Cringely has an interesting piece on Linux-based 802.11g rotuers. Wow, my non-technical readership says. That sounds aw3><50m3! Well, take my word for it. Or take Robert’s:

One of the cheapest Linux computers you can buy brand new (not at a garage sale) is the Linksys WRT54G, an 802.11g wireless access point and router that includes a four-port 10/100 Ethernet switch and can be bought for as little as $69.99 according to Froogle….But since the operating system is Linux and since Linksys has respected the Linux GPL by publishing all the source code for anyone to download for free, the WRT54G is a lot more than just a wireless router. It is a disruptive technology.

…

The result is a box you connect to power, to a DSL or cable modem and MAYBE to your PC (if all you want to be is a service provider the PC isn’t needed) and it automatically attaches itself to an OSPF mesh network that is self-configuring. In practical terms, this mesh network, which allows distant clients to reach edge nodes by hopping through other clients en route, is limited to a maximum of three hops as the WiFi radios switch madly back and forth between sending and repeating modes. If you need to go further, switch to higher-gain antennas or gang two WRT54Gs together. Either way, according to Ewing, his tests in Sweden indicate that if 16 percent of the nodes are edge nodes (wireless routers with DSL or cable modem Internet connections), they can provide comparable broadband service to the other 84 percent who aren’t otherwise connected to the Net.

…

A well-funded VoIP company like Vonage could today start WISP-based deployment one city at a time. With newspaper ads and direct mail, they could recruit what would be essentially micro-franchisees, each of which would get at cost a pre-configured router (or my preference — a pair of routers) and a DSL or cable broadband account. Since each node costs the VoIP provider exactly nothing, the problem of flaky franchisees is eliminated by over-building the network and conscientious franchisees make more money as a result. For $50 down and $30 per month the franchisee makes $93.75 per month (provided they keep the connection up and running). Want more revenue? Put routers in all your stores or delivery trucks or in the homes of your friends in exchange for giving them free Internet and/or phone service. Your take per router drops to $78.75 but your gross profit margins are still more than 70 percent.

Or imagine a school or a church distributing routers among parents or parishioners as a fund-raiser. Let’s see how long SBC or Verizon lasts against the Baptists. Now THAT’s disruptive.

I have been convinced since 1997 that exciting things would only happen in the last mile when the economics of wireless technology finally displaced the regional telcos’ billions of dollars of buried copper. DSL and cable modems worked out a lot better than I ever expected them to, but we still haven’t seen the kind of broadband love we might one day see. The kind of guerilla scenario suggested here might just be crazy enough to work. If it does, then exciting things will be afoot.

Hat tip to Todd, who does not blog.

Sorry to disappoint, but I’ll have no big roundup of the Bash. The weekend has been reasonably merciless, and there has been no time for writing. The week is now underfoot, requiring me to be extremely brief.

Briefly, huge thanks need to go Andy, Steve, Walter, and Zomby for their efforts in organizing the event and providing refreshments. Zomby was typically warm and gracious, and Andy was typically unlike his online persona (that is, pretty much the same as Zomby). Also a shout-out is owed to Darren for the original contact with the Denver Press Club, which turned out to be a very nice venue. (Some have pointed out that it was loud, but I hardly think this was the Press Club’s fault.)

I appreciated–and I am not making this up–the opportunity to get inside Jeralyn’s head a little bit. It really isn’t every day that I get to talk to such a passionate defense attorney. I’m not sure how we could have much less in common, but as a wise man once said, we can still be friends.

Jed says he talked too much. I really didn’t think so, but I was grateful for the bit of talking we were able to do together.

I also met big-timers Andrew Olmsted, Ed Driscoll, and Gary Farber. Contrary to Gary’s post, it turns out I wasn’t drunk, wasn’t weeping, and didn’t apostatize, but man, that guy is prolific and quick on the draw to boot.

There was of course more, but I did say this would be brief. Hopefully Adeodatus will add a contribution soon.

I love this country. You can wake up in the morning, decide you want to go to seminary, and be registered by 3:00pm for a course that begins that same day.

But I oversimplify. Maybe I should fill in some details.

Ten years ago this week I was enjoying the newfound freedom to sleep at night and looking forward to the birth of our first child. I had just graduated from college not three weeks earlier, and was still getting rested up from four years of sleep-deprived, full-time work and school. I was working as a software engineer for a VSAT startup called Intelesys. I was enjoying my work in software well enough, but if you asked me what I was going to do with my life, I’d have told you I was enrolling in Nazarene Theological Seminary in the fall of 1995 and entering the pastorate upon graduation. As it turned out, this was not to be.

It is a dicey proposition for Christians to discern “calls” from God. Absolute denials of the possibility of private, personal, even linguistic communication from God to the believer are not the majority report in evangelicalism today, nor have they been in historic Christianity. Still, it’s easy to blame God for our own fool thoughts, and Christian faith streams which invest very much capital in this kind of private revelation normally end up embracing theological or practical aberrations of varying levels of severity. As Luther famously said, the voice of the Holy Spirit might possibly be confused with indigestion. Ignoring this dictum rarely takes us to good places.

