I don't like to struggle to hear the caller in the first place. :people to interact with the real world." I think he is trying to discourage the man sitting alone in his bar from being on his cell phone playing games, the woman sitting alone at the table scrolling through facebook... He wants to take away the distractions that people use to isolate themselves and avoid intereacting with strangers, and probably hopes that people in his establishment will actually start to talk and interact together. I don't know if this will work, but good luck to him!
Cameras? Pictures? Facebook? Games? I think that these are what the owner of the establishment had in mind as he put the Faraday cage into his walls... His comment was that he wanted
Especially when you throw in some arbitrary, draconian rules that must be followed in order for said good time to be had.
An example of the actual laws you're casually(draconian) referring to here:
Any debtor whose status was lower than that of his creditor was forced into slavery.
The death penalty was the punishment for even minor offenses, such as stealing a cabbage.
A temporary block on your cell signal is hardly the fucking same, so let's drop the drama already.
And the gin mill owner insists I be more sociable. How about you just shut the fuck up and pour me a pint, okay, "mate?"
Have made a shielded room, and done plenty of EMC in others; it is super hard to keep cell signals out. The article looks like he has glass windows and is not underground. With an EMC room, you need conductive foam braid on the the door seals, and soon as you crack the door, you get cell coverage. Even the wiring has to have filters, as the radio waves can get in and out via wiring, plumbing etc. glass windows would need fine copper mesh. More likely he has a jammer installed, and and just told everyone it's done by mesh.
46137
Yes, you should avoid it completely.
You probably don't remember but back in the 80s when you had no cellphone, you probably died 3 or 4 times per year because you couldn't call the emergency services.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
We have RF shielded rooms in our labs at work. People are allowed to go inside them despite being temporarily cut off from all Pokemon capturing possibilities.
I'm curious to see whether he ends up with more customers, and their demographics. My male friends would be perfectly happy drinking in a place without cell phones, but the women I know (mostly middle aged MC-UMC) would go into shock if you kept them from Facebook for any length of time.
Most of those laws have to do with interfering with a person in the process of making the emergency call, as in taking away the phone or hanging up their call. Few, if any laws, actually deal with preventing cell signals through passive means otherwise all underground parking structures could be deemed in violation of those states laws.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
The landline would provide correct E911 information while your cell phone may or may not depending on GPS availability.
Some cities do have laws against anyone but law enforcement deliberately blocking cell reception. No idea if that applies here though.
Even if there's a Dratini spawn nearby?
At least they can have a decent pub quiz that isn't ruined by surreptitious Googling (though some git will probably download offline Wikipedia).
I don't think so.. You walk into an elevator and in most cases you have entered a phone free zone unless somebody has made an effort to propagate cell signals into the shaft for you. Walk into a basement of just about any building and if it's more than a few stories deep you are again in a place unlikely to have cell coverage.
Passive blocking is indeed legal and happens all the time and the FCC doesn't do anything about it.. However, carry a jammer and they will track you down like the dog you are. So the moral of the story is signal blocking is legal, but active jamming is not.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
We're not evil hearted. If that happens we just knock on the shield chamber door.
"Bar in UK closes after patrons go to an establishment where they can use the cellphones like the adults that they are."
I carry a phone so that people can get ahold of me if necessary. If they can't reach me at your place, I'll go somewhere that they can.
That's good because you would never be invited to my place. I hate to break it to you, but you really aren't so important that anybody needs to contact you instantly.
It will stop phone calls & texts but sadly candy crush will work just fine.
Net effect, I can't find out why my mate / girl / droogs are late or even going to show up AND they can't call me to tell me, but I can still ignore everyone else playing games.
Oops.
So having the ability to receive a call/text == loudly yapping... Gotcha.
So having the ability to receive a call/text == necessity to enjoy a night in the pub
Forget the grounding part, you don't need that. Just make sure the space between the wires is less than about a quarter wavelength all the way around and you have a faraday cage. Better yet, make the metal walls, floor and celing out of sheets of metal, not mesh, and it works great.
My dad had a steal lock box for the pager he had to wear on weekends when he was "on call" but didn't want to be. Worked like a charm. Drop the pager in the box on Friday when you get home and it would receive nothing as long as you left it in the box. He could claim he never got the page and the pager was turned on all weekend... Well, it worked until somebody gave out his home phone number.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I'm guessing he did this not really knowing or expecting what the effect would be on cell phone use, then decided to use it as a marketing ploy...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I'll admit I didn't read the article.
