Well, one use is you can access the contacts of your contacts, so it helps you get information about (and get in contact with) a lot of people...
But I agree it seems weird to add 50 'strangers' to your list... We don't know anything about each other really.
EDIT: Although I have seen a few people do it on LinkedIn already, they post message in groups and tell people that they want everyone to add them. They gather thousands of contacts that way, I wonder if it does them any good tho.
Whatever you do, don't work too much on side jobs while writing your mémoire/thesis. I have seen many people get a part-time or full-time job when they were done with their project, alas not with their writing. It takes them years to finish the whole thing.. (I've seen 4 years for a master's)
A much more interesting user interface used in a movie was developed by Oblong (see John Underkoffler). I am talking about Minority Report ;) They are making it into a real UI.
However, it's not the first time we hear from google cancelling adsense accounts and cut all communication. I know it's the user's responsibility to make sure his stuff is clean, but most the time the user has no f*ing clue what stuff he did/does wrong.
I use three languages commonly : French, English and Russian. I can set the language for non-Unicode programs only once, which means I can't display all programs written with a different encoding properly.
The concept or way to upgrade it is ok... it's just that it almost always causes a lot more trouble than a clean install.
My experiences so far :
6->7 : System failure, unable to boot
8.04 -> 8.10 : Alright overall, a few bugs to fix (most concerned X)
8.10 -> 9.04 : Better, still a few bugs (info tooltips, graphic card drivers)