So it was with my “call” to pastoral ministry eleven years ago. In the end I decided I didn’t know what to make of what I had experienced (which itself is no dramatic narrative to recount), but I did know that the consensus was that I was no pastor. My theological commitment to Wesleyanism was also waning quickly, so the planned course of action of Nazarene-seminary-then-pastorate was shelved. I told myself I would just raise a family, work as a software engineer, and be a regular old church layman. And so I did.

Most of the intervening time has been busy enough to keep my thoughts away from school, and most of the intervening experience as a church layman has been sufficient to keep my thoughts away from vocational ministry. Three kids, four paid-off student loans, and a certain amount of spiritual and professional growth later, though, the seminary condition flared up again. The symptoms have been particularly severe in the last six months. With the advice of some friends (including some without web presences) and after a meeting with a helpful professor, I decided to do it. The application process for degree-seeking students at Denver Seminary is appropriately complex, requiring various references, a church endorsement, a signed doctrinal statement, an account of how I came to faith in Christ, and a doting, approving statement from my wife. I obtained the right forms and set about obtaining references, writing testimonies, and cajoling my wife into going along with the whole scheme. (Note to non-insiders: it would have been she who did the cajoling, if cajoling was ever done.)

Some time on Sunday it came to my attention that there was an online section of a good introductory class starting the next day: Monday, May 24. With my application all but complete and a $50 check in an envelope in the outgoing mail, I called the school at about 9:30am on Monday to inquire about the online class. By 3:00pm I was registered. By 5:05pm I was logged in to the seminary’s courseware application. As a seminary student.

This is all moving somewhat quickly, but I think not foolishly. I’ve been giving this question serious prayer, consideration, and discussion for several months. I am only a “Special Student” for now, and I lose nothing if I stop at the end of the summer or any other semester. Where is this going? Will it result in a Master’s Degree for me? Will it even result in continued enrollment in the fall? I wish I could say. I could finish a degree program or cut and run at the end of August. Further speculation will not shed additional light on the question.

It is certainly scary to think of the loss of spare time and money that even the ten-year plan entails. (Taking one class per semester with summers off, I would earn a degree just before my forty-second birthday. My son will be 19.) It’s scary to think of educating myself to be something other than an engineer. I mean, an M.A.? Aren’t those for people who can’t do math? I write software! I read science books! This is not me!

But it is me. And for the next 12 weeks at least, I’m going to give it a go.

P.S. Responding to my amazement at how quickly you could register for a class at Denver, Adeodatus said, “Welcome to the 21st century. God moves fast now.” Indeed.

P.P.S. What does all of this mean for this blog? I can say for sure it means posting will be less frequent for the duration of the summer, and subject matter may tend to gravitate suspiciously towards what I’m studying. Don’t quit visiting or blogrolling me, though. I’ll make it quite plain if I ever throw in the towel, and I’m not throwing anything yet.

You’d never call it “slight” if you knew how long it look me, but it’s done for now. The date graphics still need some help, and I didn’t get my portrait integrated yet, but it’ll do.

Also note the RMBB 3.0 link. Incredibly, Mrs. Berglund had something on the calendar before the RMBB was scheduled a month ago, so my attendance will be conditioned on whether I can rig up overnight babysitting or not. I think all will be well.

I remember sitting at a computer in 1995 or 1996, being frustrated with the miserably irrelevant search results I was getting from Yahoo! or Altavista or some such. I remember saying that a billion dollars would go to the first man who made web search actually work.

How about three billion?

SAN FRANCISCO–Google Inc. co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin each own nearly 16 percent of the Internet search engine leader that they launched nearly six years ago–stakes expected be worth at least $3 billion apiece after the company’s initial public offering of stock.

Page owns 15.7 percent of Google’s outstanding shares and Brin holds a 15.6 percent stake, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed Friday.

I think I have this Ahmad Chalabi thing figured out.

Before I begin, let me grant that he has been a controversial figure all along, loved by the Pentagon and hated by the State Department. Of course, this tends to improve my estimation of him, but then you probably would have guessed that. His past doesn’t matter, though; what does is the past month.

Rewind to two weeks ago, when David Brooks wrote a piece arguing that we needed to find circumstances in which to “lose” some conflict with the new Iraqi government. This gives the new Iraq the credible appearance of being opposed to American interests, which in turn devalues the next best anti-American option, the violent insurgency. By losing something, we win much more: popular support for the new Iraqi government and popular disdain for the insurgents–something I think would come naturally for Iraqis if they felt they weren’t cuddling up to America too much in the process. (Lametably, the Gray Online Lady is a bit hasty in archiving her columns, so you can’t read the full Brooks. The column is aready in pay-three-bucks-for-a-permanent-link mode, and I’m too cheap to pay it. However, the abstract is sufficient for my current purposes.)

