Some of you might have missed the perspective of the article's author (perhaps it isn't that clear); you might want to re-examine it from an implementer point of view. In other words, if you have a real-life big data problem (that would benefit from parallel processing via Hadoop) and you actually have to build the thing so that it would work and scale, the decomposition presented by the architecture would make the implementation a lot simpler. Architecting such systems isn't trivial, and this is a solid blue-print to start with. And it's really an architecture, not a model: It doesn't tell you how to formulate algorithms, it rather suggests how to build a complete system around them.
I have read the recent draft of the "Big Data" book by the author, which describes the architecture that the article discusses in better detail. Honestly, if you are a beginning practitioner in this field, you can't really go wrong by reading it.
I had an 80GB X25-MG2 fail within the first week of use (by "fail" I mean a nearly complete irrecoverable loss of data--most probably related to a faulty controller rather than flash chips) . The replacement I got had been chugging along perfectly for a couple of years. I've never had any problems with a Vertex 2 120 drive that I also have.
Both drives had a pretty high read/write usage ratio, though. And most of the rewriting taking place was small in volume. I ordered a Vertex 3 drive last week, and I intend to sync its contents with a magnetic drive in the same system a few times a day, just like I have been doing with the other two drives. So all in all, besides the first Intel drive being a fluke, my experience was quite positive.
http://cloudflare.com includes a real anycasted DNS service for free (there also a bunch of other niceties which you can turn off, if you really want). All the other anycast providers cost $$-$$$ (let me know if you know otherwise, guys).
They don't have an API for users yet, so you'll need to do a bit of scraping/coding if you want to automate things for a dynamic DNS setup. Otherwise, I'm really happy with their service and recommend it wholeheartedly for any kind of VS or simple cloud setup.
Having said that, my previous choices for free DNS were NearlyFreeSpeech.net (which isn't free anymore), and the built-in (free) DNS service offered by Answerable.com for registered domains.
Under normal circumstances, one would need an expert witness to authenticate the signature, but in several jurisdictions which enacted digital signature laws statues, that may not be necessary depending on the evidentiary status of e-signatures.
I have read the recent draft of the "Big Data" book by the author, which describes the architecture that the article discusses in better detail. Honestly, if you are a beginning practitioner in this field, you can't really go wrong by reading it.