These are not incompatible classification schemes
on
The Death of Folders?
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· Score: 1
What's broken about it is that a single hierarchical classification scheme may not always be appropriate for a given body of data.
Right. But in no way does that mean a folder-based hierarchical classification scheme should not be used.
As you aptly point out, the whole purpose of a database-based file system is so that you can view files using multiple classification schemes. This does not preclude the use of a folder-based scheme. There's no reason at all to preclude users from keeping their data organized in a folder-based scheme. It may simply turn into a virtual folder-based system rather than one that reflects how the disk partition's actual directory tree is organized (this is already not true with some filesystems).
A directory structure where I can sort files by location, type, content, product type, filename length, etc. would rock. But a directory structure that can only be accessed via search queries is hardly different from a folder-based system - you're artifically limiting the user to a single means of accessing his data.
3. If he fights it and loses (which would be inevitable without legal support), he will likely spend the rest of his life in debt, lose his house and quite possibly spend a non-trivial amount of time in prison.
If he'd set up a one-man limited liability corporation and released DVD Decrypter via the LLC, then the worst that could happen would've been that his LLC went bankrupt. But most of you seem to think corporations are evil, so instead you put your personal lives at stake should an Evil Corporation® ever set its sights on you.
I believe the adage that applies here is: Fight fire with fire. The fight against corporate corruption doesn't have to reside solely in the political domain. It can be done in the market domain as well. Sean Fanning did it that way. He lost, but he now has millions he can apply to any future battles.
not the point. I relize for you Apple is technology God of the universe, but they lied and now they are paying for there lies.
From the article:
Apple has agreed to the settlement without admitting fault or misrepresentation.
As near as I can tell, Apple never admitted to lying. All they did was pay off a bunch of people (and lawyers) to shut up.
That's what I don't get about these class action lawsuits. If they were really about faulty products, wouldn't the primary goal be to get the company to acknowledge wrongdoing? Instead they all seem to be about money with no admission of fault.
If manufacturer's create a battery that lasts for years...how is that good business?
A company that produces a laptop that can go for weeks to years without recharging will clean up in the marketplace. The battery manufacturers may not have direct incentive to produce such a battery, but there is plenty of incentive for other companies to produce such a power source. If/when that happens, that company will put the battery manufacturers out of business. So it's good business for the battery manufacturers to be at the forefront of research in any technology that could potentially put them out of business.
That's what Kodak did (and Polaroid failed to do) with digital photography. Kodak owns patents on a large chunk of the technology used in modern digital cameras and is managing to stay competetive despite their film business drying up. Polaroid went bankrupt.
Right now, if you use items that suck up a lot of battery power, you have to buy more. That's more profit for the manufacturer.
Capitalism works in a free market because (without a cartel/monopoly stifling the market) the more effective product sells better than the less effective one. The introduction of a long-duration battery would reduce demand for short-duration batteries, greatly reducing the profit you're saying will keep manufacturers using the short-duration batteries. Furthermore, the company producing the long-duration battery would steal a huge chunk of the market from companies producing short-duration batteries. With enough competition, every company wants to be the one that owns a huge chunk of the market, and the doomsday scenario you outline will not happen.
Imagine if the razor companies created a blade that lasts for 3 years. Fat chance! Blades are their cash cow!
Those razor companies would go out of business when they lost their marketshare to the company who manufactured a razoe with a blade that lasts for 3 years. Yes those razor companies would fight tooth and nail to retain their marketshare, as the RIAA and MPAA are currently doing and as the horse buggywhip manufacturers once did, but the proverbial writing would be on the wall.
If you believe that Microsoft is a legitimate business earning a fair profit for its products, then his donations to charity are a wonderful example of philanthropy.