So on Thursday, we bust into Chalabi’s place and break some picture frames and stuff. Iraqi judge Hassan Muathin insists the action was to serve an arrest warrant on several member’s of Chalabi’s entourage who were accused of stealing state vehicles. U.S. forces were reportedly only present as backup. The Coalition Provisional Authority makes it own accusations of fraud, extortion, and false imprisonment. Whatever.

Then on Friday, the Governing Council denounces the U.S. for the raid. Nobody on the Council seems to love Chalabi–who actually does, come to think of it?–but they seem hopping mad that we woke him up at an ungentlemanly hour and broke that one framed picture he had of himself. Later in the day, the Pentagon says they have an open-and-shut case that Chalabi has been spying for Iran. Never mind the parking tickets; this is serious, and we’ve got the pictures. (Note that Chalabi-as-Iranian-spymaster was not news as of May 21, 2004.)

So if I were a conspiracy theorist–and I should pause to remind the reader that I am not–I’d see an interesting chain of events here: an influential op-ed writer suggests we find some way to lose in order to win; we break into a prominent, but controversial Iraqi leader’s house and rough some guys up; the Governing Council gets all up in our face for it; we dredge up a month-old pretext of espionage. Does any of it matter? Probably not much. Chalabi was never going to hold significant office in the new Iraq anyway, since everybody seems to hate him. Did we look like brutes in the process, and do new Iraqi leaders get to denounce us for it? You’d better believe it. This stuff is solid gold.

If the whole scheme involved Halliburton or somehow reflected very poorly on the Bush administration, this conspiracy already would have been floated and discussed at length at Democratic Underground. Maybe it already has, but I haven’t checked. (I don’t read DU at all, as life is too short.)

At the end of the day, I don’t believe for a second that this was deliberately contrived as a means of answering Brooks’ suggestion. Even if in that case, though, it still might serve the purpose he suggested, which was a very good purpose indeed. This little chain of events could work out very well. Let’s keep our eyes on it.

Say, it’s looking like a fun summer for movies. Check it out:

• I, Robot, starring Wil Smith. I watched the trailer about five times. Rating: Extremely Awesome. Having never read the novel, I’m not sure how close the movie sticks to the story, although I’m guessing not very close. Still, this looks like the kewlest addition to the Smith corpus in a while.
• Troy. This is probably a movie to see with the wife rather than the brother. No particular reason why.
• The Day After Tomorrow. So what if MoveOn.org and Al Gore are frothing at the mouth and using it as a propaganda piece to support their environmental policies? It looks like an awesome disaster flick, okay? Although I think when climatologists speak of “rapid” climate change, though, they mean decades, not days. Even so, they seem to be able to live with the bad science if it means people will think climatology is cool for a few weeks.
• Spider Man 2. Like I even need to mention this. Please.
• The Manchurian Candidate. Yet Another Summer Remake, but it will be reason enough for me to see the original, even if I never catch the new version on the big screen. And cognizance of 40-year-old pop culture makes you look as smart as any high culture does anymore, so this is totally win-win.
• Thunderbirds. What was I saying about pop culture from 40 years ago? How about pop culture from 40 years ago that I can share with my kids? I’ll buy some subset of the original series (which HBO never showed enough of when I was a boy), show my kids what marionettes can really be, then take the boy to see this one. What a wonderful time to be alive.
• Man On Fire. Another fun-looking Denzel Washington remake of a remake (of a remake). Probably a rental, but I wouldn’t complain if I found myself watching it in a theater.
• Around The World In 80 Days. Another period Jackie Chan flick. Probably a rental, but sign me and my wife up. Looks like huge fun.
• Van Helsing. This is already making its splash, and I must confess that it looked like gobs of undead-creature-killing fun. I may still catch it, but I am cautioned by local critic Robert Dennerstein, who wasn’t feeling it. And this is a guy who is not above having fun at the movies.
• Alien vs. Predator. Well, the can’t all look good. Eighteen summers ago, when Sean, Paul, Mike and I regularly walked across the field behind my house, crossed Chambers, and paid $3.50 (just $0.15 more than an hour’s work at minimum wage!) to see movies at the Cooper 5, we would have been all over this. Since I’m not 14 any more, I’ll probably skip it.

P.S. Did I really put this entry in the “Culture” category? It seems that I did. Thus is pop culture included in the definition…

Been reading Lark News? I have now linked you, so you may take corrective action if needed. It’s good to keep up with the Christian publishing market, so let me quote you Lark’s devotional bestseller list for April:

1. Growing Closer to God Than You Did Last Month (Zondervan)
2. You’re Getting Warmer: More Incremental Steps Toward Intimacy with God (Thomas Nelson)
3. Now You’re REALLY Close: The 2004 “Almost There” Devotional (Multnomah)
4. The Radical Teen’s Funky-Awesome Life Path Adventure Devotional, with Commentary by Television Superstar Kirk Cameron! (InterVarsity)
5. Finding God Through the Inspired Paintings of Thomas Kinkade — A Classic Country Churches Devotional (Angel-Painter of Light Books, Inc.)

Other breaking news of interest to evangelicals: animatronic worship bands! You need Lark in your life, don’t you?