A note -- if you're linking to arXiv, it's better to link to the abstract (<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.1459" rel="nofollow">http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.1459</a>) rather than directly to the PDF. From the abstract, one can easily click through to the PDF; not so the reverse. And the abstract allows one to do things like see different versions of the paper (this one has 34 versions!), search for other things by the same authors, etc.
<p><pre><code> However, Erlang lacks the following:
Instead of using exception handling, Erlang relies on silent
process failure which is supposed to be detected by nonresponse
to messages of other processes.
</code></pre>
Only somewhat true. Sending message to non-existing process will not fail, but there is erlang:monitor/2 API call which allows to deal with such situations.
Here's a three minute pictorial introduction to the actor model:
<a href="http://adit.io/posts/2013-05-15-Locks,-Actors,-And-STM-In-Pictures.html" rel="nofollow">http://adit.io/posts/2013-05-15-Locks,-Actors,-And-STM-In-Pi...</a>