approaching vendors with a consolidation of effort

Since the SOHO hacked AP for $30-50 is just too good of a deal... what 
if  [I know I'm a dreamer]

There was a petition.  Not a dumb petition to try to convince one of the 
companies to yield to our desire, but a petition that quantifies the 
interest and lets these companies see the numbers.

Something like this:

1. Setup a web sign up sheet for 2 groups: people that would hack and 
people that would use
2. Try to get as many of the hackAP projects members on there as possible.
3. Try to get hackedAP users to sign up, easy if you could get on 
slashdot... right?  ;)
4. Approach these companies like Dlink, Netgear, Linksys, USR, SMC, etc
5. Basically say, HERE is the demand.  "We've identified you out of 9 
potential corporate sponsors."  Sponsorship costs no money.  It only 
requires technical information so our Linux engineers can utilize your 
hardware.  And potentially a small amount of email correspondence with 
one of your hardware engineers.

The more I think of this...  the more I like it.  A subtle factor is 
they are 1 of 9, if they decline.. they are withdrawing from a market 
that their competitors are just being invited into.

I can setup a website on a big pipe, if you guys think this might fly.  
[I don't think I could survive a slashdoting though]

-Scott