OTOH if you believe that Microsoft gouges consumers by leveraging its monopoly OS position to stifle competition and keep software prices artificially inflated, then the $25 billion he's donated to charity probably would've done more good if left in the hands of the people who were overchargd. It'd be like a shop charging $5 per bottle of water for firefighters after 9/11, then donating the excess proceeds to charity. Yeah they donated a ton of money, but the firefighters were robbed of money that could've been put to other (better from a market standpoint) uses. A more accurate assessment would be that the firefighters were coerced into unwillingly making a donation to charity.
Course we can argue forever about which view is correct; and in truth both views may be partially correct.
Obviously you've never been hunting if you think it's just a matter of aiming at an animal and pulling the trigger. I hunt, with a camera, and oh how I wish it were as easy as just pushing an "I Win" button. There's a great deal of tracking, prediction, guesswork, and luck before you even get to the point of sighting the animal. That's the sporting element that's missing in a hunt-over-the-web setup. Without that element it's, as the aphorism goes, like shooting fish in a barrel.
In other words, two 200 seat airplanes do require more fuel than one 400 seat one.
I simply pointed out why that isn't necessarily true. Yes ETOPS regulations influence the decision on number of engines. But from a purely fuel efficiency standpoint, it's not necessarily true that a 400 seat 4-engine plane must be more fuel efficient than two 200 seat 2-engine planes.
As for the weight of two engines being an issue, if they hurt efficiency as badly as you claim, smaller planes would also be using 4 engines instead of 2.
Eastbound flights during daytime are not popular and tend to use smaller aircraft (like a 757/767 or now 787)
Night flights/redeyes are more popular because you arrive the following morning and don't "lose a day travelling". These flights have 777s, 330-300s, 747-400s.
That doesn't work. The number of 787s you have going East on a route has to equal the number of 787s going West. Otherwise you end up with all the 787s in Europe and all the A380s in the US.
The fact is that Fluid Mechanics shows that big bodies have proportionally lower drag than low bodies. In other words, two 200 seat airplanes do require more fuel than one 400 seat one.
You'd be right if all you did was scale the plane bigger or smaller. But economies of scale say that 2 engines is more efficient than 4 engines (actually 1 engine would be most efficient, but nobody is going to do that from a safety standpoint). That's why all the newer bigger planes (A330, 767, 777) are two-engine models. The 747 and A380 are 4 engine planes simply by virtue of the fact that engine manufacturers can't yet produce two engines that can provide enough thrust for these beasts. They pay an efficiency price for using 4 engines instead of 2.
There's an important difference between Airbus PR and Boeing PR. Boeing has been trying to sell the idea of a 747 with the upper deck completely stretched almost since the 747 first rolled out. They tried to sell it again when Airbus first began trying to sell the A380.
None of the airlines bit.
Airbus' PR is what it is because their collective governments decided to build the plane. Boeing's PR is what it is because they couldn't find enough customers to justify the plane. One is based on wishful thinking, the other is based on market forces. The exact same thing happened with Concorde and the SST. Boeing dropped the SST when it couldn't find customers. The UK and France went ahead with Concorde because, probably blinded by the prestige, they thought it was a good idea. It turned out to be a major money-loser.
That's not to say the A380 won't succeed. The 747 was considered a boondoggle by most when it was first conceived. But if I were forced to bet based only on the PR, my money would be with Boeing.
work with eCommerce for a living. Credit card processing requires the CC#, Exp date, CVV2 code (the digits on the back of the card) and the billing Zipcode.
Why then must we supply name, address, phone number, email, and other personal information just to make a purchase? (obvious answer is for customer profiling and contacting post-sale.)
No, it's because the credit card companies set things up to absolve themselves of all liability if a credit card is used fraudulently. Say your credit card gets stolen and the thief buys stuff. You call the credit card company, they cancel the card and reimburse your account. Problem solved, right?
Nope. The credit card company then refuses to pay the merchant for the fraudulent purchase. The merchant loses the item and he loses the money. (Meanwhile the credit card companies charge exorbitant interest rates to supposedly "offset the cost of fraud." In reality they're laughing all the way to the bank.)
