So what you're really having a problem with is not microsoft, but the corporations and people who use microsoft products. People that use microsoft products use it for their own intensive purpose, if you don't like it, then don't use microsoft products. Nothing is preventing you from doing so. Your argument doesn't parallel to what the researcher is talking about here, because the researcher is talking about how people use a service, yet there is no immediate contact to a service rep.. your argument is talking about microsoft products and how it doesn't cooperate with similar open free products.. yet.. nothing about the quality of their product or their services. No correlation here at all. Your displaced hate for Microsoft is definitely warranted for the examples you provided, but it wasn't a really suitable as a response to that particular statement.

It's funny how you talk about the problems with Microsoft and innovation, yet complain about the ineptitude of people using a Windows command line. At my university, I was taught computer science using Java on a solaris machine, and it was horrible upon graduation; no experience with using any good frameworks and no enterprise project experience; and company used solaris. Trying to find jobs out there, especially in the job market where I'm in, it was certainly tough when almost everyone wanted 3+ yrs of experience with MS products, and I didn't have that. It would have been nice if I had something that companies were looking for upon graduation. I do agree with the sentiment of programming in a variety of platforms and technologies, that is including MS, because like it or not, we will be working on projects that we will dislike programming in; ahem.. coldfusion 7 anyone? ugh.

What I don't understand is how Marissa Mayer says something in the lines of, "We want people to be in the actual building of Yahoo to improve on communication" when it means cutting off ties with current employees who live far away. Then going on to say something like, "By allowing people to be in the building, you'd generate more collective ideas." I had a yahoo account for 10 years and saw the huge decline. If I literally bought the services like mail forwarding, I would have left a long time ago and move all my accounts to google mail. I never once entered the Yahoo building or had any collaborations with them, but I have had way too many ideas about what they can do with their products; which leads me to the next point.

It's not the engineers and developers fault for their bad services and bad qualities. The real case points directly to management. I can bet that there are quite a few employees who don't care about passing ideas up the ladder, regardless of where they are; and the real reason is because in those companies, management is an unapproachable bully of an entity. I can't tell how many times my co-workers get together during lunch to ridicule what the managers are doing, only to be part of something that we know will fail, and trust me we tried all in vain for change. When you have employees opening up, and really show signs of contributing, and actually enjoy the process of providing those ideas without fear of backlash... THAT is the signs of good upper management... THAT is the sign of a good company. This move of trying to limit remote connection is telling me the real scape goats and the ones who aren't part of the building, shifting liability from their own failures to someone else's.

Now Best Buy is giving into all this.. it doesn't make any sense how they can just make a move like that without even THINKING of how much reward it would be in the long run. It's not like there aren't companies out there that aren't following this kind of rule already.. there have been companies for years that never had remote access.. and are they showing signs of success?

If anyone really wants to know a true CEO.. a master of his game.. check out Joel Spolsky from "Joel on Software". The guy has one of the best models for a business corporation I've seen, and I commend him for his catering to his employees.