I I can't get the wireless card to turn on my dell latitutude 820

try right clicking on the set of curved bars that appear on the top of the screen, then select enable networking.

Marcus, Thanks for responding. I tried that and it didn't work. If this helps when I left click the icon under wireless networks it says "device not ready"

The output is

     description: Network controller
       product: BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN
       vendor: Broadcom Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:0c:00.0
       version: 01
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
       configuration: driver=b43-pci-bridge latency=0
       resources: irq:17 memory:efdfc000-efdfffff
  *-network
       description: Ethernet interface
       product: NetXtreme BCM5752 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express
       vendor: Broadcom Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:09:00.0
       logical name: eth0
       version: 02
       serial: 00:19:b9:64:d0:6d
       size: 100MB/s
       capacity: 1GB/s
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm vpd msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=tg3 driverversion=3.102 duplex=full firmware=5752-v3.19 ip=192.168.1.65 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=100MB/s
       resources: irq:28 memory:efcf0000-efcfffff
  *-network DISABLED
       description: Wireless interface
       physical id: 1
       logical name: wlan0
       serial: 00:19:7e:4d:eb:64
       capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg

Your Broadcom 4311 chip needs firmware, so from a wired connection, install the b43_fwcutter package and accept the offer of a download from Broacdom.
sudo apt-get install b43_fwcutter

Alternatively, your chip should work with the open firmware, so try
sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer

With the firmware installed in /lib/firmware/b43 (or ...b43-open), disable/enable networking and you should be able to see available access points
sudo iwlist scan

and connect by clicking on one of the losted aps. Connect to hidden networks if your access point is not broadcasting.

Marcus I don't know if this is the same thing that you were trying to get me to do but I went to ttps://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx and followed the instructions and I am up and running. Thanks so much for all your help!!

Sorry, I meant to thanks Ubfan as well