As a member of Virginia Anti-terrorists Anonymous, I've already cracked this code and alerted the proper authorities about this dangerous "Anonymous" group Slashdot.
However, sometimes I really think that only stupid paranoids think that there is a secret society trying to get them. I mean, people in general are too lazy to act en-masse' to disrupt things if they are comfortable. Of course, if you are creating misery and death for a group, then by all means worry. But these people are simply clutching at straws...
Fortunately, I spend so much time infiltrating these Anonymous groups and cracking their secret codes, that I can usually suppress these sort of thoughts to the back of my mind. Well, now it's time for me to go back to investigating the 4chan terrorist network.
...In the USA, much health care is funded by insurance companies that essentially serve the function of averaging medical expenditure among a group of people....
The one goal of a private enterprise, including an insurance company, is to maximize profits. It's nice to think that they have other goals or morals, but in the end, nothing they do will go against their pursuit of higher profits. Your post makes it sound as though insurance companies are victims of the health care industry, who are only doing their best to help everyone, and that's a good laugh.
No tax-financed health care system could possibly be worse than what we currently have, and there are plenty of examples of countries in which they are clearly far better than our own.
It's definitely not an April Fools joke. But does this really surprise anyone? They're just going the way of DEC and just about every other Unix vendor. The only ones that are still around and thriving are Sun, IBM, and HP. But those too are slowly dying the old Unix death, done in by Linux I suppose.
When I was younger, I could have only dreamed of having one of these venerable Unix systems. But now that they're finally cheap and I can afford them, Linux now makes them seem very outdated and proprietary in nature. Kind of a sad thing to see old dreams die, but in this case I think it's also a step forward.
It's always seemed like such a shame to see old well-designed machines built around Unix (rather than just generic PC's) become a thing of the past, though. Good quality hardware and a machine that looked and ran like it meant business, with fast disks and lots of RAM...:-)
Hey numbnuts (it's funny because your name is plasticsquirrel), I wasn't flaming tube amps. I have a tube amp. What I was trying to convey is that if you want a clean sound from guitar to ear, you would use a solid-state amp with no effects.
In the context of this article, we're assuming that signal artifacts are "lower quality" (as the parent of my original post implied).
The point of my post is that as guitarists, we like the artifacts that effects and tube amps introduce, and we have specific intentions when we use them. Which is completely different from MP3 listeners who prefer the artifacts introduced by MP3 compression. Hence, a counter-argument to the parent post.
Clean tone is just tone that isn't clipped by overdriven tubes or something meant to emulate overdriven tube distortion. "Cleanness" doesn't simply refer to how linear the amplification is. No solid state or tube guitar amps amplify linearly, because they all have EQ stages in them that drastically change the frequency response. The only way to get somewhat linear amplification of a guitar signal, is to plug into a mixer, and then (ironically) you still need to deal with potentially terrible sounding distortion if the signal is clipped at some point.
That's a little different. With guitars, THE ARTISTS add effects because the basic sound can be unexciting. Distortion/overdrive doesn't produce a high-quality, clean tone... but we don't want a clean tone. Likewise, we don't want the clean tone of a solid-state amp. We know what we're doing.
With MP3s, it's THE LISTENERS that don't want the sound that the artist intended. Because they're dumb motherfuckers!
Distortion/overdrive doesn't produce a high quality clean tone??? You've got to be kidding me. All great clean guitar tube amplifiers (like a Fender, Victoria, or Vox) distort the signal to some degree, regardless of whether the tubes are actually being overdriven. That's why a clean solid-state amp never sounds as good as a great clean tube amp.
If solid state amp manufacturers were able to replicate the exact way that vacuum tubes amplify and distort, tube amps wouldn't be at such a premium, and every guitarist wouldn't either want or use one. Every year guitar equipment manufacturers like Line6 and Roland/Boss come out with new amplifiers, effects processors, digital pedals, and analog pedals trying to reach the tube sound. After over 30 years of trying, they haven't gotten there yet, and tube amps are still the standard even for the cleanest jazz tones.
For slashdotters who aren't tuned into the music world, tubes still are the standard for guitar amps, used by all great guitarists to get their tones (Metallica, Green Day, any notable band you can think of). Big Marshall, Mesa Boogie, etc. amps you see at concerts all use ancient vacuum tube technology and tubes manufactured in Eastern Europe or Asia.
Linux.org hasn't even had a new site design in the last 10 years. I remember going to that site probably around 1997 or 1998 when I was first trying out Linux, and seeing it exactly as it looks today (old-looking, plain, disorganized). It has that boring 90's beige box sort of a look and feel to it that's an immediate turn-off.
Linux has always deserved more enticing and more helpful sites than linux.org and linux.com.
To go one step further, this is the way things naturally worked out for the PS1 as well. By the end of the 90's, early PS1 games almost looked like they were developed for a different console altogether. Compare Battle Arena Toshinden to Tekken 3, or Twisted Metal to Vigilante 8, for instance. Developers became so good at milking all the power they could out of a 33MHz CPU and 2MB of RAM.
