Okay well lets step back a bit.  What about implementing dan's idea of persistent data-bag-ish node storage as a separate API and putting nice encryption sauce and stuff on it just to make a useful feature.  Then we don't talk about deprecating normal attributes until people have already migrated to the new hotness anyway?  If its successful then the community should point out to us when and if normal attrs are no longer a useful thing.

Then we stop having this debate about killing normal mode off, and start looking at if the proposed alternative stands on its own merits or not.