the tindog coffeehouse

Former Microsoft vice president Dick Brass (insert your own jokes here) wrote a pretty indicting op-ed piece yesterday in the New York Times about how his previous employer’s corporate culture stifles any true innovation coming out of the Redmond monolith:

Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator. Its products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason. Its image has never recovered from the antitrust prosecution of the 1990s. Its marketing has been inept for years; remember the 2008 ad in which Bill Gates was somehow persuaded to literally wiggle his behind at the camera? …

What happened? Unlike other companies, Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation. Some of my former colleagues argue that it actually developed a system to thwart innovation. Despite having one of the largest and best corporate laboratories in the world, and the luxury of not one but three chief technology officers, the company routinely manages to frustrate the efforts of its visionary thinkers.

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I’ve been a huge fan of Lost since Season 1, but for whatever reason I’ve only blogged about it (briefly) once. And I’m not really starting now. After all, there are so many other, better places to find in-depth reviews, analyses, and theories. But with so much going on in this final season, I just wanted to jot down my initial thoughts of last night’s episode, braindump style. I’ll try to update the list throughout the week as I read through everyone else’s ideas, and hopefully I’ll repeat the process for the entire season.

That being said, here goes (in no particular order):

• So fake-Locke is the resurrected/reincarnated Man in Black, and fake-Sayid is the resurrected/reincarnated Jacob. Which means that the actors we saw in the Season 5 finale were probably resurrected/reincarnated as well. In other words, the battle between the two characters has been going on for a long, long time. When one body dies, the spirit of that character moves on to another host and the cycle continues. That is, until the Man in Black finds his loophole.

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Source.

While college football fans may be begging for a playoff system, they should probably be careful what they ask for. At least if the NCAA basketball tournament is any indication. If the NCAA and coaches get their way, the current 65-team March Madness tournament could expand to as many as 96 teams, adding up to a mind-boggling 31 extra games to the schedule. (And you thought filling out your bracket was tough before!)

BCS proponents argue that in basketball, the already-bloated playoff system makes the regular season irrelevant, and if that’s true, then a 96-team playoff would make it even more so. That alone should be reason enough not to fatten the tournament any more than it is.  But Andrea Adelson of the Orlando Sentinel points out another reason, one that would drastically affect college football as well:

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