First of all, Catholic.com is not "the official catholic website", it is merely and approved source of information. Secondly, if you go down to the "Abuses" section of that Wikipedia, you can see exactly what abuses were committed and how the Church attempted to stop them. You can't stop counterfeit indulgences completely, just like you can't stop counterfeit iPhones. Abuses in indulgences disprove the theory behind them about as much as counterfeit iPhones disprove the potential usefulness of the real ones.
Contrary to popular perception, the Catholic Church is not rich and only has a budget about the size of the Archdiocese of Chicago (and considering how the Catholic Church is one of the most charitable organizations in the entire world). The Catholic Church runs hospitals, schools, missions, and many other things that people benefit from daily; it's not for selfish gain at all. Donations are expected whether you sinned or not. It's no better to donate to any other organization, especially considering that Churches have expenses that have to be paid somehow. When you confess your sins, you're expected to be totally honest about it. If you aren't, and you continue to "break the rules", that's extremely sinful.
Assuming that the Catholic Church is the divine organization that it claims to be, and being shown that it isn't a selfish scam, there is absolutely nothing wrong with giving alms.
And in exchange for your official, sanctimonious lies, you get to tithe, tithe, tithe, so the Pope can have yet another gold spoon.
Yet another common misconception. The Catholic Church is not rich at all; it needs money just like any organization to pay bills, pay wages, build buildings, distribute materials, and so on. How is it a crime to help fund it, especially since the Vatican's budget is only about the size of the Archdiocese of Chicago?
Catholic.com on the Inquisition Fr. Joe on the Inquisition and then some I am going to be totally honest here and say that I don't 100% trust these articles. Note that these articles were written in 2004 and 1998, respectively. While some citations and statistics may be inaccurate or even wrong, it's no worse than many protestant citations. The articles are at least worth considering, however, and make some very valid points.
The very source you linked to shows how the Church repressed some abuses. And as I said before, yes there were abuses. The mere existence of people abusing indulgences does not disprove the theory behind them; it's like saying that Creationists disprove Evolution because they misstate facts about it, or like saying that iPhones/iPods aren't useful because there are so many counterfeit ones on the market. Counterfeit indulgences change absolutely nothing about the ones that are actually meaningful.
And yet, I'm the only one with citations here. Not only is there a lot of evidence that I've stated here to the contrary, but it's so incredibly easy to find that there is no logical reason to believe you, especially considering your lack of citations of any sort, and are merely repeating the same lies and misconceptions that are said so often that they're almost accepted as fact.
I'd love to respond to this obviously troll-ish post, but you fail to cite any sort of sources and spout the very same misconceptions that many people fall to. Saying, in a nutshell, "this is a fact" with no logical or historical basis besides common misconception is illogical. What do they call this, again? Oh, right: "If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it".
Either way they aren't legitimate Christian practices. The Catholic Church hasn't been "God's very own church" in hundreds of years. Also, the Catholic Church is hardly an unbiased source of information on Catholic practices.
Well I'd love to see a historically accurate source that doesn't fall to common misconceptions. Of course the Catholic Church is biased; who isn't? I can assure you though that it is truthful and doesn't lie to protect itself.
The whole practice of confession isn't one which is found in the Bible and leads one to believe that it somehow assists one in getting into heaven. The truth is that there is one gate keeper in the religion and it isn't somebody you're going to run into.
First of all, you're forgetting where the Bible even comes from. The Bible is not the sole rule of faith, was never intended to be, and does not contradict the doctrine of purgatory, as the links I shared earlier stated rather clearly.
Additionally Purgatory doesn't exist, it wasn't introduced until a really long time after the events of the Bible and frequently involved both masses being said and prayers.
The original church fathers did, in fact, believe in Purgatory; the belief that it was "introduced" comes from a misunderstanding about how Catholic doctrines are approved. The mere approval of a doctrine as official does not mean that it was "invented". It means that there is enough evidence to show that it does not contradict tradition, including scripture. The Catholic Church has not "invented" a single doctrine, and every single one of them was believed by the original church fathers.
I'm not really up on all things Catholic, but I have a hard time imagining that the Priests are saying all these masses completely gratis.
Some priests take a vow of poverty, yes, but not all. Mostly, it's the church itself that needs the money for things like electricity, repairs, distributing materials, buildings, taxes if any, and whatnot. I don't see how donations to help the Church, assuming it's a decent place to give money of course, could possibly be a bad thing.