But, yes, that's the sort of thing that would be decided by the courts here in the US.
He put in a faraday cage--he went out of his way to install this for no other reason than to block cellphone signals. So if someone were to die and it could be shown that their death could have been prevented if people had been able to call 911, he could be liable in civil court for damages.
Puts a Pokie Stop INSIDE the building and watches while the hapless Pokimon players drift in and realize there is a life outside their mom's basement.. The look on their faces is priceless.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
How are you going to catch Pokemon?
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
Requiem for the American Dream
If you are on call with a hospital, why are you out drinking?
News flash: Parents went out all the time without their kids before cell phones.
Yes, you should avoid it completely.
You probably don't remember but back in the 80s when you had no cellphone, you probably died 3 or 4 times per year because you couldn't call the emergency services.
You jest, but the people that did die in 80s because help couldn't get there soon enough aren't around to tell you their story.
It's call Survivorship Bias.
Does that make Pokémon Go illegal, because millennials' cellphone batteries might be flat when they need to make an emergency call?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
unless somebody has made an effort to propagate cell signals into the shaft for you.
And yet nobody made an effort to block the signals either. Not the same. The FCC has nothing to say about it anyway. It's all about whether it is decided to be "interfering with an emergency call" in court under one of the state laws.
Passive blocking isn't illegal under the FCC. I never said that it was. You're arguing against a straw man.
...registered the center of the bar as a Pokestop.
The same way your game running in a console emulator does it when you're not in a Faraday cage?
Ezekiel 23:20
If "making an effort" means I used foil backed sheeting on my walls, a tin roof, metalized glass for windows and metal doors (all common building materials) because I wanted the energy efficiency and durability it affords me, how are you going to bring me up on charges even if my real reason is to block my customer's cell service while they are inside my place of business? You going to forbid the use of materials or structures that block cell service now?
What about the hapless electrical engineer who works in a shielded room, not because they want to keep RF out but need to keep it IN the room as is common when working on modern electronics? Is his employeer knowingly breaking the law now because they KNOW they are blocking RF signals and they are doing it on purpose even.
The law you describe is pretty much unenforceable if it really is intended to prevent passive disruption of RF based emergency services. Not to mention it's stupid to apply it to passive measures, done on purpose or not.
There is a reason the FCC doesn't address this kind of thing.. It's a fool hardy idea. As stupid as the FCC is sometimes even they realize that you cannot ever hope to enforce that kind of rule, so why bother having it?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If "making an effort" means I used foil backed sheeting on my walls, a tin roof, metalized glass for windows and metal doors (all common building materials) because I wanted the energy efficiency and durability it affords me, how are you going to bring me up on charges even if my real reason is to block my customer's cell service while they are inside my place of business? You going to forbid the use of materials or structures that block cell service now?
Same as most laws, you actually would have to prove intent in court to have it enforced against you. That may fail in most cases, unless you publicly announce to the media your intent (as in a case like this).
I never said it was an open and shut case.
Don't you have voicemail? In most places you wouldn't hear your phone ringing so you'd miss the call anyway.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
What the fuck?
Armed robbery? Why the fuck do you think that the robber will let you make a call?
Just out of curiosity, is voice recognition on most cell phones mature enough to where a person with a Bluetooth earpiece (that also has a mic) could have their phone call 911 (or the UK equivalent) without the perps overhearing? If so, that could conceivably an argument against blocking, as anyone who makes a move toward the bar's landline phone would probably be shot immediately.
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I'm sure the bar has a phone you can use in emergencies. Heck, the bar tender might already be on the phone by the time you ask them for emergency services.
Under most emergency circumstances that would work. But, if it is something like an armed robbery or any other hostage situation, you would not be able to ask the bartender to use the phone, because he would be dead the moment he reached for it. If voice recognition is mature enough (as I asked about in another part of the discussion), then someone could mutter almost inaudibly into their BT mic that is on their earpiece, and have their smartphone call 911 without anyone else overhearing them.
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Holy shit, I take it back. Mod me down.
I had no idea, until I scrolled down and read more comments. There are really people who look at making emergency phone calls as a positive right, where they think someone is doing something bad to them, if they're unable.
They're not joking, they're just stupid or evil (as usual, it's hard to tell the difference).
