I think this is probably a positive development as far as we're concerned. Basically, the Panda update penalises sites that feature tons of badly-spun / duplicate content and in particular sites which (like Ezinearticles) are awash with tons of blatant advertising. (Yeah, I know advertising is the reason we're doing it, but not at the expense of readability.)
I've always felt very uncomfortable with the "Ezine" approach. I hated the idea of having to churn out gallons of low quality material just to chase backlinks. I'd much rather spend time creating real, informative, readable content.
I only stumbled across Crashed's thread a couple of days ago, but I love the approach he's taking. His focus on Social Interaction rather than bombastic SEO tactics is one I feel much more comfortable with.
To my mind, the Panda update is indicative of the way things are going, and these developments are going to massively favour those of us who adopt the "content rich", "reader-oriented" approach....
As for the guys who hate writing original content from scratch, there's nothing wrong (in my opinion) with taking PLR content or 'spun' articles and just spending 5 minutes giving them a quick cosmetic makeover. Change a few words. Rewrite a couple of paragraphs. Throw in a bit of humour. Stamp your personality on it. It's not that difficult and it needn't take you more than a few minutes to personalise even the most cliched of articles. Your readers will view your site as more 'human' and therefore more worthy of their time, and as a bonus it should get you over any new obstacles Google throws in your path.
As I said, I only discovered Crashed's thread a couple of days ago so I haven't been participating (yet), but I intend to devote some SERIOUS time to it over the next few days and will set up a site so I can follow along and check my results against everyone else's. It is without doubt one of the most inspiring threads I've seen on here.