Well, if you read the fine article (the original, not the bgr rehash), you'd see that all the proces come from NewEgg -- not the cheapest, but also not the most expensive...

The basic premise of your whole argument "The Fifth amendment means that person need not answer 'Yes' or 'No' when asked the question 'Did you commit the crime'" is simple wrong and untrue. IF someone is charged with a crime and arraigned, they must THEN enter a plea of "guilty" or "not guilty" and cannot at that time "refuse to answer". The context is key -- this questioning happens in a courtroom in front of a judge, with a lawyer present, and not in a back room somewhere. The same protections apply to a 3rd party being questioned -- they DON'T have to answer unless they are subpoenaed and in that case can have a lawyer present. Of course, insisting on these full legal protections might make the police suspicious that they are involved, but that is kind of tough to avoid.

Well, I've subjectively seen one effect -- a huge spike in the number of telemarker calls I've received in the past week, apparently due to no longer being able to report them to the DO NOT CALL registry (which is shutdown due to the gov't shutdown).

The point is that its a READ ONCE device -- Eve can't make a copy of the data in Bob's key without destroying the physical device containing the key...

Which is why they're sueing for TRADEMARK infringement. The fact that slashdot gets things totally wrong in the headline is besides the point

There's nothing here about using others works without compensation -- this is about manadatory licensing of works, with rates set by the state licensing board. Which may or may not be a good thing, depending on who you are.

The most interesting thing I thought was that the device uses an IP multicast address for the backdoor reply. This makes it possible to search for all Microcell devices across the network, as long as its not behind a router that blocks IP multicast.

He's basically just trying to deflect criticism about whether things that he's done (or his company has done) are bad for the Open Source community. Anyone who is ciritical must obviously think that profits are immoral and so be an ignorable nut-job.