So to cover their ass, most merchants also run the optional security checks the credit card companies offer to prevent fraud: verifying your name, address, and phone number with the billing information on file with the credit card company.
You probably have to examine Nikon's EULA carefully. They likely retain their copyright over the "NEF" part even if it is incorporated into the subsequent photograph.
AFAIK, facts cannot be copyrighted. That's all the white balance data is - facts about what the settings were when you took the picture.
The real issue here is that the DMCA is so loosely worded that it could be interpreted to cover cases even when copyright is only tangentially involved. That is what happens when you write legislation that makes blanket restrictions and itemizes specific exceptions, rather than legislation that itemizes specific restrictions.
This is a boneheaded decision by Nikon, but they are famous for such things. They make fantastic products, but the management has always been retarded.
I've got a Nikon Coolscan slide scanner. It's a wonderful unit that does excellent high-quality scans.
One day I brought it into work to scan some work-related slides. Since I use Vuescan instead of the Nikon software, I just needed the drivers. The original CDs were in a box somewhere from a recent move so I figured I'd just download the drivers off their web site and I'd be good to go.
Simple, right? Nope. I visited their web site and found they don't offer drivers. What modern peripherals company does not offer drivers online? Instead I had to register, provide proof that I owned the NikonScan software, and download an upgrade to it. Half an hour later I found out the upgrade wouldn't install without the original being present. If it won't install without the original present, why did I have to provide proof that I owned the original? Furthermore, it was packaged in such a way that you couldn't extract just the drivers.
I ended up going to some third party website which required I register, give a working email address, and opt out of a ton of mailing lists. 10kB and a virus scan later, I had the drivers installed.
Clue for Nikon: If someone wants drivers for your hardware, it's reasonable to assume they have the physical hardware present, which means they probably already paid for it. You don't have to make them jump through hoops with the original bundled CDs just to download hardware drivers.
Well, you can imagine why people in the sciences might be a little snarky on this subject. A lot of the history of Christianity revolves around bashing people who try to point out the actual reality of the universe. Those people (scientists) do get a little tired of the unrelenting "seek to tear down" (to use your phrase) attitude from the religious side of the spectrum. So, must of the comments in that tone about this article are made in the context of a more-secular-than-usual audience, and presume a certain world-weariness on this subject.
So by your reasoning which is it? "Do as I say, not as I do," or "I have become what I beheld and I am content that I have done right"?
Bashing others just because they bash you is the reason our 21st century world is still mired in wars. Consider for a moment that you're seeking excuses for this behavior, while the book they're criticizing instructs people to simply turn the other cheek.
Re:Why is everyone so impressed with Google Maps?
on
Satellite Easter Eggs
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· Score: 1
How are you getting the high resolution color images from terraserver? I get black and white with lower resolution from terra server.
The US Government has an ongoing project to cover the entire country with aerial photography. If you're in on of the regions that have already been photographed, it'll show up on Terraserver at 0.5m resolution or better. I'm in one of the preliminary regions - San Bernardino/Riverside county in California - and managed to snag some gorgeous aerial photos of the hiking trails near my workplace.
For California stuff, I find The California Spatial Information Library site to be more useful. The interface is a bit clunky, but they offer a wider variety of photos.
Do you really want to be paying the defendant's legal bill if you lose a case where you, the little guy, are suing a large corporation?
That's a scare tactic the trial lawyer lobby uses to keep the public opposed to a loser pays system. In countries where the loser does pay, the judge has authority to use his/her jdugement to determine how much the loser should pay. If you sue a corporation that decides to hire $1000/hr lawyers to fight you, and you lose, the judge decides how much you pay. If he decides the corporation overspent on legal fees, he can cap your payment to what he feels is a reasonable amount. If he decides your case had merit even though you lost, you might not even have to pay anything. Of course if he decides your lawsuit was frivilous he may make you pay the full amount, which is the whole point - an impartial third party has the final say on whether a lawsuit is worthwhile, not some lawyer who only risks losing time.
