The only thing is that now anybody will be able to do it and not just some geeks. Show me any mommies and daddies out there can do this with Linux and I will show you a geek.
Yes, but will it ask permission first? Or even allow you to decide whether it will ask permission first? Even if it does, what will the default setting be?
At least when one had to reboot to update, one could usually make an informed choice whether to interupt one's work, close everything, and reboot. One can only assume that the "update without reboot" process will not be without risk. That is not a slam against MS; software isn't perfect. One way we deal with such imperfection is by minimizing the consequences of a crash or fault.
What if "update without reboot" is, in the name of consumer friendliness, as well as in the supposed interest of the "mommies and daddies out there," both automatic and invisible, and something goes wrong and/or is corrupted in the middle of a vastly important project?
There is safety in being forced to reboot. It means you aren't doing something else.
Ellison won't get a tax break. Although the payment is being made to a charity, it is not a charitable contribution. He is receiving legal consideration for the payment -- i.e., he is settling and discharing a debt. It would similar to the situation where you bought a used car from the charity, and paid them money in exchange. Your payment would not be a charitable contribution
More precisely, the charity is a third party beneficiary of a contract between the plaintiff(s) and Ellison to settle the case. It would be more like a case where "Seller" sells a car to you but, feeling charitable, writes the contract so you pay the money to the charity. In that case, if anyone got a deduction it would be "Seller" and not you.
we seriously need to change our perspective on reality. these blogs and bullshit just makes shit worse. why isnt a story about Iraq or something more important to us than some douche and his camera?
The reason why is that, particularly armed with the internet, a blog and the resulting social networking, one can do something about being ripped off on a camera purchase.
In contrast, most people feel that, even armed with the internet, a blog and the resulting social networking, one cannot do anything about Iraq.
A spokeswoman for the F.B.I. said "we're aware of the possibility" that older wiretap systems may be foiled through the techniques described in the paper. Catherine Milhoan, the spokeswoman, said after consulting with bureau wiretap experts that the vulnerability existed in only about 10 percent of state and federal wiretaps today.
Would you rely on this? Particularly given the probability that, if it is a FBI wiretap, it is only going to work one time out of ten?
There is some indirect evidence that criminals might already know about the vulnerabilities in the systems, Mr. Blaze said, because of "unexplained gaps" in some wiretap records presented in trials.
Of course, if you play a long-shot you sometimes win.
Looking at the results, I have to ask, how representative was the sample group? Was it, as it appears, entirely self-selected? And what does that say about the validity of the results?
I mean, 54% of the respondents use, or are considering, Ubantu? With only 19% for Red Hat, with another 26% for Fedora, for a total of 45%? Could that possibly be representative?
And the second most important application is "Digital Camera/Video?"
But these already exist, don't they? Or have I been imagining websites like http://www.x.org/ all along?
x.org has four letters and five characters.
I'm not sure that the latter distinction gets what is, or will be, new -- whatever that is. From the article:
Meanwhile, a handful of companies have asked ICANN to free up the single characters. Overstock.com Inc., for instance, prefers a single-letter brand of "o.com" because its newer businesses no longer fit its original mission of providing discounts on excess inventory.
How is "o.com" different than "x.org"? I just typed x.org into my browswer windown and it resolved or redirected to http://wiki.x.org/wiki/ and I got the website with the title "X.Org - Home"
The article summary looks wrong. I don't see anything in TFA itself which indicates that laziness is a result of some genetic factor.
You are correct. The article says nothing about genetics.
Plus, it appears the experiment itself was pretty meaningless, and the conclusions therefrom unsupported. Basically, they observed that some monkeys were active and others weren't, and that the level of activity didn't depend on the amount of space a particular monkey had to be active in. Wow.
The only attempt to change an independent variable appears to be as follows:
A follow-up study was performed with an additional 10 monkeys, which were housed in single cages and then moved to larger group housing. Again, a high degree of individual variability was found in activity level. However, activity level did not significantly change when monkeys were moved between types of housing. Sedentary monkeys remained sedentary even when they had a great deal of space to move around in and companions to interact with, while active monkeys remained active even when they were housed in a smaller space with limited interaction with other monkeys.
