Cisco routers now lock you out unless you join their online service

I think this is indicative of a much bigger problem than the article suggests. Cisco is falling way behind in their core hardware market (routers and switches), losing in VoIP, never could write acceptable software, failed and unwound their consumer services push from a few years back (social networking sw), abandoned their consumer non-networking hardware (Flip, that tablet thing), and are now getting tone-deaf "creative" in their low-margin consumer networking hardware (Linksys) division??

What's left?? Scientific Atlanta set top boxes?

Not to be overly dramatic, but this speaks very very poorly for Cisco's vision of itself, and I think we can learn something here. Chambers is starting to look a lot like Ballmer. The clock is ticking.