I recieved a letter simular to that form my isp. It basicaly said i was above the "average usage" and it tended to indecate i was doing somethign ilegal. ... Then after explaining that the average was what it is because people like me use more bandwidth and if i quit it would lower the average i was still met with an attitude.
You didn't explain that right. The correct explanation is: By definition half your customers have above average usage. By their reasoning, half their customers are doing something illegal.
I suppose the wide use of GSM probably makes the hardware cheaper, which would make more and smaller cells economical.
The problem with poor coverage in the US in sub/urban areas was due to poor early implementation. There was a significant analog network already in place, so the companies rolling out digital networks weren't necessarily the ones developing digital networks. The companies who were developing digital networks often oversold their capabilities to the phone companies (yeah blame it in marketing). The phone companies then built networks based on overoptimistic specs, resulting in the towers being too far apart. They've been paying for that mistake ever since, spending oodles of money adding new towers or relocating towers. But since that's only done in locations where they get frequent reports of poor coverage, a lot of marginal sites are still around. Capitalism requires well-informed purchasing decisions in order for it to work well, and those early purchasing decisions weren't well-informed.
As an aside, GSM (the old one) uses timeslices (TDMA) to separate out phone calls. So each tower has a maximum number of calls it can handle. If an area is densely populated such that they're expecting to hit that max limit frequently, they had to position the towers closer together to begin with. A large chunk of the US networks (Verizon, Sprint, a couple others) use CDMA, which doesn't really have a set-in-stone per-tower limit since all the transmissions can happen simultaneously. As a result, those companies initially tried to place their towers as far apart as they'd been told by marketing that they could. That resulted in marginal and patchy coverage. Despite the rough start, CDMA has proven to be the better (albeit patented) technology. The new GSM systems are based on CDMA.
Given that calls within the UK and Europe are always fine, I think it's perfectly safe to assume that the faults lie in the US part of the circuit.
That's stupid. "Given that calls within the US are always fine, I think it's perfectly safe to assume that the faults lie in the UK/Europe part of the circuit."
The fault is in the international circuit. You know, the thousands of miles of cable lying on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
Is the impact of litigation on GDP. (Warning: link to right-wing source follows, but I haven't seen anything denying these particular figures.)
According to this site litigation consumed 2.2% of the US' GDP in 1994, but less than 1% in other industrialized countries. If true, regardless of exactly what percentage succeeds or what the average payout is, it's more than twice as bad in the US as in other countries.
I suppose one could argue that the US philosophy towards business - letting the marketplace (and the courts) decide things rather than mandating via legislation - tends to encourage this sort of thing.
What's EVEN more frightening is that they've wanted to have talks with the US for years, but the US has refused any direct negociations with them.
There's good reason for that. North Korea does not consider South Korea to be a legitimate nation. They think South Korea is merely a puppet state, and consider the Korean War to have been between North Korea and the United States.
The U.S. doesn't want to validate that line of thinking, so it has always insisted that any negotiations be between either North Korea and South Korea, or between all five major parties involved in the war (both Koreas, Japan, the U.S., and China). Unless North Korea recognizes South Korea as a legitimate nation, you will never see the U.S. agree to direct talks with only North Korea.
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I use the Photoshop to read raw .cr2 files from my Canon 20D all the time. It was
Nikon that encrypted the white balance portion of their RAW format.
Right. But in no way does that mean a folder-based hierarchical classification scheme should not be used.
As you aptly point out, the whole purpose of a database-based file system is so that you can view files using multiple classification schemes. This does not preclude the use of a folder-based scheme. There's no reason at all to preclude users from keeping their data organized in a folder-based scheme. It may simply turn into a virtual folder-based system rather than one that reflects how the disk partition's actual directory tree is organized (this is already not true with some filesystems).
A directory structure where I can sort files by location, type, content, product type, filename length, etc. would rock. But a directory structure that can only be accessed via search queries is hardly different from a folder-based system - you're artifically limiting the user to a single means of accessing his data.