From this, the scientist concludes:
Overall, these findings suggest that it is likely to take a significant conscious effort to change one's level of physical activity and override one's intrinsic inclination to be active or inactive. To state it more plainly, if you're a couch potato, suddenly becoming active may be harder than you think," said Judy Cameron, Ph.D., senior scientist in the divisions of Reproductive Sciences and Neuroscience at the OHSU Oregon National Primate Research Center.
I don't think so. How do we know any particular monkey made an "conscious effort," much less a "significant conscious effort," to change its level of physical activity? Perhaps more fundamentally, there is not evidence the scientists even provided any incentive for the monkeys to do so. Simply putting a monkey in a bigger cage may not have given it any incentive or reason to be more active.
There seems to be an assumption that because they gave a sedentary monkey more space, it should have wanted to be more active, and because it wasn't, in fact, more active, this must be because its inactivity was "an intrinsic property of that individual." The scientist's argument assumes his conclusion. What if the money+ simply did not want to, and indeed had no reason to, move?
Put a banana at the other end of cage, and watch Mr. Sedentary Monkey take off like a rocket.
The second problem is something the author doesn't mention at all: "management" has clearly told these administrators to apply the patches directly to the "production" systems. In real life many people do this with Windows, but you don't do this with Linux. With any Unix you duplicate your production environment on the sysadmin's workstation and debug any processes to be applied to production there before proceeding. They don't say why they didn't do this, but a reasonable speculation is that there were two reasons: the simulation would have imposed unrealistic calendar time constraints, and, probably more importantly, this isn't the Windows way, and they did everything the Windows way.
I'm not sure the study's use of the "windows way" was, from a "scientific" point of view, a problem. I think it may simply have been realistic.
If the vast majority of (low wage) administrators are trained and have experience in, and solely in, the "Windows way," I'm not sure that allowing the Linux admins to use the "Unix way" would have been realistic. Yes, they could do it, and do a better job using the "Unix way," but that might make the study less useful and less accurately predictive given the shortage of people adequately trained in the "Unix way."
Also (and this is an honest question, I have no idea what the answer is), is the truly the "Unix way" to "duplicate your production environment on the sysadmin's workstation and debug any processes to be applied to production there before proceeding?" Is that even possible?
Are introverts arrogant? Hardly. I suppose this common misconception has to do with our being more intelligent, more reflective, more independent, more level-headed, more refined, and more sensitive than extroverts.
Parent:
It's not arrogance when it's true.
Arrogance:
a feeling or an impression of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or presumptuous claims
Result: The fact that one informs others of one's superiority makes one a person who is less than superior, but nonetheless acting in an overbearing manner and/or making a presumptuous claim. In other words, arrogant.:)
let's not launch a couple manned space missions and instead take the billions saved to plop a robot probe in one of these volcanoes to look for life in the underlying water layer.
I think you may be ignoring another effect of no (or to be more precise and fair to you, fewer) manned missions over time -- i.e., less political support for space exploration and lower funding.
People will support a certain amount of funding for heroism, Star Trek, to boldly go... or to at least feel we are on the way there. They will pay far less to support inanimate objects in space. Boring... for most people.
Perhaps, in the short run, the savings from eliminating, or limiting, manned flights would be greater than the loss of funding. I suspect over the long run it would be death.
Introverted children enjoy the internal world of thoughts, feelings and fantasies, and there's a physiological reason for this. Researchers using brain scans have found introverts have more brain activity in general, and specifically in the frontal lobes.
Are they introverted because they have more brain activity? Or do they have more brain activity because they are introverted? Or are they introverted and have more brain activity because of another cause?
There is frequently an assumption that the physical (brain chemistry, electrical activity) causes the behavior (introspection), as opposed to the other way around, or some other, independent cause.
PostgreSQL has a huge lead here over MySQL, that is, as an community-driven open source project. They already have a large distributed network of developers, whereas I understand MySQL has been developed almost entirely by the AB.
I've often wondered about this as a general matter. That is the value of the GPL, as a practical matter, if somebody else buys the brains? I'm not asking to be antagonistic; I honestly don't know.
I've read that various GPL, LGPL and open source projects are heavily supported by corporations who employ the hackers who do the majority of the work, and the vast majority of the hard work. Stuff that other people aren't capable of doing and/or don't have the time to do. How vulnerable are various projects to somebody buying the brains?
He mentions "Then there's the professional ecologist major in Benin - he's a birder. He's sent in hundreds of bird entries, every type of thrush or crow ever spotted in East Africa, with their English and Swahili names." How does he "vet" these entries if he's not an ecologist himself?
