I can understand why they do it - diminishing the page rank of sites that give answers to questions on Stack Overflow causes Stack Overflow to gain more traffic - but it still seems kind of underhanded. They rely on others for the content of the site, so they should give credit to the producers of that content - without it, they would have no service at all.
This actually seems VERY important, although probably less so if you've been exposed to the idea before.
Regardless, the results are impressive, and the ability to impose the mathematical properties' of PDFs or CDFs over those of discrete numbers could have an enormous impact on the efficiency of certain types of algorithms.
Knowledge has an incredibly large impact on the possibility of the betterment of human life, be it individually or socially. It is better for everyone if knowledge is more widely available, those who run businesses involved with its distribution included.
Simply posting something that already exists, be it through a Tweet or a link or what-have-you, does not create anything of value.
However, creating said link with a short description or within the context of a greater article does create value. It's not a huge amount of value, but I know that I, personally, am much more likely to examine a link posted by someone if they explain what it is about and that explanation is both interesting and relevant.
There's also the bit where attempting to get people to support a piece of positive legislation is infinitely harder than getting them to oppose negative legislation.
If for no other reason, you have to agree with all the parts of a bill to truly support it, while you only have to strongly disagree with one part to be opposed to it.
The end bit is kind of creepy, in my opinion, but I'm liking the way this is going overall.
I, for one, would love to be able to talk to people over the Internet and still have some sort of physical presence on both ends to make it seem more natural.
Then again, I dislike even having to talk on the telephone, so perhaps I'm alone on that one...
Reflection on work is an important step in getting work done efficiently, and this process forces it quite well. On top of that, it requires little action on the part of the managers.