If he'd set up a one-man limited liability corporation and released DVD Decrypter via the LLC, then the worst that could happen would've been that his LLC went bankrupt. But most of you seem to think corporations are evil, so instead you put your personal lives at stake should an Evil Corporation® ever set its sights on you.
I believe the adage that applies here is: Fight fire with fire. The fight against corporate corruption doesn't have to reside solely in the political domain. It can be done in the market domain as well. Sean Fanning did it that way. He lost, but he now has millions he can apply to any future battles.
From the article:
Apple has agreed to the settlement without admitting fault or misrepresentation.
As near as I can tell, Apple never admitted to lying. All they did was pay off a bunch of people (and lawyers) to shut up.
That's what I don't get about these class action lawsuits. If they were really about faulty products, wouldn't the primary goal be to get the company to acknowledge wrongdoing? Instead they all seem to be about money with no admission of fault.
A company that produces a laptop that can go for weeks to years without recharging will clean up in the marketplace. The battery manufacturers may not have direct incentive to produce such a battery, but there is plenty of incentive for other companies to produce such a power source. If/when that happens, that company will put the battery manufacturers out of business. So it's good business for the battery manufacturers to be at the forefront of research in any technology that could potentially put them out of business.
That's what Kodak did (and Polaroid failed to do) with digital photography. Kodak owns patents on a large chunk of the technology used in modern digital cameras and is managing to stay competetive despite their film business drying up. Polaroid went bankrupt.
Right now, if you use items that suck up a lot of battery power, you have to buy more. That's more profit for the manufacturer.
Capitalism works in a free market because (without a cartel/monopoly stifling the market) the more effective product sells better than the less effective one. The introduction of a long-duration battery would reduce demand for short-duration batteries, greatly reducing the profit you're saying will keep manufacturers using the short-duration batteries. Furthermore, the company producing the long-duration battery would steal a huge chunk of the market from companies producing short-duration batteries. With enough competition, every company wants to be the one that owns a huge chunk of the market, and the doomsday scenario you outline will not happen.
Imagine if the razor companies created a blade that lasts for 3 years. Fat chance! Blades are their cash cow!
Those razor companies would go out of business when they lost their marketshare to the company who manufactured a razoe with a blade that lasts for 3 years. Yes those razor companies would fight tooth and nail to retain their marketshare, as the RIAA and MPAA are currently doing and as the horse buggywhip manufacturers once did, but the proverbial writing would be on the wall.
If you believe that Microsoft is a legitimate business earning a fair profit for its products, then his donations to charity are a wonderful example of philanthropy. OTOH if you believe that Microsoft gouges consumers by leveraging its monopoly OS position to stifle competition and keep software prices artificially inflated, then the $25 billion he's donated to charity probably would've done more good if left in the hands of the people who were overchargd. It'd be like a shop charging $5 per bottle of water for firefighters after 9/11, then donating the excess proceeds to charity. Yeah they donated a ton of money, but the firefighters were robbed of money that could've been put to other (better from a market standpoint) uses. A more accurate assessment would be that the firefighters were coerced into unwillingly making a donation to charity. Course we can argue forever about which view is correct; and in truth both views may be partially correct.
Obviously you've never been hunting if you think it's just a matter of aiming at an animal and pulling the trigger. I hunt, with a camera, and oh how I wish it were as easy as just pushing an "I Win" button. There's a great deal of tracking, prediction, guesswork, and luck before you even get to the point of sighting the animal. That's the sporting element that's missing in a hunt-over-the-web setup. Without that element it's, as the aphorism goes, like shooting fish in a barrel.
In other words, two 200 seat airplanes do require more fuel than one 400 seat one.
I simply pointed out why that isn't necessarily true. Yes ETOPS regulations influence the decision on number of engines. But from a purely fuel efficiency standpoint, it's not necessarily true that a 400 seat 4-engine plane must be more fuel efficient than two 200 seat 2-engine planes.