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
That's just silly. Caused a lot of death - sure. But MILLIONS?
Doesn't every bar have a *Big Red Button*?
The excuses being posted here are definitely sillier than my post.
I'm left wondering why the movie theaters haven't put in Faraday cages a long time ago.
Well, let's see if the building code is changed to make all public buildings RF transparent.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The difference isn't whether we have fuckwits that stupidly misuse emergency response resources, it's that we don't ask those fuckwits to write and adjudicate on laws.
Well, and again, you have to remember that I included...
So if someone were to die and it could be shown that their death could have been prevented if people had been able to call 911
So, first, in the world of "What-If", I'm sure you could find someone who would talk about how "seconds count" in whatever situation it was and how valuable time was lost when a person had to leave the crowded bar or convince the bartender to call 911.
Second, it's a civil court. All I have to do is put 7 cell-phone addicted people on the jury and I have a victory. There's no way you'd get a criminal conviction...
This would not have been necessary if the radio protocols for mobile/cell phones had included a provision for blocking in the first place.
It would not just be convenient to have in bars and movie theatres; some hospital departments need cell-phones to be off for some very sensitive equipment (MRI, etc.) to work properly.
It is not as if illicit cell phone use have not been a problem at hospitals and movie theatres since they first were introduced.
I think having the phone stop transmitting by itself would be a much better solution than a Faraday cage. Then it would still be possible to call emergency services.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
shot? in the UK?
I've heard that just can't happen....
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
shot? in the UK?
I've heard that just can't happen....
I had briefly considered ending the post with something like, "as anyone who makes a move toward the bar's landline phone would probably be shot immediately, or in the UK glared at and shouted at to stop."
But I figured I would leave that little opportunity to someone else. :)
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It's really not that much different than bars that have lockers for smartphones, as long as people are warned about it beforehand.
Of course it'd be better if people were just polite and still have a little empathy left in them to keep their smartphones away in social occasions, but you know.
So this bar is also a privacy zone !!
With the government's current streak of paranoia, this mean he will have police/spys siting around watching the other customers.
And drinking hopefully.
The powers that be will consider people that setup places like this dangerous at some point in the future.
This is my opinion based on what little I know and understand of the rumors and lies Thanks, Randal
Since most phones increase their transmitter power when they are having problems communicating with the tower, anyone that does not turn their phone off soon after entering this bar will likely exit with a phone that has no power left in its battery.
I wish that this technique was used whenever any new movie theater was built. I've been in secure US Government rooms that were explicitly designed like this years ago.
Ain't that the truth. They spend all of their money on whine.
Happy people make bad consumers.
Furthermore, mom's basement already has poor cell coverage. The wifi is fine, of course.
pay phones? now days are hard to find out side of airports and maybe some bus / train stations
I've been in nearly all 50 states. I'm pretty sure there's no such place as "Hove, East Sussex". So there wouldn't be phone service anyway.
Armed robbery in a UK bar? What about if the Germans invade again and no one can call the RAF to send in an airstrike?
http://gamapserver.who.int/gho...
claims that the total for the whole world for 2013 is 1.25million. Assuming that for the whole period of the 20 years, that's 25 million. For it to be 'millions' implies > 2 million. Therefore over 8% or so are caused by mobile abuse. That seems conceivable; I must admit to assuming a lower rate of death on the roads.
Thank you for making me think - that's nearly the highest compliment I can pay to a person!
Faraday cage in UK serves spirits to lure in users
You jest, but the people that did die in 80s because help couldn't get there soon enough aren't around to tell you their story.
Of course they did, but the world is large and all sorts of things happen. The question, of course, is how much. At no point in the 80s did I know someone who died who in hindsight would have not died had cellphone coverage existed. Any vaguely built up area in the 80s had landlines, so for areas where emergency services could respond quickly, phones were not in especially short supply in an emergency.
There are plenty of places now without cellphone coverage and yet, surprisingly many in cities (anywhere underground), and yet it still isn't a problem that people are dying in droves. The other aspect is the nature of deaths. Survivorship bias is a thing, but we can work things out.
Deaths are rare, about 9 per 1000 people per year. Given a reasonably occupancy numbers (100 people?) and occupancy time (it's a bar, say 5 hours per day for those 100), and say it has those numbers for the full 365 days per year. That gives an average 20 person years per year occupancy. Amortized over the whole population, that's an expected 1 death every 5 years with some pretty generous numbers.
