may be a myth. Rob Flickenger has his doubts:
It all started last Friday afternoon. We were all buzzing about Cringely and his Passive Repeater. What a fantastic idea! The thought that he got one of these near-urban-legend devices working, on the first try, from up a tree, to low-gain panel antennas in downtown Santa Rosa, without a supporting ground crew (or even so much as a site survey), truly boggled our minds. Especially since it’s been a point of debate in various community group mailing lists for months as to whether such a design is practical at the low power level that client cards put out.
Cringeley has been known to pull a little prank or two in the past, so he may be pulling our collective leg again. Linked from Techno-Blog 802.11b.