As a practical matter, is he re-creating the language? And if so, does it make any difference? If people come to rely upon this dictionary as the dictionary for Swahili, and the dictionary says that the Swahili word for a particlar bird is "XYZ," then the Swahili word for the bird is "XYZ." In a generation, nobody will know the difference. Hardly anyone (if anyone) will know any better right now.
Well, if we're talking alternatives then check out Copernic http://www.copernic.com/ A lot better than Googles deskbar - especially if you're moving your files around.
ARGHHHHHHHH!
I made a critical, and stupid, mistake in my original post. I assumed that people would RTFA. I am not talking about alternatives. I mentioned the X1 Software site because Yahoo has licensed the X1 search software for its new desktop search engine. From the article:
Yahoo! has licensed the X1 search software for Windows from tech incubator Idealab, in an attempt to compete both with Google's browser-based desktop search download, and the current leader Copernic.
Privilege isn't the only issue, unless it is somehow relevant to the case, it's still not something FSF has to give out willingly
This is correct, but the standard is very broad. This action is in Federal Court, and is therefore governed by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP). FRCP Rule 26(b)(1) provides:
(b) Discovery Scope and Limits. Unless otherwise limited by order of the court in accordance with these rules, the scope of discovery is as follows:
(1) In General. Parties may obtain discovery regarding any matter, not privileged, that is relevant to the claim or defense of any party, including the existence, description, nature, custody, condition, and location of any books, documents, or other tangible things and the identity and location of persons having knowledge of any discoverable matter. For good cause, the court may order discovery of any matter relevant to the subject matter involved in the action. Relevant information need not be admissible at the trial if the discovery appears reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence. All discovery is subject to the limitations imposed by Rule 26(b)(2)(i), (ii), and (iii).
FRCP Rule 26(b)(1) (emphasis added). The portion of FRCP 26(b)(1) emphasized above is very important. The requested information need not be admissible; it only has to be "reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence."
"Relevant evidence" means evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.
Makes me wonder... if they do this on purpose, so they can hook you then make you come back to more.. Caffeine withdrawls suck, and if the home-made stuff isnt as potent, people are pretty much the slave of starbucks (or have to drink 2x more home-made coffee)...
And if there is *any* evidence of this (and even if there isn't), I wonder about the possibility of mandated warnings and/or lawsuits. From the Globe and Mail article, Your morning habit holds chemical bomb:
In fact, a 20-ounce jumbo cup of house blend at Starbucks or Second Cup contains almost 400 milligrams of caffeine -- the upper limit of what Health Canada says an adult can consume healthily in a day.
* * *
"There are certain advantages to caffeine but, after 300 milligrams [daily intake], you start getting into health problems," Dr. Marcone said.
Then again, I expect this to be used as mitigation (if not an excuse) to a charge of murder. "Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, Starbucks knowingly and intentionally addicted my client was adicted to caffeine.... When he wasn't able to secure his "fix," and his wife asked him about the yard work...."
The union position, press release and game
on
SBC CWA Strike Imminent
·
· Score: 4, Informative
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Communications Workers of America announced that a 4-day strike involving 100,000 union employees of SBC in 13 states will begin at 12:01 a.m. local time in each time zone on Friday, May 21. Workers will return to their jobs at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, May 25.
Among key issues in the contract dispute, CWA members are seeking to strengthen their employment security, including gaining access to new jobs in growth areas of the company, and to preserve their health care benefits in the face of substantial cost-shifting demands by SBC management.
National bargaining that has been taking place between the parties in Washington, D.C. over health care, wages, pensions and employment security will cease, and these issues will now be referred back to the four regional tables in New Haven, Conn., Chicago, Austin, Tex., and Pleasanton, Calif.
"We appreciate the hard work of Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Director Peter Hurtgen in helping us try to work out an agreement on these issues, but unfortunately these efforts have failed to achieve a settlement," said CWA President Morton Bahr.
"We are making this a limited job action right now to drive it home to SBC that our members are serious about securing their future at SBC," said Bahr. "We know that a prolonged strike could cause a loss of major customers and do significant damage to the company, and hopefully that can be avoided."