Sigh... The app was *never* approved as a replacement for visiting a Priest to forgive sins. It was only seen as something that can *help* you to want to ask for forgiveness. Also, contrary to protestant belief, the Bible (which is not intended to be the sole rule of faith, by the way, considering where we got it from) does not, in fact, contradict this Catholic practice:
yeah, they're different now, but that's one of the reasons the Protestants even exist.
Did you even read the articled I linked to? The point I'm trying to make is that they were never different. The only major differences in the Catholic Church between now and then is the number of officially approved doctrines, political power, and how we now use native translations in places like America (New American Bible, for example). Indulgences were exactly as I, and those articles, said; to say otherwise would be grossly historically inaccurate. Opposition to purgatory and many of the Catholic Church's other doctrines by protestants is, in almost all cases, based on some misunderstanding; in this case, it's that indulgences "forgive sins" or can be "bought", which are completely false and always have been false. There were abuses, of course, but those didn't count as official indulgences and they sure don't disprove indulgences altogether.
Haha, very funny. The truth is, contrary to popular perception (especially from protestants), that indulgences aren't sold; in fact, they are acts of penance done to reduce the required stay in purgatory, not a money-making scheme. In fact, if they were a money-making scheme, they're one of the least effective ones in existence. Indulgences were given for reading your bible, for reciting prayers regularly, and many other things. The times when money was involved were occasions where you'd give alms (charity), which is not buying it outright. Assuming that charity is a good thing, and assuming that the Catholic Church is a good organization to give money to (considering it's God's very own church for Christ's sake, literally), why wouldn't it be praiseworthy from God himself that you helped his Church?
I am going to be totally honest here when I say that they're right, sort-of. I've bought normally-priced games, I've bought super-cheap games, I've downloaded free games, I've even downloaded the occasional ROM (mostly for really old, obscure games; I buy used whenever it's reasonable), and what I've found is that almost all of the free/cheap games I've played get pushed pretty far back on my personal gaming backlog. For example: I've bought Tales of Monkey Island and every single season of Sam and Max from Telltale Games ($5 and $20 respectively, on sale), and I've only gotten about half-way through each before going on to something else.The games were very fun, don't get me wrong, but I just didn't have as much of a "push" to get them over with. I'll beat them eventually, but that's another story. Likewise, I haven't beaten every one of the Humbie Indie Bundle (1 and 2) games yet... not even half or 1/4 of them! I've played them all but the drive to finish them, even if they're very good games, just isn't there.
I just recently bought Ghost Trick and Kingdom Hearts Re:coded for the Nintendo DS back in January, and I've already beaten Ghost Trick (which is awesome) and KH is almost there. Behind that is Baldur's Gate ($10 at GOG), the games I mentioned earlier, a few games I bought used a year or two ago, and whatever else is lying around the house that I haven't fully completed yet.
Don't bash Nintendo on this; they're partially right. Of course, if people get used to super-cheap or even free games, there's less of a possibility that they'd buy more expensive ones, especially if the quality of these games aren't quite up-to-snuff (then again, some $30-50 games aren't either but that's besides the point). Some of the best games I've played were full-priced, and that was mostly because I've had a drive to complete them. I don't have a problem with really cheap games, don't get me wrong, but I don't think that indie game developers and game publishers shouldn't have to price their games as much as a song on Amazon MP3 or iTunes; there's lots of people that would buy them if they were more expensive, you know? And it helps because it gets the publisher/developer more money, especially if they aren't independent.
tl;dr, yes competition is a good thing as people here are pointing out left and right. That's not Nintendo's fault that it can't "compete"; it needs that money to stay afloat. Games are much more inexpensive than years ago when you take inflation into account (in the US anyways), and I don't complain about the occasional $30-50 game if it's worth my money; that's why we have review sites and magazines. $1 and $2 games, like $1 and $2 songs (only more so because games are much more expressive and interactive and whatnot compared to a 3-4 minute song), will force everybody to compete at a lower price point, and that's not necessarily good for some development studios/publishers in some cases.
FOSS != Democracy, Collaboration, etc. and are not mutually exclusive. A government that worked like open-source software would be an absolute disaster, and I don't think I need to say why considering the large number of comments that explain it pretty well.
