I'm glad I wasn't the only person affected by this. I couldn't finish the article. At first I thought it must be some sort of commentary related to the article

I'm glad I wasn't the only person affected by this. I couldn't finish the article. At first I thought it must be some sort of commentary related to the article (i.e. web 2.0 and social clutter) but no. You can minimize the "no spam" widget but apparently are held hostage by the other box until (I assume) you click one of the social +1's. Assuming the rest of the article's content is well thought out, perhaps they should forward it to their own designer.