The best engineers focus on the pros and cons of their available choices and how well they match the needs of their situation, rather than focusing much on whether something is old or new. However, for your own professional growth, you should occasionally experiment with new technologies or its going to be hard for you to take advantage of new technology that is truly superior when it arrives.

In response to this exact problem, I changed my programming portion of the interview to "You have 30 minutes. Please write any program in any language you like and explain it to me. It can be an algorithm that you particularly like, a problem that you recently solved, etc." The hardest adjustment was to deal with the truckload of questions that candidates had before they would get started. It seemed to help by following up with "I just want to understand how you compare to an average candidate and what makes you special or better suited to this position than others. Feel free to cherry pick from the possibilities and choose something that you feel highlights your personal strengths."

Be prepared for someone to take the first 5-10 minutes getting warmed up a getting their head into the zone, because many people had never been asked such a question, so they need time to come up with something. Don't count it against them. I learned some amazing things after a few years of asking this question and I feel like we made better hires overall.

Coincidentally, we laughed at the store yesterday noticing that the only fuzzy displays were the Sharp ones in comparison to the others. Can they be so ignorant of their product quality issues?

Jerk or not, brilliant people are rare and incredibly useful. If you can't figure out how to minimize the jerk aspect while maximizing the brilliance, then you're not being very effective. In fact, this ability is one way to define an excellent business leader.

Companies are massively scanning their existing products to find things that need defensive patents, which indicates that the patent system did not encourage their invention and in those cases software patents are just an innovation tax instead.

Bayesian analysis of my attempts to find my car keys would suggest that my keys don't actually exist, right up to the point when I find them...

What does "optimized registry" even mean? Maybe the products don't work because they solve an imaginary problem.

You can say whatever you want but building an audience and venue requires consent of other people and usually money. If your words don't cause anyone to want to listen, or pay for it, etc. then that's not a problem with your rights. People find a way to get the information they want and freedom of speech ensures that they can probably find it somewhere.

When other people have to make personal sacrifices against their will for your free speech, then it's not free speech anymore. Like protesting and blocking the road so I cannot get to work and feed my family. Also, I shouldn't be forced to hear your bullhorn at 11pm at night through my bedroom window. So there are distinct limits in a populous society how much you can reasonably speak freely before you are screwing other people our of their freedoms and I think that's fair. There are violations of rights that occur, so you sue and use the due process until you can get the nation to agree on a better system.

Everything else mainly ends up with people killing each other.

They shouldn't be able to get a search warrant for your brain. In the US, I'd expect someone to plead the 5th Amendment if they required you to give information that could incriminate yourself.

..while she is needing you so much right now.

He did not take an oath to protect the government, his oath was to protect the Constitution of the United States. That's an important but subtle difference. Here's an interesting movie quote that sums it up nicely, I think:

"You took an oath, if you recall, when you first came to work for me. And I don't mean to the National Security Advisor of the United States, I mean to his boss... and I don't mean the President. You gave your word to his boss: you gave your word to the people of the United States. Your word is who you are."

Most trademark offices won't let you trademark a name that describes the thing in question. That's why people invent product names like Coca Cola, Pepsi, etc. because you cannot trademark descriptive names like brown fizzy drink, bubbly soda, etc.

Your statements are logical but they are wrong. Here are a few numbers to show why:

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated 52,447 deliberate and 23,237 accidental non-fatal gunshot injuries in the United States during 2000. The majority of gun-related deaths in the United States are suicides, with firearms used in 16,907 suicides in the United States during 2004." ("Safe-Storage Gun Laws: Accidental Deaths, Suicides, and Crime". Journal of Law and Economics)

In other words, most gun incidents are premeditated acts by criminals. Subtract the suicides and premeditated acts still outnumber accidents.

You're also wrong about gun storage laws:

"Researchers have shown that safe-storage laws do not appear to affect gun suicide rates or juvenile accidental gun death." ("Measures of Gun Ownership Levels of Macro-Level Crime and Violence Research". Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency)

If justice is about rehabilitation, then why do judges give sentences based on crime severity rather than psychiatrist recommendations of rehabilitation time?

"You pay me for my expertise and I recommend these rules. If something goes wrong with a PCs that was exempted from the rules, then I want you to remember this conversation." Then move on to something else more important.