ZFS is Smashing Baby

How is this any different from RAID-6?

there is no ZFS in linux. Only in Solaris and FreeBSD

That isn't correct. There is an implementation using FUSE. This isn't optimal ofcourse, so just as you are probably looking for an in-kernel driver, I am too :)

FUSE isn't really official is it? I was talking about official support

And now in NetBSD

I have a test system running Opensolaris 2008.11 with 8 disks in a raidz2 pool. To test this, I unplugged the power on two of the disks at once(Unlike Sun's marketing dept., we can't justify the destruction of a disk here). The reads paused for about 5 seconds and then resumed without any intervention.

It appears that this bug was fixed between April and November 2008.

Can I just plug in a new drive that's bigger and then have the system even out and also utilize the extra space gained?

If you have 3 x 500GB drives and 1 x 640GB drive, you're missing out on ~140GB of data. It uses only the size of the smallest vdev. However, if you replace every 500GB drive with a 640GB one at a time, it'll resync each disk and then utilise the extra space once all drives are 640GB.

What's the likelihood that a hard drive would implode and short out connectors and/or break traces to create shorts?

Totally acceptable circumstances.

Just more system load per unit of IO, bugs, cant make vdevs part of vdevs.

ZFS is cool, for sure, but its not a be all end all by any stretch. I've been able to break it in Solaris 10u5 where UFS would not break under the same stresses.