Perhaps its a bad article, but I can't see the value of solving the boson sampling problem by sampling bosons having any application in general computing.
It probably does not, though there are some proposals (such as generating certified random bits I think). But that is not relevant to the discussion here. A computational algorithm does not have to be useful generally, for it to prove a result about complexity classes.
It depends how general you mean, I reckon. I don't know enough about physics to know how important boson sampling is, but simulating other systems in particle physics is already one of the big-ticket uses of supercomputers today.