The reason it is illegal is fiduciary responsibilty. What it boils down to is this: The people who own the company have hired this person to make business decisions which will maximize the profit (or maximize whatever specific metric was defined as his responsibility). When someone with a fiduciary responsibility takes a bribe, they are basically conspiring with the bribing entity to steal a money from the shareholders/business owner and taking a cut of that stolen money in the form of the bribe.

ie: You give me $100 and tell me to go get the best value widget on the market. I determine that widgets should cost $50. Company A offers the widget for $50 and Company B offers the widget for $80.

Company B offers a bribe of $20 dollars if I choose their $80 widget. This provides for $10 pure profit for company B over the base widget value, and $20 for me by accepting.

However, that $30 difference was $30 that was effectively stolen from you when the decision was made to not select the appropriately priced $50 widget.

The value of the bribe, plus the cost difference between comparable products is pure theft from the people whose money the bribe receiver was entrusted to manage.

That's why it is illegal, and unethical.

Personally, the only time I've ever experienced even the slightest bit of motion sickness was after eating an Italian hoagie that had warmed to 80 degrees while I was riding on a KC-135A during a training mission. I'm talking about the fact that human physiology in general relies a great deal on visual cues to keep balance and THAT is an advantage over some physiological scenario where visual feedback to maintaining balance was reduced. I took your use of the term 'you' as the general 'all humans' rather than the specific individual 'you'.

Your response, however, is pretty rabid. Did someone with motion sickness push you in the dirt as a child?

How much does a hand grenade weigh?

What happens when you dust a crowd of protestors with a chemical or radioactive marker and then track their movements via chemical/radiological sensors tuned to those specific signatures?

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Balance based on visual cues allows us to preemptively compensate for pending shifts in balance. It also allows us to more quickly react to sudden or rapid changes instead of relying on fluids stimulating sensory hairs.

Protest, anger, and reservations don't occur until AFTER it becomes clear that you have been harmed. Afterall, if you aren't being harmed, it is hard to say that abuse is occuring.

It's not so much that people are enjoying the 'bread and circuses', but that human nature is to trust, until the trust is abused. While you may be right in your statement that trust is misplaced, you will find that it is very difficult to convince people NOT to trust by default.

I consider it something like trusting a Barber to give you a shave. You are trusting a person to literally place a razor sharp blade against your neck and do you no harm. That's a hell of a lot of trust to be placed in a stranger. But you aren't calling for people to implicitly distrust barbers and demand the adoption of safety razors instead of straight razors.

So why trust the barber? Because we have no actual experience with barbers slaughtering their customers. There isn't fear of abuse of that trust because there is no experience of that trust being abused (either first hand, or from friends/family being harmed).

Until people (or those close to them) are harmed by something, we won't think to care. Unfortunately for privacy advocates, the harm from having your privacy violated is hard to quantify, and therefore seems intangible and non-existent to normal people.

So don't get upset that people aren't up in arms, they won't be until the harm is either tangible, or quantifiable and relevant.

My wife gets severe motion sickness, which is a challenge on Pennsylvania roads. For those who aren't familiar, most non-highway PA roads are basically just old farmers paths that have been worn down and eventually paved. They tend to hug the terrain and follow creeks. Fun to drive, bad for motion sickness.

One trick that I suggested and seems to work is pretending to drive the car. I noticed that most people don't get motion sick when they drive, only when they are in the passenger or rear seats. By pretending to drive the car, literally holding up your arms and operating an imaginary steering wheel, you can trick your brain into linking the motion sensations with what you see.

So the next time you start feeling a bit motion sick, pretend that you are driving the car. Sure, you might look a bit silly, but less silly than horking out the window of a car.

Yes, those are the words they used, but actual implications of those words was a lot worse than 'You won't get a bugfix for Red's Raiders game'.

The reason you are sworn to tell the whole truth, and not only the truth.

So the whole truth of that statement would be: "Don't update, and never again connect to our network. Also, your PS3 is now a sub-PS3 and you are forbidden from playing any new game released from this point forward*."

"*Also, post a guard on your couch to prevent anyone from ever clicking through the text when they pop in a game or movie. Because that's going to be an irrevocable update applied to your hardware with no recourse to you. Sure, you could go out and buy an entire new PS3... but we altered the HW of the PS3 so you lose your backward compatability as well."

That would be the 'Whole truth' of 'Just don't update.'

Not true. Astrology will vary between readings and individuals.

Responses from the internet will always trend toward maximum Lulz.

The answer, of course, is phasers. Useful and motivational.

Looks as if I've been downmodded for something? I guess the civil engineer that designed the roads surrounding the Ben Franklin Bridge are upset that I don't care for the signage leading up to it...

Is this actually true, or is it that you need to be a licensed gunsmith to *sell* a gun (but making one for yourself is totally legal)?

Honest question; I don't know anything about American gun laws...

When trying to understand US laws, keep in mind that one of the founding principles of the US was that it was to be a collection of semi-sovereign states. As such, the states have great authority at shaping their own laws.

So to answer your question... it depends on which state you are in when you want to sell a firearm. Pennsylvania, IIRC, doesn't have any particular restriction on personal sales of firearms (I'm sure there are some, but I remember it being pretty free). New York State does, but it also depends on the type of firearm.

It can actually be a big problem for people because you can easily make a wrong turn in your car and what is perfectly legal and a non-issue in one state can be considered an extreme felony with mandatory multi-year minimum sentences.

IE: The Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia. It's so damned easy to accidentally cross over into New Jersey where the gun laws are more draconian. Of course, the laws in Philly are pretty severe too, but you could be legal in Philly, and accidentally cross into NJ.

The Ben Franklin Bridge, for those that don't know, is very easy to accidentally cross as the roads leading to it are confusing and don't really have the standard 'Oh shoot, this road is taking me to the bridge let me quick take this exit' offramps. By the time you realize you are approaching the Ben Franklin Bridge, it's already too late and you are on your way to Camden, NJ.

Don't worry, they do. It's just that your choice of priority depends on your final goal.

If your goal is a reduction in gun violence, you might prioritize efforts to reduce poverty, unemployment, and parents lacking time to be parents.

If your goal is to ban firearms, you prioritize the efforts which are achievable in small bite-sized portions.

And a small bomb on a school bus would make the entire country lose their minds.

I've said it before, the Constitution is an incredibly difficult document to understand, if you are trying to understand it as a means of limiting rights/expanding government authority.

It's a spectacularly clear and concise document to understand if you are looking at it from the perspective of protecting rights/limiting government authority.