I don't know what world you're from where Catholics think it's a sin to buy anything expensive, but it sure isn't a sin to buy a freaking iPod. This app helps you figure out what to confess about when you go to confession. Yes, it's a sin to buy too many expensive things, but an iPod of all things isn't even close to that limit. Troll harder next time.
Actually, the latest nightlies have a statusbar-esque thing in the bottom left when you hover links or load a page, now. It's a bit like how Chrome does it.
Just to clarify, by "behavior" I meant social behavior. Like, you can't be born with a tendency to drink alcohol or a tendency to socially blow up in peoples' faces. That's what I meant; not instinctive behavior. My bad for not clarifying.
There is NO SUCH THING as a gene that dictates your behavior, preferences, or predisposition!
Hold on, if this is true then how do you explain instinctive behaviour? I'm no biologist, but my understanding is that genes can dictate behaviour (e.g. baby turtles move towards ocean) and preferences (e.g. birds of paradise).
Sorry for not clarifying; I meant some/most social, human behaviors, not instinct. My bad.
This is absolute madness. Nobody knows what genes do anymore! They've all became tools for misleading people into believing the stupidest things, including, but not limited to:
That you can be "born" gay (or with ANY other sexual attraction, for the matter) That, as the article suggests, you can be born leaning towards religion in general, which is the most illogical thing I've heard this week That it's useless to try and change who you are because you were "born that way"
Etc. etc. etc.... There is NO SUCH THING as a gene that dictates your behavior, preferences, or predisposition! When will people actually care about this? All of those things are either semi-random or are determined by the person's general intelligence/experiences (IIRC).
Not to forget that this article also assumes that there is absolutely nothing positive to be gained from religion and that it "makes people stupid", therefore it's a "bad thing". I, as a Catholic, beg to differ. Roman Catholicism is one of the most well-thought-out, reasonable, logical, and historically accurate religions in the world (if not THE most, for all of them). Yes, there are stupid Catholics (including ones that abuse children) but that doesn't disprove the religion, unless it contradicts something (which it doesn't).
tl;dr, don't listen to this guy who obviously doesn't know his facts.
Did anybody read the comment thread in the second link? It appears to be nothing but 15-year olds, but the overwhelming sentiment is *against* George Hotz and *for* Sony. I find it depressing when I talk to normal people who cheerfully use iTunes et al with no idea what DRM is. But seeing a whole gang of young people vehemently defending Sony against those mean, mean pirates is just demoralizing.
You do realize that iTunes got rid of DRM about 2 years ago, right?
No, not quite. It has no DRM on music, but virtually everything else still does.
Well, yeah... You sign up for Facebook and everything you post there is on Facebook's servers. Why wouldn't they allow incriminating data to be searched for by the authorities? If you do something illegal (depending on your local definition of illegal of course, which may or may not be a good definition) and you put it on Facebook of all places, there's no excuse. I'd expect decent criminals to be smart and make sure it's not so easy to be caught... right?
Neither is mutually exclusive, and they're bad for their own reasons;)
They've accepted devices locked in firmware.
All depends on what you're going to do with it. For example, I wouldn't mind a Netflix box with locked firmware; it'd be pretty sweet to be able to modify it, but Netflix gets their money from a streaming/rental service and I want to support that. I can always have my own unlocked media server thingamajig in addition to it, you know.
Again, neither is mutually exclusive. In fact, you can rip Blu-ray discs provided you have the right hardware and AACS keys
They've accepted the iOS app store. They've accepted the Kindle.
I don't mind the iOS app store; it's not like you're forced to sell your applications in there, you know. It's pretty simple to just buy something that isn't Apple-related. Also, you can read DRM-free books on the Kindle IIRC, so I don't see a problem.
blah blah blah conspiracy theory
Yeah... I highly doubt it. As long as the world has people with common sense, it will always be possible to build unlocked devices.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, Catholic.com is not "the official catholic website", it is merely and approved source of information. Secondly, if you go down to the "Abuses" section of that Wikipedia, you can see exactly what abuses were committed and how the Church attempted to stop them. You can't stop counterfeit indulgences completely, just like you can't stop counterfeit iPhones. Abuses in indulgences disprove the theory behind them about as much as counterfeit iPhones disprove the potential usefulness of the real ones.