CWA also is ratcheting up other mobilization activities in the field and is being supported by the AFL-CIO and other major unions in mounting a carrier-switch campaign that potentially could shift substantial business from SBC to another union carrier, AT&T, which operates in 11 of the SBC states. AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka personally is spearheading carrier-switch efforts aimed at labor organizations and the 5 million union families who are SBC customers. Customers are being asked to give CWA their "proxy" to implement a carrier switch if the union deems it necessary.
CWA members, who have lost 29,000 jobs at SBC over the past three years, are seeking access to the new growth jobs in Internet data services, installation of Wi-Fi hotspots, voice over the Internet (VOIP), DSL broadband and other areas. Virtually all of this SBC work, amounting to thousands of jobs, is being outsourced, including going offshore to countries such as India and the Philippines.
"SBC continues to refuse to give this work to our members, the frontline workers who have built SBC into the nation's most profitable telecom company," said Bahr. SBC's profits last year were more than $8 billion.
CWA also noted that SBC's latest bargaining proposal called for members to receive no base wage increase upon settlement, but instead receive a one-time lump sum payment of 4 percent. A cash payment instead of a 3 percent base wage increase equates to a savings to SBC of more than $1 billion over four years.
"Incredibly, SBC wants to take $1 billion out of our members' pockets in wages, not to pay for rising health costs, but just to fatten its profits. At the same time, SBC is still demanding that workers also start paying tens of millions more out of pocket for their health care," Bahr stated.
Negotiations began in mid-February. These contracts cover SBC workers in Connecticut, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, California and Nevada.
i'm glad to hear that there are companies out there who are against acosting their customers with guerilla-advertising. i tip my hat...
I'm surprised that people don't see the First Amendment concerns. Be careful what you wish for. What if L.L. Bean where "taking the high road" by preventing their customers from being "accosted" with information such as L.L. Bean's use of sweatshop labor, discrimination against (fill in the blank), or sale of clothing that was dyed with alleged carcinogens? It is easy to applaud a method of speech when you also happen to dislike the (usual) message. Unfortunately, you may be creating a precedent so that method cannot be used to distribute any content.
Not necissarily Breaking a contract is not necissarily illegal
Merely breaking a contract is not "illegal" if by "illegal" you mean "criminal" (as opposed to incurring only civil liability). However, violation of the DMCA may (or may not) be "illegal" -- i.e., criminal. The DMCA, and particularly 17 U.S.C. sec. 1201(b) provides in pertinent part:
(b) Additional Violations. -
(1) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that -
(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof;
(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof; or
(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof.
It appears the software in question violates section 1201(b). I suspect the DMCA takedown notice is on the way.
However, it does not appear there is any criminal (as opposed to civil) liability. 17 U.S.C. sec. 1204(a) provides in relevant part:
Sec. 1204. - Criminal offenses and penalties
(a) In General. -
Any person who violates section 1201 or 1202 willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain -
(1) shall be fined not more than $500,000 or imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or both, for the first offense; and
(2) shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both, for any subsequent offense.
17 U.S.C. sec. 1204(a) (emphasis added). Because the author of the software at issue doe not appear to be acting "for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain," it looks like there is no criminal liability.
On the other hand, the potential civil liability is substantial. 17 U.S.C. sec. 1203(c) provides in relevant part:
(c) Award of Damages. -
(1) In general. -
Except as otherwise provided in this title, a person committing a violation of section 1201 or 1202 is liable for either -
(A) the actual damages and any additional profits of the violator, as provided in paragraph (2), or
(B) statutory damages, as provided in paragraph (3).
(2) Actual damages. -
The court shall award to the complaining party the actual damages suffered by the party as a result of the violation, and any profits of the violator that are attributable to the violation and are not taken into account in computing the actual damages, if the complaining party elects such damages at any time before final judgment is entered.
Did Novell indirectly create a monster? Caldera's 300 million winnings against Microsoft are now being used to fund lawsuits against Linux (and Novell).
Actually, no. A portion (and I suspect a very significant portion) of Caldera's $300 million winnings against Microsoft went to Novell. That is the entire point of Novell's current lawsuit against Caldera. From the linked Salt Lake Tribune article, "Novell wins breach-of-contract dispute with Canopy Group":
Novell also was to receive a cut of any lawsuit awards in the form of so-called "royalties."
* * *
When Canopy prevailed against Microsoft and received the settlement, it tried to first deduct its attorney fees, court costs and other expenses, the judges found. Novell, believing its still-undisclosed cut of the award should have come on the gross amount, sued for breach of contract.
