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Ten years ago I was studying CS in a conservative small religios city in central Iran. My girlfriend was living in a dormitory one kilometer away. Due to limita

by mehdix 10y ago

Ten years ago I was studying CS in a conservative small religios city in central Iran. My girlfriend was living in a dormitory one kilometer away. Due to limitations I was unable to meet her freely. I borrowed a WRT54G and an outdoor antenna and made a WAN. The default output power was insufficient for my antenna and my intended target laptop in the other side of the city, however. With WRT54G having its firmware open sourced, I downloaded a custom built of it and hacked the device to increase the output power. Not only I circumvent the limitations, but I used an old 300mhz Intel PC as an internet gateway to let her access internet using her laptop. We were finally able to communicate freely at any time. My thanks to Linksys for crating this fantastic hardware and opening it to the world.

arkitaip 10y ago
That's brilliant. Thank you for sharing.
devereaux 10y ago
And this is why the FCC requirements make little sense. Such products are used all over the world. Forcefully limiting the freedom in one locale is catering to the lowest common denominator. Instead, the ability to use spectrum should be controlled by the end user, through some hardware measure (ex: jumpers) that is done at the user own responsibility.
- colanderman 10y ago
  "The government should not regulate the shared limited resource of radio bandwidth because it is useful to work around restrictions on free speech" is nonsensical. If your government significantly curtails free speech, then it either is also so fascist that it doesn't care what you think about bandwidth regulation, or (as in the case of the GP) it is so technologically incompetent that it effectively does not regulate the airwaves. Either way your suggestion is useless.
  - bhickey 10y ago
    You're misrepresenting what the GP post said and being obnoxious about it. Given that there are different regulatory regimens, locking down hardware to a particular locale may be inappropriate. For example, Channel 14 is fine in Japan and 13 in the EU but not the US. Restricting the whole world to 11 channels to comply with US law would be silly.
    - colanderman 10y ago
      Yes, I misread his post. My mistake.
rocky1138 10y ago
This is exactly what Hacker News is all about. Thanks for sharing!

by mehdix 10y ago

arkitaip 10y ago

That's brilliant. Thank you for sharing.

devereaux 10y ago

And this is why the FCC requirements make little sense. Such products are used all over the world. Forcefully limiting the freedom in one locale is catering to the lowest common denominator. Instead, the ability to use spectrum should be controlled by the end user, through some hardware measure (ex: jumpers) that is done at the user own responsibility.

colanderman 10y ago
"The government should not regulate the shared limited resource of radio bandwidth because it is useful to work around restrictions on free speech" is nonsensical. If your government significantly curtails free speech, then it either is also so fascist that it doesn't care what you think about bandwidth regulation, or (as in the case of the GP) it is so technologically incompetent that it effectively does not regulate the airwaves. Either way your suggestion is useless.
- bhickey 10y ago
  You're misrepresenting what the GP post said and being obnoxious about it. Given that there are different regulatory regimens, locking down hardware to a particular locale may be inappropriate. For example, Channel 14 is fine in Japan and 13 in the EU but not the US. Restricting the whole world to 11 channels to comply with US law would be silly.
  - colanderman 10y ago
    Yes, I misread his post. My mistake.

rocky1138 10y ago

This is exactly what Hacker News is all about. Thanks for sharing!