What do the HoTMaiL Admins Think of the Windows Gui?

From this article:
BF: Are there scaling reasons to think about the benefits of a command line for managing over a GUI, or are there other things to think about?
PS: Our operations group never wants to rely on any sort of user interface. Everything has to be scriptable and run from some sort of command line. That's the only way you're going to be able to execute scripts and gather the results over thousands of machines.
I really don't know how Windows admins consistently deal with the limitations of the Windows GUI. While a GUI may be fine, and even preferred in a desktop environment, a GUI in the server environment is nothing short of crippling for a variety of reasons. The lack of easy scripting, the limitation of only being able to access features that are exposed via the GUI, the added overhead of actually running the GUI; the list goes on, but I'll stop there. I also find it interesting that there is an allusion to the fact that some customizations were needed in parts of the Windows stack to scale so far. Of course, the only way that would be possible, would be if you were part of Microsoft (which 99.9999% of the world is clearly not) and had access to (some of) the code, like HoTMaiL does, being part of MSN. There is there power of Open Source – 100% of the world has access. The ability to scratch your own itch is something that I'd not want to be without, especially in an environment that's so conducive to itching.
Microsoft, HoTMaiL, GUI
—jeremy