Contrary to popular perception, the Catholic Church is not rich and only has a budget about the size of the Archdiocese of Chicago (and considering how the Catholic Church is one of the most charitable organizations in the entire world). The Catholic Church runs hospitals, schools, missions, and many other things that people benefit from daily; it's not for selfish gain at all. Donations are expected whether you sinned or not. It's no better to donate to any other organization, especially considering that Churches have expenses that have to be paid somehow. When you confess your sins, you're expected to be totally honest about it. If you aren't, and you continue to "break the rules", that's extremely sinful.
Assuming that the Catholic Church is the divine organization that it claims to be, and being shown that it isn't a selfish scam, there is absolutely nothing wrong with giving alms.
And in exchange for your official, sanctimonious lies, you get to tithe, tithe, tithe, so the Pope can have yet another gold spoon.
Yet another common misconception. The Catholic Church is not rich at all; it needs money just like any organization to pay bills, pay wages, build buildings, distribute materials, and so on. How is it a crime to help fund it, especially since the Vatican's budget is only about the size of the Archdiocese of Chicago?
Catholic.com on the Inquisition
Fr. Joe on the Inquisition and then some
I am going to be totally honest here and say that I don't 100% trust these articles. Note that these articles were written in 2004 and 1998, respectively. While some citations and statistics may be inaccurate or even wrong, it's no worse than many protestant citations. The articles are at least worth considering, however, and make some very valid points.
Also, Google's your friend.
And then I went to other places, and verified that the abuses of indulgences by the Catholic Church were one of the triggers of Reformation.
Here's one!.
The very source you linked to shows how the Church repressed some abuses. And as I said before, yes there were abuses. The mere existence of people abusing indulgences does not disprove the theory behind them; it's like saying that Creationists disprove Evolution because they misstate facts about it, or like saying that iPhones/iPods aren't useful because there are so many counterfeit ones on the market. Counterfeit indulgences change absolutely nothing about the ones that are actually meaningful.
Citations from the original Church Fathers to the contrary.
Nope, it very well is. Same with indulgences.
And yet, I'm the only one with citations here. Not only is there a lot of evidence that I've stated here to the contrary, but it's so incredibly easy to find that there is no logical reason to believe you, especially considering your lack of citations of any sort, and are merely repeating the same lies and misconceptions that are said so often that they're almost accepted as fact.
I'd love to respond to this obviously troll-ish post, but you fail to cite any sort of sources and spout the very same misconceptions that many people fall to. Saying, in a nutshell, "this is a fact" with no logical or historical basis besides common misconception is illogical. What do they call this, again? Oh, right: "If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it".
Either way they aren't legitimate Christian practices. The Catholic Church hasn't been "God's very own church" in hundreds of years. Also, the Catholic Church is hardly an unbiased source of information on Catholic practices.
Well I'd love to see a historically accurate source that doesn't fall to common misconceptions. Of course the Catholic Church is biased; who isn't? I can assure you though that it is truthful and doesn't lie to protect itself.
The whole practice of confession isn't one which is found in the Bible and leads one to believe that it somehow assists one in getting into heaven. The truth is that there is one gate keeper in the religion and it isn't somebody you're going to run into.
First of all, you're forgetting where the Bible even comes from. The Bible is not the sole rule of faith, was never intended to be, and does not contradict the doctrine of purgatory, as the links I shared earlier stated rather clearly.
Additionally Purgatory doesn't exist, it wasn't introduced until a really long time after the events of the Bible and frequently involved both masses being said and prayers.
The original church fathers did, in fact, believe in Purgatory; the belief that it was "introduced" comes from a misunderstanding about how Catholic doctrines are approved. The mere approval of a doctrine as official does not mean that it was "invented". It means that there is enough evidence to show that it does not contradict tradition, including scripture. The Catholic Church has not "invented" a single doctrine, and every single one of them was believed by the original church fathers.
I'm not really up on all things Catholic, but I have a hard time imagining that the Priests are saying all these masses completely gratis.
Some priests take a vow of poverty, yes, but not all. Mostly, it's the church itself that needs the money for things like electricity, repairs, distributing materials, buildings, taxes if any, and whatnot. I don't see how donations to help the Church, assuming it's a decent place to give money of course, could possibly be a bad thing.
Sigh... The app was *never* approved as a replacement for visiting a Priest to forgive sins. It was only seen as something that can *help* you to want to ask for forgiveness. Also, contrary to protestant belief, the Bible (which is not intended to be the sole rule of faith, by the way, considering where we got it from) does not, in fact, contradict this Catholic practice:
Source 1
Source 2
yeah, they're different now, but that's one of the reasons the Protestants even exist.
