[sdiy] What the heck is this for?

[Eric Brombaugh]

OK, dumb question:

Perusing the DIY section on DealExtreme today and came across pages and 
pages of "IC soldering film" - like this:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.6700

Googling turns up additional sites selling this stuff, but no 
explanations of why you need it, or how it works. To my eye it looks 
like random footprints of SMD solder paste masks all jammed together on 
one sheet, but that strikes me as singularly useless.

Any ideas what this is? If it's what it seems then that suggests there's 
an enormous underground of mad SMD DIY folks out there busily modding 
their cellphones...

Eric