Except of course, the majority of deaths are not unexpected. Most deaths occur among the elderly and sick and are somewhat expected, and spike for the very young too. The bar setting pretty much excludes those demographics. You can also subtract off the majority of the accidental deaths too since for example traffic collisions are rare indoors (and besides, that would put a huge hole in the shielding, letting in phone signals anyway, bystanders notwithstanding).
The expected number of deaths is somewhere in the region of one in several decades at most. So you're down to (say) 1 death in 20-30 years for which a cellphone might be useful.
The other side is of course that cellphone coverage is not ubiquitous by any means and we're talking about a bar which will certainly have a physical land line wired in too.
For the cellphone to be the key factor, there has to be no other means of dialling 999 (unlikely given the bar will have a phone), the person has to be saveable, and the emergency services would have had to arrive in time even with the cell phone call.
Those are hard to estimate of course, but the probabilities are all less than unity.
In other words, the chance of someone croaking in the bar who would have been saved by a cellhphone is negligible.
TL;DR unexpected deaths are rare. The number of lives saves by cellphones must be less than the accident rate, so the effect is quite small.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Yes, because if someone has a medical emergency in a dark corner of the bar, it could take a bystander seconds to hike all the way to the bar where the landline is! Seconds they could have spent drunkenly fumbling for their cellphone in the wrong pocket.
Clearly, the solution is to serve drinks in the emergency room so if there's a problem, help is right there.
A target-rich environment with no chance to call for help.
But how do you catch the pokemons???
Just kidding, I don't play that game.
I do wonder if those that do will report the bar as a deadspot and try to work around it...
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
I hope no-one ever needs to call the emergency services from his establishment.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
I wish them luck with their niche business model. Hopefully the Faraday cage won't be too expensive to remove for the next tenant of the space when they go out of business.
My experience is that I rarely have any phone signal when I walk into any pub or restaurant outside London. Luckily most places have free Wi-Fi.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Does "conversing" with dozens or hundreds of people on the Internet really lead to deep, thoughtful, intimate discussion--something face-to-face conversations with a small group certainly promotes--or is it really not much more than "surface contact"? There will always be exceptions, of course, but IMHO, texting and tweeting just does not promote deep discussion.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
I'm in the US. We can sue for almost anything.
Filing a lawsuit and winning can be significantly more difficult.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I work at an EMI laboratory with four shielded rooms. I can tell you that it is *extremely* difficult to effectively shield an enclosure from radio waves, especially in the gigahertz range (where cell phone frequencies lie). FM radio signals, with much larger wavelengths (and thus far easier to block), can penetrate the room if we get a small crack in one corner. Also, any wires that penetrate the walls can carry the signals via conduction - think power lines, cable TV, POTS phone lines, etc. This is a noble effort, but the chances of it being highly effective are low.
I am not a number - I am a free man!
Thank you for the 5th grader book report explanation of a Faraday cage.
NRRPT/RCT
I'm blind. My phone is a compass, GPS navigation system, object recognizer, money counter, menu reader, and ride-summoning device. Would everyone like to lose all of those abilities upon entering a business? And God forbid, I might even use it to call for a friend to come join me. People shouldn't assume that cell phone == asocial.
I know! It'll be like the dark ages back in 1995 again. People died man. People died.
Most of them died. And the rest will die in the next few decades. And it's worse than that, you are going to die, too. (eventually)
But more die now from walking in front of buses and stuff, than did then... 8-P
Deaths are rare, about 9 per 1000 people per year. Given a reasonably occupancy numbers (100 people?) and occupancy time (it's a bar, say 5 hours per day for those 100), and say it has those numbers for the full 365 days per year. That gives an average 20 person years per year occupancy. Amortized over the whole population, that's an expected 1 death every 5 years with some pretty generous numbers.
Now, there is a -real- SlashDot answer! 8-)
Often pubs are full of sad, drunk bastards. I just want to chill with a drink and catch up with what my friends and family are doing around the world on facebook (or the 4 messaging apps you need to have installed because federated services are still some years in the future), read the news etc, and not get involved with someone who looks like they've not left the pub to do any exercise in the last 30 years. Irish pubs are especially bad for unstable idiots looking for a fight, even by UK standards of drunken idiocy.