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If you want to jail offenders then there has to be a law or regulation for that. This is that regulation. How does this harm society? Imagine your wifi router

If you want to jail offenders then there has to be a law or regulation for that. This is that regulation. How does this harm society? Imagine your wifi router becoming useless cause your neighbor decides to modify his and boost his output which overpowers yours. Plus adding additional frequencies that render your wireless phone useless.

kazinator 11y ago
Imagine (and be terrified of) your neighbor sneaking over at night and smothering you with a pillow. Let's ban pillows! Bonus: the ban will stop those vicious pillow fights.
- gopowerranger 11y ago
  You are pretending such things I mention don't happen but they happened all the time before the FCC came into being and happened often during the CB craze. In fact, I still occasionally hear of such things. Imagine there were no regulations. Such things would be rampant as they were in the past.
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    All of the things you're worried about are already illegal. Pointing out that they were legal sometime in the past, and it sucked, is a non sequitur.
  - kazinator 11y ago
    I've played with the transmitter power in my Wi-Fi router to get better coverage in a distant room. Thank goodnes for open source.
    - Sanddancer 11y ago
      Yes, and have you checked to see what the end result of the emissions are on the main harmonics. If you're overdriving your amplifier, there's a good chance the distortion harmonics are sending into the 7.3 ghz band and 12 ghz band, which are both used by satellites, and can cause interference due to the sensitivity of communications.. This is one of the many problems with these modifications, and why the FCC is making enforcement; driving circuitry outside of its range can and does cause problems more severe than annoying your neighbor by making their connections a bit worse.
      - kazinator 11y ago
        > Yes, and have you checked to see what the end result of the emissions are on the main harmonics. Let me think, no. > If you're overdriving your amplifier, ... distortion harmonics RF amplifiers are not linear at any amplitude! RF is not audio.
        Sanddancer 11y ago
        Even with nonlinear amplifiers, you can still drive it too much, you can still have distortion, and you're still going to have to test with a scope regardless. There's plenty of guidelines out there describing how to minimize harmonics, like this one http://www.tek.com/support/faqs/what-fft-fast-fourier-transform-math-function-oscilloscope-useful http://www.tek.com/support/faqs/what-fft-fast-fourier-transf..., or this one http://www.mpdigest.com/issue/Articles/2009/feb/CEL/Default.asp http://www.mpdigest.com/issue/Articles/2009/feb/CEL/Default.... or this one http://www.evaluationengineering.com/articles/200611/rf-measurement-basics-for-non-rf-test-engineers.php http://www.evaluationengineering.com/articles/200611/rf-meas... . This is one of the reasons the FCC is proposing rules like this, people don't realize the unintended consequences.
        kazinator 11y ago
        If the hardware register being in range causes the circuit to be out of its range, that's a hardware problem. It's not my problem. The FCC should take that up with the hardware designer. I don't supply the input signal to that amplifier; it's all within the router. The hardware should know the amplitude of the input signal and what maximum gain can be applied to it before these detrimental effects set in. It should not permit higher gains than that. I trust that it doesn't, and don't give a shit beyond that. I'm not going get a multi-gigahertz-capable scope costing tens of thousands of dollars just to tweak my home router.
        Sanddancer 11y ago
        Your attitude towards the problem is exactly why the FCC is making these rules. Enough people not caring about the rules is why the FCC is putting their foot down and saying that hardware makers have to make their devices a black box.
  - Turing_Machine 11y ago
    Your example of the CB craze ignores the fact that there were plenty of regulations at that time -- there were actually more then than there are now. They were totally ignored. For instance, back then you were required to have an FCC license to operate a CB radio, but not one user out of a thousand bothered to get one. Regulations and laws aren't magic.
    - gopowerranger 11y ago
      I'm not ignoring it at all. It's my point that, if those CBers couldn't modify their equipment, many of those issues would not have come up. Being an illegal operator is a different story unrelated to this topic.
shkkmo 11y ago
Right, make it illegal to operate your device in a way that causes interference. Don't make it illegal to modify your device and don't make it illegal to manufacture a device capable of being modified. There is a huge difference here.
- gopowerranger 11y ago
  Your idea is already in place. The regulations state you cannot cause interference but people still modify their devices to do so anyway.
  - shkkmo 11y ago
    So then we just need better enforcement, not new laws that impinge on our ability to control our own hardware.