As for the weight of two engines being an issue, if they hurt efficiency as badly as you claim, smaller planes would also be using 4 engines instead of 2.
If you can figure out an economically feasible way to route planes from London to New York via Tokyo, be my guest.
Night flights/redeyes are more popular because you arrive the following morning and don't "lose a day travelling". These flights have 777s, 330-300s, 747-400s.
That doesn't work. The number of 787s you have going East on a route has to equal the number of 787s going West. Otherwise you end up with all the 787s in Europe and all the A380s in the US.
You'd be right if all you did was scale the plane bigger or smaller. But economies of scale say that 2 engines is more efficient than 4 engines (actually 1 engine would be most efficient, but nobody is going to do that from a safety standpoint). That's why all the newer bigger planes (A330, 767, 777) are two-engine models. The 747 and A380 are 4 engine planes simply by virtue of the fact that engine manufacturers can't yet produce two engines that can provide enough thrust for these beasts. They pay an efficiency price for using 4 engines instead of 2.
None of the airlines bit.
Airbus' PR is what it is because their collective governments decided to build the plane. Boeing's PR is what it is because they couldn't find enough customers to justify the plane. One is based on wishful thinking, the other is based on market forces. The exact same thing happened with Concorde and the SST. Boeing dropped the SST when it couldn't find customers. The UK and France went ahead with Concorde because, probably blinded by the prestige, they thought it was a good idea. It turned out to be a major money-loser.
That's not to say the A380 won't succeed. The 747 was considered a boondoggle by most when it was first conceived. But if I were forced to bet based only on the PR, my money would be with Boeing.
That this is why the vote of an individual in an election is anonymous.
Why then must we supply name, address, phone number, email, and other personal information just to make a purchase? (obvious answer is for customer profiling and contacting post-sale.)
No, it's because the credit card companies set things up to absolve themselves of all liability if a credit card is used fraudulently. Say your credit card gets stolen and the thief buys stuff. You call the credit card company, they cancel the card and reimburse your account. Problem solved, right?
Nope. The credit card company then refuses to pay the merchant for the fraudulent purchase. The merchant loses the item and he loses the money. (Meanwhile the credit card companies charge exorbitant interest rates to supposedly "offset the cost of fraud." In reality they're laughing all the way to the bank.)
So to cover their ass, most merchants also run the optional security checks the credit card companies offer to prevent fraud: verifying your name, address, and phone number with the billing information on file with the credit card company.
AFAIK, facts cannot be copyrighted. That's all the white balance data is - facts about what the settings were when you took the picture.
The real issue here is that the DMCA is so loosely worded that it could be interpreted to cover cases even when copyright is only tangentially involved. That is what happens when you write legislation that makes blanket restrictions and itemizes specific exceptions, rather than legislation that itemizes specific restrictions.
I've got a Nikon Coolscan slide scanner. It's a wonderful unit that does excellent high-quality scans.
One day I brought it into work to scan some work-related slides. Since I use Vuescan instead of the Nikon software, I just needed the drivers. The original CDs were in a box somewhere from a recent move so I figured I'd just download the drivers off their web site and I'd be good to go.
Simple, right? Nope. I visited their web site and found they don't offer drivers. What modern peripherals company does not offer drivers online? Instead I had to register, provide proof that I owned the NikonScan software, and download an upgrade to it. Half an hour later I found out the upgrade wouldn't install without the original being present. If it won't install without the original present, why did I have to provide proof that I owned the original? Furthermore, it was packaged in such a way that you couldn't extract just the drivers.
I ended up going to some third party website which required I register, give a working email address, and opt out of a ton of mailing lists. 10kB and a virus scan later, I had the drivers installed.
Clue for Nikon: If someone wants drivers for your hardware, it's reasonable to assume they have the physical hardware present, which means they probably already paid for it. You don't have to make them jump through hoops with the original bundled CDs just to download hardware drivers.