Did you even read the articled I linked to? The point I'm trying to make is that they were never different. The only major differences in the Catholic Church between now and then is the number of officially approved doctrines, political power, and how we now use native translations in places like America (New American Bible, for example). Indulgences were exactly as I, and those articles, said; to say otherwise would be grossly historically inaccurate. Opposition to purgatory and many of the Catholic Church's other doctrines by protestants is, in almost all cases, based on some misunderstanding; in this case, it's that indulgences "forgive sins" or can be "bought", which are completely false and always have been false. There were abuses, of course, but those didn't count as official indulgences and they sure don't disprove indulgences altogether.
Haha, very funny. The truth is, contrary to popular perception (especially from protestants), that indulgences aren't sold; in fact, they are acts of penance done to reduce the required stay in purgatory, not a money-making scheme. In fact, if they were a money-making scheme, they're one of the least effective ones in existence. Indulgences were given for reading your bible, for reciting prayers regularly, and many other things. The times when money was involved were occasions where you'd give alms (charity), which is not buying it outright. Assuming that charity is a good thing, and assuming that the Catholic Church is a good organization to give money to (considering it's God's very own church for Christ's sake, literally), why wouldn't it be praiseworthy from God himself that you helped his Church?
Sources:
http://www.catholic.com/library/Primer_on_Indulgences.asp
http://www.catholic.com/library/Myths_About_Indulgences.asp
Also, Google's your friend.
I am going to be totally honest here when I say that they're right, sort-of. I've bought normally-priced games, I've bought super-cheap games, I've downloaded free games, I've even downloaded the occasional ROM (mostly for really old, obscure games; I buy used whenever it's reasonable), and what I've found is that almost all of the free/cheap games I've played get pushed pretty far back on my personal gaming backlog. For example: I've bought Tales of Monkey Island and every single season of Sam and Max from Telltale Games ($5 and $20 respectively, on sale), and I've only gotten about half-way through each before going on to something else.The games were very fun, don't get me wrong, but I just didn't have as much of a "push" to get them over with. I'll beat them eventually, but that's another story. Likewise, I haven't beaten every one of the Humbie Indie Bundle (1 and 2) games yet... not even half or 1/4 of them! I've played them all but the drive to finish them, even if they're very good games, just isn't there.
I just recently bought Ghost Trick and Kingdom Hearts Re:coded for the Nintendo DS back in January, and I've already beaten Ghost Trick (which is awesome) and KH is almost there. Behind that is Baldur's Gate ($10 at GOG), the games I mentioned earlier, a few games I bought used a year or two ago, and whatever else is lying around the house that I haven't fully completed yet.
Don't bash Nintendo on this; they're partially right. Of course, if people get used to super-cheap or even free games, there's less of a possibility that they'd buy more expensive ones, especially if the quality of these games aren't quite up-to-snuff (then again, some $30-50 games aren't either but that's besides the point). Some of the best games I've played were full-priced, and that was mostly because I've had a drive to complete them. I don't have a problem with really cheap games, don't get me wrong, but I don't think that indie game developers and game publishers shouldn't have to price their games as much as a song on Amazon MP3 or iTunes; there's lots of people that would buy them if they were more expensive, you know? And it helps because it gets the publisher/developer more money, especially if they aren't independent.
tl;dr, yes competition is a good thing as people here are pointing out left and right. That's not Nintendo's fault that it can't "compete"; it needs that money to stay afloat. Games are much more inexpensive than years ago when you take inflation into account (in the US anyways), and I don't complain about the occasional $30-50 game if it's worth my money; that's why we have review sites and magazines. $1 and $2 games, like $1 and $2 songs (only more so because games are much more expressive and interactive and whatnot compared to a 3-4 minute song), will force everybody to compete at a lower price point, and that's not necessarily good for some development studios/publishers in some cases.
FOSS != Democracy, Collaboration, etc. and are not mutually exclusive. A government that worked like open-source software would be an absolute disaster, and I don't think I need to say why considering the large number of comments that explain it pretty well.
I don't know what world you're from where Catholics think it's a sin to buy anything expensive, but it sure isn't a sin to buy a freaking iPod. This app helps you figure out what to confess about when you go to confession. Yes, it's a sin to buy too many expensive things, but an iPod of all things isn't even close to that limit. Troll harder next time.