To accomplish this, Novell and Canopy executed two separate documents: the first was a contract of sale, obligating Canopy to pay $400,000 for rights to the source code; the second was a temporary license obligating Canopy to pay $600,000 in license fees and "royalties."
The royalties included provisions for payment to Novell of a percentage of any recoveries from lawsuits.
Novell may have created a monster, but not a $300 million monster. Indeed, Novell received some undisclosed portion of Caldera's recovery against Microsoft, which Novell can now use to battle... Caldera.
Slashdot Mirror
At least when one had to reboot to update, one could usually make an informed choice whether to interupt one's work, close everything, and reboot. One can only assume that the "update without reboot" process will not be without risk. That is not a slam against MS; software isn't perfect. One way we deal with such imperfection is by minimizing the consequences of a crash or fault.
What if "update without reboot" is, in the name of consumer friendliness, as well as in the supposed interest of the "mommies and daddies out there," both automatic and invisible, and something goes wrong and/or is corrupted in the middle of a vastly important project?
There is safety in being forced to reboot. It means you aren't doing something else.
Ellison won't get a tax break. Although the payment is being made to a charity, it is not a charitable contribution. He is receiving legal consideration for the payment -- i.e., he is settling and discharing a debt. It would similar to the situation where you bought a used car from the charity, and paid them money in exchange. Your payment would not be a charitable contribution
More precisely, the charity is a third party beneficiary of a contract between the plaintiff(s) and Ellison to settle the case. It would be more like a case where "Seller" sells a car to you but, feeling charitable, writes the contract so you pay the money to the charity. In that case, if anyone got a deduction it would be "Seller" and not you.
In contrast, most people feel that, even armed with the internet, a blog and the resulting social networking, one cannot do anything about Iraq.
Looking at the results, I have to ask, how representative was the sample group? Was it, as it appears, entirely self-selected? And what does that say about the validity of the results?
I mean, 54% of the respondents use, or are considering, Ubantu? With only 19% for Red Hat, with another 26% for Fedora, for a total of 45%? Could that possibly be representative?
And the second most important application is "Digital Camera/Video?"
Plus, it appears the experiment itself was pretty meaningless, and the conclusions therefrom unsupported. Basically, they observed that some monkeys were active and others weren't, and that the level of activity didn't depend on the amount of space a particular monkey had to be active in. Wow.
The only attempt to change an independent variable appears to be as follows:From this, the scientist concludes:I don't think so. How do we know any particular monkey made an "conscious effort," much less a "significant conscious effort," to change its level of physical activity? Perhaps more fundamentally, there is not evidence the scientists even provided any incentive for the monkeys to do so. Simply putting a monkey in a bigger cage may not have given it any incentive or reason to be more active.
There seems to be an assumption that because they gave a sedentary monkey more space, it should have wanted to be more active, and because it wasn't, in fact, more active, this must be because its inactivity was "an intrinsic property of that individual." The scientist's argument assumes his conclusion. What if the money+ simply did not want to, and indeed had no reason to, move?
Put a banana at the other end of cage, and watch Mr. Sedentary Monkey take off like a rocket.
If the vast majority of (low wage) administrators are trained and have experience in, and solely in, the "Windows way," I'm not sure that allowing the Linux admins to use the "Unix way" would have been realistic. Yes, they could do it, and do a better job using the "Unix way," but that might make the study less useful and less accurately predictive given the shortage of people adequately trained in the "Unix way."
Also (and this is an honest question, I have no idea what the answer is), is the truly the "Unix way" to "duplicate your production environment on the sysadmin's workstation and debug any processes to be applied to production there before proceeding?" Is that even possible?
People will support a certain amount of funding for heroism, Star Trek, to boldly go... or to at least feel we are on the way there. They will pay far less to support inanimate objects in space. Boring... for most people.
Perhaps, in the short run, the savings from eliminating, or limiting, manned flights would be greater than the loss of funding. I suspect over the long run it would be death.
There is frequently an assumption that the physical (brain chemistry, electrical activity) causes the behavior (introspection), as opposed to the other way around, or some other, independent cause.
I've often wondered about this as a general matter. That is the value of the GPL, as a practical matter, if somebody else buys the brains? I'm not asking to be antagonistic; I honestly don't know.