kazinator 11y ago

Imagine (and be terrified of) your neighbor sneaking over at night and smothering you with a pillow. Let's ban pillows! Bonus: the ban will stop those vicious pillow fights.

gopowerranger 11y ago
You are pretending such things I mention don't happen but they happened all the time before the FCC came into being and happened often during the CB craze. In fact, I still occasionally hear of such things. Imagine there were no regulations. Such things would be rampant as they were in the past.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  All of the things you're worried about are already illegal. Pointing out that they were legal sometime in the past, and it sucked, is a non sequitur.
- kazinator 11y ago
  I've played with the transmitter power in my Wi-Fi router to get better coverage in a distant room. Thank goodnes for open source.
  - Sanddancer 11y ago
    Yes, and have you checked to see what the end result of the emissions are on the main harmonics. If you're overdriving your amplifier, there's a good chance the distortion harmonics are sending into the 7.3 ghz band and 12 ghz band, which are both used by satellites, and can cause interference due to the sensitivity of communications.. This is one of the many problems with these modifications, and why the FCC is making enforcement; driving circuitry outside of its range can and does cause problems more severe than annoying your neighbor by making their connections a bit worse.
    - kazinator 11y ago
      > Yes, and have you checked to see what the end result of the emissions are on the main harmonics. Let me think, no. > If you're overdriving your amplifier, ... distortion harmonics RF amplifiers are not linear at any amplitude! RF is not audio.
      - Sanddancer 11y ago
        Even with nonlinear amplifiers, you can still drive it too much, you can still have distortion, and you're still going to have to test with a scope regardless. There's plenty of guidelines out there describing how to minimize harmonics, like this one http://www.tek.com/support/faqs/what-fft-fast-fourier-transform-math-function-oscilloscope-useful http://www.tek.com/support/faqs/what-fft-fast-fourier-transf..., or this one http://www.mpdigest.com/issue/Articles/2009/feb/CEL/Default.asp http://www.mpdigest.com/issue/Articles/2009/feb/CEL/Default.... or this one http://www.evaluationengineering.com/articles/200611/rf-measurement-basics-for-non-rf-test-engineers.php http://www.evaluationengineering.com/articles/200611/rf-meas... . This is one of the reasons the FCC is proposing rules like this, people don't realize the unintended consequences.
        kazinator 11y ago
        If the hardware register being in range causes the circuit to be out of its range, that's a hardware problem. It's not my problem. The FCC should take that up with the hardware designer. I don't supply the input signal to that amplifier; it's all within the router. The hardware should know the amplitude of the input signal and what maximum gain can be applied to it before these detrimental effects set in. It should not permit higher gains than that. I trust that it doesn't, and don't give a shit beyond that. I'm not going get a multi-gigahertz-capable scope costing tens of thousands of dollars just to tweak my home router.
        Sanddancer 11y ago
        Your attitude towards the problem is exactly why the FCC is making these rules. Enough people not caring about the rules is why the FCC is putting their foot down and saying that hardware makers have to make their devices a black box.
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  Your example of the CB craze ignores the fact that there were plenty of regulations at that time -- there were actually more then than there are now. They were totally ignored. For instance, back then you were required to have an FCC license to operate a CB radio, but not one user out of a thousand bothered to get one. Regulations and laws aren't magic.
  - gopowerranger 11y ago
    I'm not ignoring it at all. It's my point that, if those CBers couldn't modify their equipment, many of those issues would not have come up. Being an illegal operator is a different story unrelated to this topic.

shkkmo 11y ago

Right, make it illegal to operate your device in a way that causes interference. Don't make it illegal to modify your device and don't make it illegal to manufacture a device capable of being modified. There is a huge difference here.

gopowerranger 11y ago
Your idea is already in place. The regulations state you cannot cause interference but people still modify their devices to do so anyway.
- shkkmo 11y ago
  So then we just need better enforcement, not new laws that impinge on our ability to control our own hardware.