Are there any plans or thoughts in regards to adding some way to implement it on a website without using JavaScript? You control the browser, so it shouldn't be difficult to do.
For example, you could define a special URLs for login and logout actions. (E.g. persona:action=login&onsuccess=encoded_url1&onfailure=encodedurl2 ). I don't know about others, but it would make me much more willing to give a try.
I think it's an admirable goal, but they have a huge task ahead to convince both developers and other browsers to pick the standard up.
Realistically, I expect most people/services will converge on Single Sign On via one of Twitter, Google, Facebook, and maybe a couple others. Hopefully all offering 2-factor authentication. So you'll only need a handful of passwords anyway.
I agree with you. Those big names, for better or worse, became the identity store on the internet. Most websites tend to support at least one of them if not all of them.
Google Apps accounts should work. That error message shows up when there's a delay with XHR requests behind the scenes -- things look good on our end. Maybe a blip in your connection? Is it working now?
[1] https://login.persona.org/