In the first case, a country selector allows a user to select a country as a component of their shipping address, a user profile, etc. The input method described in the aforementioned article suits that case decently; however, it's not immediately intuitive that a user can access some of its touted conveniences (such as the selection of a country by its short name), and in most cases, a user will not frequently return to the same country input field (i.e. they'll set up a saved shipping address ONCE, or set their home country on a social profile ONCE) which removes the possible avenue of training the user to expect the pattern.
In this case, the best possible user experience can be given by leveraging geo-location (either by using the JS API, or any of the myriad IP-based solutions) and making intelligent suggestions to the user. For example: If I'm a user, and I am required to enter my shipping information (including country) on a checkout page, the page's best GUESS as to where I am should be displayed first, and the user should be allowed to change that assumption quickly. For example, you might show the user a drop-down box with the page's best guess selected by the default, surrounded by nearby countries (depending upon geo-location accuracy). Secondly, flag icons actually have quite a bit of value -- many people think visually, first, and will be looking for their flag's colors. Even if the icons are minuscule, they're still incredibly helpful.
The second use case which I want to present is that in which a company (such as Range Rover) presents a page allowing you to select which localized version of their site you wish to visit. In Range Rover's case, this is a massive list of countries, with their respective flags. Let's be honest: part of the reason this page exists for most companies is because they wish to demonstrate how significant their global reach is, or the expenditure required to translate the site. On Range Rover's site, the US (my homeland) is buried deep on the bottom left-hand side -- to make this more usable, they could leverage the same geo-location technique discussed above, and simply provide visual differentiation between my home country, and the other countries! Everyone's goals are achieved here; usability is increased, the "global" feeling is imparted, and the business douches who insisted upon a massive list of countries in the first place are sated!
The guys who wrote this article don't understand what's possible with current technology, and therefore cannot successfully design for it.