I remember at least six occurences of this, Keith, and I find it very stupid.
The last instance was the last song on Jim Gilmour's "Great Escape"...I purposely left it off the show since it was nine min of great music, then 3 min of silence, then a long piano part. I'm not wasting my time editing.
Hidden tracks are different. They're kinda cool. But silence in the middle of tracks (Pure reason revolution is another that comes to mind) is damn annoying!
Tool has like 69 tracks of one second each on "Undertow".
About SH's SHS: As much as I like that band, that song is done after 20 minutes for me. It's way overblown, then the slience ices it.