> If you could answer one question for me:  To do this story, I 
> started opening up all the electronics in my house to see 
> which uses freescale, atmel, microchip.  Why do some 
> manufacturers grind off the 
> name and model numbers off the chips?   One of the products I tried 
> to open up had all the chips wiped clean.  Maybe it was just a fluke?

If you can't identify the chip, you can't crack the copy protection, read
out the firmware, and make your own knock off of the product without paying
the firmware development cost.

Not that "you" would, just that there are people who do. And "we" want to
make it harder for "you" to do that.

Honestly, I doubt it slows down most professional knock off artists. I
remember the later generations of the cue cat got xrayed to find out what
chip ran it since they can encapsulated the thing to keep people reverse
engineering it. That sort of ability has got to be very much in the hands of
any scumbag who does that sort of thing for a "living."

Its more a matter of slowing down the lower level scumbags so that you can
sell your product for a bit longer... Until the upper level scumbags bring
their tools to bear and copy it.

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