Actually, the latest nightlies have a statusbar-esque thing in the bottom left when you hover links or load a page, now. It's a bit like how Chrome does it.
Just to clarify, by "behavior" I meant social behavior. Like, you can't be born with a tendency to drink alcohol or a tendency to socially blow up in peoples' faces. That's what I meant; not instinctive behavior. My bad for not clarifying.
There is NO SUCH THING as a gene that dictates your behavior, preferences, or predisposition!
Hold on, if this is true then how do you explain
instinctive behaviour? I'm no biologist, but my understanding is that genes can dictate behaviour (e.g. baby turtles move towards ocean) and preferences (e.g. birds of paradise).
Sorry for not clarifying; I meant some/most social, human behaviors, not instinct. My bad.
There is NO SUCH THING as a gene that dictates your behavior, preferences, or predisposition!
What's your favorite explanation for instinct?
(Assuming you believe such a thing exists.)
That's not what I meant, and they aren't the same thing. Yes, instinct exists. I meant the other kind of behaviors, like, social/mental.
the genetic components that predispose a person toward religion
*facepalms so hard that my head starts to bleed*...
JSYK, here's the Common misunderstandings of genetics page on Wikipedia.
This is absolute madness. Nobody knows what genes do anymore! They've all became tools for misleading people into believing the stupidest things, including, but not limited to:
That you can be "born" gay (or with ANY other sexual attraction, for the matter)
That, as the article suggests, you can be born leaning towards religion in general, which is the most illogical thing I've heard this week
That it's useless to try and change who you are because you were "born that way"
Etc. etc. etc.... There is NO SUCH THING as a gene that dictates your behavior, preferences, or predisposition! When will people actually care about this? All of those things are either semi-random or are determined by the person's general intelligence/experiences (IIRC).
Not to forget that this article also assumes that there is absolutely nothing positive to be gained from religion and that it "makes people stupid", therefore it's a "bad thing". I, as a Catholic, beg to differ. Roman Catholicism is one of the most well-thought-out, reasonable, logical, and historically accurate religions in the world (if not THE most, for all of them). Yes, there are stupid Catholics (including ones that abuse children) but that doesn't disprove the religion, unless it contradicts something (which it doesn't).
tl;dr, don't listen to this guy who obviously doesn't know his facts.
Did anybody read the comment thread in the second link? It appears to be nothing but 15-year olds, but the overwhelming sentiment is *against* George Hotz and *for* Sony. I find it depressing when I talk to normal people who cheerfully use iTunes et al with no idea what DRM is. But seeing a whole gang of young people vehemently defending Sony against those mean, mean pirates is just demoralizing.
You do realize that iTunes got rid of DRM about 2 years ago, right?
No, not quite. It has no DRM on music, but virtually everything else still does.
Well, yeah... You sign up for Facebook and everything you post there is on Facebook's servers. Why wouldn't they allow incriminating data to be searched for by the authorities? If you do something illegal (depending on your local definition of illegal of course, which may or may not be a good definition) and you put it on Facebook of all places, there's no excuse. I'd expect decent criminals to be smart and make sure it's not so easy to be caught... right?
I hate to say this, but we've lost. The public has accepted HDMI.
Wikipedia is your friend:
This is HDMI
This is HDCP
Neither is mutually exclusive, and they're bad for their own reasons ;)
They've accepted devices locked in firmware.
All depends on what you're going to do with it. For example, I wouldn't mind a Netflix box with locked firmware; it'd be pretty sweet to be able to modify it, but Netflix gets their money from a streaming/rental service and I want to support that. I can always have my own unlocked media server thingamajig in addition to it, you know.
They've accepted Blu-Ray.
Yet again...
This is Blu-ray
This is AACS
Again, neither is mutually exclusive. In fact, you can rip Blu-ray discs provided you have the right hardware and AACS keys
They've accepted the iOS app store. They've accepted the Kindle.
I don't mind the iOS app store; it's not like you're forced to sell your applications in there, you know. It's pretty simple to just buy something that isn't Apple-related. Also, you can read DRM-free books on the Kindle IIRC, so I don't see a problem.
blah blah blah conspiracy theory
Yeah... I highly doubt it. As long as the world has people with common sense, it will always be possible to build unlocked devices.
Don't Ghostery/Beef Taco for Firefox do the same thing? Or did I misread something?