So by your reasoning which is it? "Do as I say, not as I do," or "I have become what I beheld and I am content that I have done right"?
Bashing others just because they bash you is the reason our 21st century world is still mired in wars. Consider for a moment that you're seeking excuses for this behavior, while the book they're criticizing instructs people to simply turn the other cheek.
The US Government has an ongoing project to cover the entire country with aerial photography. If you're in on of the regions that have already been photographed, it'll show up on Terraserver at 0.5m resolution or better. I'm in one of the preliminary regions - San Bernardino/Riverside county in California - and managed to snag some gorgeous aerial photos of the hiking trails near my workplace.
For California stuff, I find The California Spatial Information Library site to be more useful. The interface is a bit clunky, but they offer a wider variety of photos.
That's a scare tactic the trial lawyer lobby uses to keep the public opposed to a loser pays system. In countries where the loser does pay, the judge has authority to use his/her jdugement to determine how much the loser should pay. If you sue a corporation that decides to hire $1000/hr lawyers to fight you, and you lose, the judge decides how much you pay. If he decides the corporation overspent on legal fees, he can cap your payment to what he feels is a reasonable amount. If he decides your case had merit even though you lost, you might not even have to pay anything. Of course if he decides your lawsuit was frivilous he may make you pay the full amount, which is the whole point - an impartial third party has the final say on whether a lawsuit is worthwhile, not some lawyer who only risks losing time.
Then after explaining that the average was what it is because people like me use more bandwidth and if i quit it would lower the average i was still met with an attitude.
You didn't explain that right. The correct explanation is: By definition half your customers have above average usage. By their reasoning, half their customers are doing something illegal.
A California jury found against Toshiba, awarding $465.4 million in damages to Lexar.
The problem with poor coverage in the US in sub/urban areas was due to poor early implementation. There was a significant analog network already in place, so the companies rolling out digital networks weren't necessarily the ones developing digital networks. The companies who were developing digital networks often oversold their capabilities to the phone companies (yeah blame it in marketing). The phone companies then built networks based on overoptimistic specs, resulting in the towers being too far apart. They've been paying for that mistake ever since, spending oodles of money adding new towers or relocating towers. But since that's only done in locations where they get frequent reports of poor coverage, a lot of marginal sites are still around. Capitalism requires well-informed purchasing decisions in order for it to work well, and those early purchasing decisions weren't well-informed.
As an aside, GSM (the old one) uses timeslices (TDMA) to separate out phone calls. So each tower has a maximum number of calls it can handle. If an area is densely populated such that they're expecting to hit that max limit frequently, they had to position the towers closer together to begin with. A large chunk of the US networks (Verizon, Sprint, a couple others) use CDMA, which doesn't really have a set-in-stone per-tower limit since all the transmissions can happen simultaneously. As a result, those companies initially tried to place their towers as far apart as they'd been told by marketing that they could. That resulted in marginal and patchy coverage. Despite the rough start, CDMA has proven to be the better (albeit patented) technology. The new GSM systems are based on CDMA.
That's stupid. "Given that calls within the US are always fine, I think it's perfectly safe to assume that the faults lie in the UK/Europe part of the circuit."
The fault is in the international circuit. You know, the thousands of miles of cable lying on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
I suppose one could argue that the US philosophy towards business - letting the marketplace (and the courts) decide things rather than mandating via legislation - tends to encourage this sort of thing.
There's good reason for that. North Korea does not consider South Korea to be a legitimate nation. They think South Korea is merely a puppet state, and consider the Korean War to have been between North Korea and the United States.
The U.S. doesn't want to validate that line of thinking, so it has always insisted that any negotiations be between either North Korea and South Korea, or between all five major parties involved in the war (both Koreas, Japan, the U.S., and China). Unless North Korea recognizes South Korea as a legitimate nation, you will never see the U.S. agree to direct talks with only North Korea.