I wonder what the system does to check that it has a wifi connection? And how you would give it a false result.

At least I can still ssh using the usb networking!

I know this shows how little I know, but the \system\osso\connectivity\network_type\ entries all point to the kernel modules to use. Could one not add the dummy module and then add an entry in gconf (copying from chinook)? Or is it a problem with how the network manager has been compiled?