I've read that various GPL, LGPL and open source projects are heavily supported by corporations who employ the hackers who do the majority of the work, and the vast majority of the hard work. Stuff that other people aren't capable of doing and/or don't have the time to do. How vulnerable are various projects to somebody buying the brains?
As a practical matter, is he re-creating the language? And if so, does it make any difference? If people come to rely upon this dictionary as the dictionary for Swahili, and the dictionary says that the Swahili word for a particlar bird is "XYZ," then the Swahili word for the bird is "XYZ." In a generation, nobody will know the difference. Hardly anyone (if anyone) will know any better right now.
I thought laziness was a good enough reason not to do anything....
ARGHHHHHHHH!
I made a critical, and stupid, mistake in my original post. I assumed that people would RTFA. I am not talking about alternatives. I mentioned the X1 Software site because Yahoo has licensed the X1 search software for its new desktop search engine. From the article:
See Yahoo! gives away free desktop search.
My point was that people can try out the software right now.
X1 Website
15 Day Trial Version
X1 Website
15 Day Trial Version
This is correct, but the standard is very broad. This action is in Federal Court, and is therefore governed by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP). FRCP Rule 26(b)(1) provides:
FRCP Rule 26(b)(1) (emphasis added). The portion of FRCP 26(b)(1) emphasized above is very important. The requested information need not be admissible; it only has to be "reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence."
Further, under Rule 401 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, "relevant evidence" is defined very broadly as follows:
FRE Rule 401 (emphasis added).
And if there is *any* evidence of this (and even if there isn't), I wonder about the possibility of mandated warnings and/or lawsuits. From the Globe and Mail article, Your morning habit holds chemical bomb:
Then again, I expect this to be used as mitigation (if not an excuse) to a charge of murder. "Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, Starbucks knowingly and intentionally addicted my client was adicted to caffeine.... When he wasn't able to secure his "fix," and his wife asked him about the yard work...."
The Communications Workers of America (CWA) has issued a press release, Communications Workers Set Strike at SBC Involving 100,000 Workers at Midnight Tomorrow:
The CWA also offers a See-n-Say with CWA Game.
I'm surprised that people don't see the First Amendment concerns. Be careful what you wish for. What if L.L. Bean where "taking the high road" by preventing their customers from being "accosted" with information such as L.L. Bean's use of sweatshop labor, discrimination against (fill in the blank), or sale of clothing that was dyed with alleged carcinogens? It is easy to applaud a method of speech when you also happen to dislike the (usual) message. Unfortunately, you may be creating a precedent so that method cannot be used to distribute any content.
Merely breaking a contract is not "illegal" if by "illegal" you mean "criminal" (as opposed to incurring only civil liability). However, violation of the DMCA may (or may not) be "illegal" -- i.e., criminal. The DMCA, and particularly 17 U.S.C. sec. 1201(b) provides in pertinent part:
17 U.S.C. sec. 1201(b) (emphasis added)
It appears the software in question violates section 1201(b). I suspect the DMCA takedown notice is on the way.
However, it does not appear there is any criminal (as opposed to civil) liability. 17 U.S.C. sec. 1204(a) provides in relevant part:
17 U.S.C. sec. 1204(a) (emphasis added). Because the author of the software at issue doe not appear to be acting "for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain," it looks like there is no criminal liability.
On the other hand, the potential civil liability is substantial. 17 U.S.C. sec. 1203(c) provides in relevant part:
There is an academic article discussing the purported relationship between the "D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M" code and the Holy Grail: The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Chateau and the Prieure du Sion. The article is by Dr. Steven Mizrach of Florida International University.
The book discussing the subject is: Holy Blood, Holy Grail. This is the book that inspired (or was ripped off) by The Da Vinci Code.
The Disinformation page on the subject is: here.
Actually, no. A portion (and I suspect a very significant portion) of Caldera's $300 million winnings against Microsoft went to Novell. That is the entire point of Novell's current lawsuit against Caldera. From the linked Salt Lake Tribune article, "Novell wins breach-of-contract dispute with Canopy Group":
As stated in paragraph 5 of the opinion of the Utah Court of Appeals in Novell, Inc. v. The Canopy Group, Inc. (see also here):
Novell may have created a monster, but not a $300 million monster. Indeed, Novell received some undisclosed portion of Caldera's recovery against Microsoft, which Novell can now use to battle... Caldera.