An awkward moment at the discussion about the competitiveness of the U.S. economy: Professor Thomas Hazlett of George Mason (how about the Colonials' Final Four run?) was talking about the old Microsoft antitrust case and that how he never could understand why Microsoft's lawyers could not make a stronger argument that Microsoft was a company that was challenged every day by new competitors. It turns out that someone from Microsoft was in the room. "I'll pass on that to Bill for you," shot back Gary Flake, a technical fellow at Microsoft.

Later on during the question and answer session, Flake took issue with some of Hazlett's comments about the state of the telecom industry in the U.S., saying that it was "shameful" how far behind the U.S. lagged Asia, Europe and other regions of the world in wireless telecommunications.

But Hazlett cast some of the blame at Microsoft, arguing that "even forward thinking companies like Microsoft are on the wrong side of lobbying," regarding efforts to get the government to invest more in tech and telecom infrastructure.