Maybe they were trying to implement security by air-gap and unplugged the wrong cord, accidentally achieving it.
Security by accident - now there's new sales pitch for their sales team to use.

You know, that would only end up in: "stop video recording, post to youtube, label 'This fool thinks he can voice control my google glasses lol'"

Can someone explain to me what the fuss is about unlocking?
If I understand it right, you are not allowed to unlock a phone which you are buying with monthly contract.
Well, makes sense to me, you haven't paid the device fully, it's not yours to hack.
Once you've paid the (24 month?) contract you're free to do what you want with the device.
If you don't like those terms why did you even buy the phone with contract rather than directly with cash?

Perhaps Mayer checked those users who need corporate network to do their job then?
To me, this sounds like military-style management.
You are supposed to work as a team. If one of you goofs around instead doing their task, everyone suffers.
It's classic team-bonding strategy, and I don't see anything wrong with the approach.
She can prove wrongdoings happened but instead pointing fingers everyone gets punished. Now the group can work out itself who deserves to get soap-sock treatment.

Why on earth are you repurposing ~7-10 year old server hardware?
You really cannot trust such devices in production environment and repurposing for testing would fail because you might run into issues installing current software on that hardware as it's not officially supported.
Don't test with obsolete hardware.
If your plan was to run linux on them, why did you bother with BMC updates, just leave it unconfigured. Yes, it'll flash ugly orange error messages, but you know those are unneccessary and you'll remote manage the machine over ssh anyways.

Call Dell, explain them that you need new servers and you'd like to recycle your old ones.
They'll likely even give you some discount for the old machines rather than charge you for recycling them.
You get new hardware to work with, which is under warranty again, and it's most likely less power consuming and produces less heat so you'll save on the energy bill and cooling as well.

This is assuming you are the first owner of the devices though. If you bought them second hand, you're SOL.

I really recommend anyone with roomba to take their screwdriver and open the thing.
Once you do and compare the inner workings to the device linked in the article, you really start to understand the concept of product design.

To recap the differences for those who don't own one:
Roomba design shows massive modularity. Every component inside is relatively easy-to-swap module.
It's very easy to fix if something breaks down when everything is attached with 2-3 screws max.
Modules have fixed connectors which just slot in. You won't end up in situation like: "ooh, this 4-pin connector looks like that one, did I connect it right?"(see the pics linked - power connector and speaker for example)
You could probably 3D print matching spare modules if you made drawings for one.

Parts of the rover, like motors and gears are supposed to be modular, yet they don't really look like that to me, maybe I'm just misreading the images.
To me, it looks like "Made in China" - medium cost build. There's some build quality, it's not made from the cheapest material available, but it's not for daily use. Well, it's supposed to be a toy..
In the Rover, wifi and camera modules are most likely USB yet they use different cabling, why?
For hackable toy, those should be replaceable easily. Roomba doesn't have USB for wifi or camera either, but then again, it's a vacuum cleaner!

Something from the article I'd have to agree with.

I haven't tried it myself, but stumbled on it few years ago.
Ulteo (download links) should provide you with seamless application integration regardless of the platform.
Downside: the webclient is java based

Somewhere at DoD:
Guys, I wanted you to build one thing, ONE thing only and you screwed up!
I wanted server capable of running SkyDrive, not one capable of Skydive!

If you talk long conversation, specific pauses might simply work as morse code.

I'm assuming they're targetting commercial vpn providers rather than companies using VPN?
If not, I'd like to get some address where to register corporate endpoints which should be excluded from filtering.
Otherwise managing workstations and servers located in China might become rather tedious.
Atleast this IPSEC VPN to China which I'm using to post this message seems to work just fine right now.

You clearly haven't tried Outlook 2013 yet.

Or downgrade.
If you have active SA on machine that has pro/ultimate sticker, it gives you permission to run W8, W7, Vista, XP, Windows 2000, NT4 or DOS6.22 & W3.11.
Yes there's also 2 and 1 but all applications on them run on W3.11 anyway.

It's just a gui for Mer, which you can fork already.

Or you could

1) place physically similar datacenters around the world
2) make your datacenter virtual, so you can keep the applications running at any place, and verify that hot-migrate works
3) ignore localized storms, since you have capacity and uptime on global scale

Sure, you notice that the datacenter goes down, but you don't have to waste diesel on generators, since the services have already been handed over to the next datacenter to handle.
Your crew can stay at home sleeping in their own beds rather than some cleaning closet or meeting room at datacenter and fix things once the storm has passed.

Patents won't touch you if you make 1-10 units.
Other manufacturers won't consider you as worthwhile to legislate against since you most likely won't make any profit from those devices sold.
From US point of view, good luck getting your device FCC approved, that'll be cheap and fun process!