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In place of a legal notice, here is a blessing

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Re: In place of a legal notice, here is a blessing

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reference to any Code of Ethics in the linked space above, though. Contextually the blessing text is completely subjective. (PS Are you also saying they have objectively measured the existence of God, or the divinity of Christ...?)

> PS Are you also saying they have objectively measured the existence of God, or the divinity of Christ...? There's only one objective reality/truth, regardless of human ability to measure it. It's like arguing that the stars' existence is subjective because you can't count them.

> There's only one objective reality/truth, regardless of human ability to measure it.

This way of thinking doesn't respect relativity enough to be settled. Sure if you go meta enough you could say there's only one universe, but maybe that's an imaginary descriptive construct and two particles whose light cones don't intersect aren't actually in the same "reality".

Re: In place of a legal notice, here is a blessing

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reference to any Code of Ethics in the linked space above, though. Contextually the blessing text is completely subjective. (PS Are you also saying they have objectively measured the existence of God, or the divinity of Christ...?)

I'm saying that Abrahamic faiths generally don't leave any room for "my truth" being different from "your truth." There is only one Truth with a capital T, because there is only one God with a capital G. So if two people differ on some point of doctrine or ethics, one of them must be Right and the other must be Wrong. Mere mortals might not be able to determine which is which with perfect accuracy, but the One True G…

I can't speak to Judaism or Islam (the latter in particular seems quite legalistic), but Christianity has the concept of "Christian freedom." TL;DR: A Christian is allowed to partake in any activity that is not outlawed by Christ as long as doing so does not cause the Christian to stumble or cause others to stumble. So whereas Islam or Judaism forbid consumption of pork, Christianity allows it insofar as it does not cause someone to stumble. Or take alcohol: it's not explicitly outlawed (though debauchery is), yet the Christian should probably have more self-control than to drink to the brink of debauchery. It's just a matter of personal governance.

So IMO, Christianity does indeed have quite a bit of subjectivity, but it's all calibrated around creating good and forging a tight knit relationship with Christ so we can better emulate Him to the world.

Re: In place of a legal notice, here is a blessing

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't respons to randerson's comment directly because it's dead, I'd recommend he look at Aquinas' just war theory and other Christian ideas on when war is ok. There are many problems with the military industrial complex we have but that does not mean we should have no defense. Guided missile destroyers fulfill a legitimate defense role and would be needed even if we were much less interventionist.

I didn't dispute whether it can be used for good, I'm glad we have these things and I'm also a huge fan of SQLite. But when your system shoots down an enemy (to you) aircraft, how do you reconcile that with: "Do not murder." "Love your neighbor as yourself." "Honor all people." "Do not do to another what you would not have done to yourself." "Do not return evil for evil." "Love your enemies." the list goes on..

Perhaps getting a copy of SQLite fired at you in a rocket isn't enough to make you part of the user community.

Re: In place of a legal notice, here is a blessing

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't respons to randerson's comment directly because it's dead, I'd recommend he look at Aquinas' just war theory and other Christian ideas on when war is ok. There are many problems with the military industrial complex we have but that does not mean we should have no defense. Guided missile destroyers fulfill a legitimate defense role and would be needed even if we were much less interventionist.

I didn't dispute whether it can be used for good, I'm glad we have these things and I'm also a huge fan of SQLite. But when your system shoots down an enemy (to you) aircraft, how do you reconcile that with: "Do not murder." "Love your neighbor as yourself." "Honor all people." "Do not do to another what you would not have done to yourself." "Do not return evil for evil." "Love your enemies." the list goes on..

> I'd recommend he look at Aquinas' just war theory

There have been whole books written about this - though I can't blame you for not having read them, many of them are turgid in the extreme. Christian ethics aim to break cycles of recrimination and escalation, but not in general to the point of helpless passivity. Of course the strictures of just war doctrine are considerably harder to square with the de facto imperial power of a country like the United States which is practically and to some extent aspirationally similar to the Roman empire in its heyday.

For a more modern take on the ethics of warfare you might find it interesting to examine the Lieber doctrine, which was instituted during the US civil war and (nominally) still in force in many respects.

Re: In place of a legal notice, here is a blessing

#76
post #24
post #9

Has anyone heard of any issues using SQLite in jurisdictions without a concept of the public domain? The copyright page [1] seems to imply that you'd need to buy a license from Hwaci. [1] https://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html

It remains an open legal question (at least in the United States) whether or not an author even can voluntarily release something into the public domain. Hwaci could theoretically decide that, actually, that they never really put SQLite in the public domain and in fact possess full copyright over it and would like not only current and future licensing fees, but also retroactive fees from everyone who's used it over t…

What prevents this scenario is estoppel: the users of sqlite have been told they can use it freely and Hwaci can’t retrospectively withdraw their promise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel

Re: In place of a legal notice, here is a blessing

#77
post #20
post #9

Has anyone heard of any issues using SQLite in jurisdictions without a concept of the public domain? The copyright page [1] seems to imply that you'd need to buy a license from Hwaci. [1] https://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html

Everyone is happily using public domain software in all jurisdictions. The timezone code used by many (all?) Linux and Unix distributions is public domain. If you can find a jurisdiction without the explicit concept of the public domain and judges and lawyers that think there is no implicit concept of the public domain and someone who can claim copyright with a straight face to code that explicitly states that the au…

The reason it would fail in court is estoppel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel

Re: In place of a legal notice, here is a blessing

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't respons to randerson's comment directly because it's dead, I'd recommend he look at Aquinas' just war theory and other Christian ideas on when war is ok. There are many problems with the military industrial complex we have but that does not mean we should have no defense. Guided missile destroyers fulfill a legitimate defense role and would be needed even if we were much less interventionist.

I didn't dispute whether it can be used for good, I'm glad we have these things and I'm also a huge fan of SQLite. But when your system shoots down an enemy (to you) aircraft, how do you reconcile that with: "Do not murder." "Love your neighbor as yourself." "Honor all people." "Do not do to another what you would not have done to yourself." "Do not return evil for evil." "Love your enemies." the list goes on..

These are Christian commandments, so it would help to understand what Christianity thinks of war to understand these. Even ignoring the tradition and focusing on the Bible:

- Do not murder is a commandment Israel received on Mt. Sinai. After that Israel continued its journey to conquer the Promised Land, which involved killing a lot of people (i.e. kill != murder)

- If you think New Testament has changed this, there is an episode in the Gospel of Luke (3:14) when soldiers come to St. John the Baptist to ask how they should change their lives. Guess what - he never tells them that being a soldier (and that was voluntary at the time) and killing your country's enemies is a sin. In fact early Christianity was popular among soldiers

Re: In place of a legal notice, here is a blessing

#80
post #35

I almost feel like SQLite could have documentary made about it at this point. There are so many things about it that are just unique and fascinating.

I remember several years ago, I was considering pushing for some changes to our application to use a database like sqlite instead of a proprietary flat file format. I remember reading through the source and realizing how beautiful C source code could be, compared to the prop C code I was used to working on. That plus the constant improvement, stellar performance, and beautiful source code make Sqlite one of the top most gems of open-source software in my opinion. Huge props to Dwayne Hipp and the other contributors to this database which has enabled so many apps and products!
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