The results of developers becoming better and better and programming these systems are truly impressive. Of course, the only thing that kills these systems off is the next one in line. I'm sure we would have even more amazing Square RPG's today, for instance, if we were limited to the 32-bit PS1, and developers had to rely more on gameplay and innovation.
Sony is just going with the usual plan of not babying the developers too much. It will help their console mature in age too, just like it did with the last two.
That's a problem in the U.S. because the FDA won't allow it -- it's illegal here. If it were possible (and the federal government weren't in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry), then this would be happening now. People do cross over into Canada and Mexico now to buy cheaper medication, but they can't resell it.
The embargo is only between the U.S. and Cuba. They no doubt buy from another country, and there's no real reason Microsoft would want to lose them as customers. Corporations aren't really moral entities with benevolent scruples about freedom of the press, good vs. evil, etc.
Looking at the record of foreign policy, privacy, and civil liberties in this country, we also have to ask ourselves if we really have the moral high ground to make judgments about other countries like this, as well. When was the last time Cuba started an international conflict? The expression "Physician, heal thyself" springs to mind.
"But a ruler who reigns humanely and takes care of the people is to be obeyed strictly, for the benevolence of his dominion shows that he has been mandated by heaven."
What Confucius is saying is that when people see leaders who are acting out of goodness and humanity, they should obey them because they are doing good for the people and for their kingdom. Note that none of this departs from the person's own judgments, though. If a person sees a ruler who is not acting out of benevolence, then none of this may apply. It's always at the discretion of the person and their best judgment. After all, who decides if a ruler is benevolent and humane? Ultimately, every person does. This is why Confucians cultivate awareness and become knowledgeable, so they can make informed judgments about their own thoughts and actions.
Rulers who are acting out of benevolence and wisdom are said to have the mandate of heaven because their actions are essentially natural and good. It's an ancient expression that reflects pre-Confucian times, and is tied in with the concept of the ideal ruler, who is not just an ordinary person, but a sage. Someone who does not display this benevolence, wisdom, essential goodness and naturalness, etc. does not have the mandate of heaven, and so nothing associated with it need apply because they are nothing beyond ordinary people.
I'm going to go out on a limb to say that you've never actually read the Four Books of classical Confucianism mandated by the imperial examinations. Or are familiar with the exact Daoist influences on government either.
Confucius taught that the first steps to being successful were to 1.) cultivate essential goodness and humanity 2.) study one's own actions as well as history and literature.
Leaving virtue without proper cultivation; not thoroughly discussing what is learned; not being able to move towards righteousness of which a knowledge is gained; and not being able to change what is not good: these are the things that worry me.
There is nothing about conformance or dogmatism in the classical works of Confucianism. In fact, from The Great Learning, the most important Confucian book on governance, we can see that the Confucian view on governance is rooted in sincere study.
The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the Kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.
It's a tragedy that something so noble has been smeared so much in the West, where everyone professes to "know" that Confucianism was responsible for any and all backwardness in imperial China. Confucianism has absolutely nothing to do with controlling others, and everything to do with cultivating honesty, responsibility, and broad knowledge. The fundamental approach to Confucian governance is that people ought to regulate themselves, and a harmonious society would result from that. Confucius said nothing about people needing to maintain their positions in society, or being subservient to others. According to classical Confucianism, all laws were ultimately a reflection of failure on the part of individuals.
Unfortunately uninformed people such as yourself take Confucianism to simply be the catch-all social structure of China, responsible for all forms of rigid hierarchical control (or as the "bad" school of thought relative to Daoism). In reality, the rigid social structure of imperial China reflects a Chinese culture that pre-dates both Confucianism and Daoism, and does not belong any one philosophy or system of governance. But if one had to be assigned to it, they most accurately reflect the legalism of the Qin dynasty.
I generally agree, but frankly, OpenOffice.org Writer is still not a drop-in replacement for MS Word if you're doing anything non-trivial. And I've worked on OpenOffice.org Writer -- it has a couple of advantages and a bunch of glaring omissions even today. I haven't tried Word in Wine, but if it's made such strides, then great.
If you're doing anything non-trivial, why would you be working in Word to begin with? Word is just a little WYSIWYG word processor for student papers and unimportant documents. It's not capable of real typesetting or controlled document structure. For anything serious, more specialized software is absolutely necessary.
You would think that Governments--who exist to serve the people...
I think this is where it starts going wrong. Government institutions are basically working in their own self interest, and the only thing that makes government in check is the pressure put on it by people.
When legislators are looking over bills, in the back of their minds, there is the question, "Will this help me get elected again?" If it doesn't give them money or support, it's a bad move for them politically. How can any good government exist in such a system, except through constant pressure from voters?
And you give an example of how students should program, in C++? That's is the exact sort of language a student should not be learning first -- an overly-complicated, inconsistent hybrid language with a terrible object system. Say what you will about Java, but it's fairly consistent, portable, and closer to a pure OO language.
But personally, I'd rather see introductory programming courses taught in Python or Scheme. Those languages are small enough that students can focus on program design without being encumbered by syntax and semantics.
There's four borders in this country. Pick one and head out. We don't need whiners like you in a small mess like this. Real Americans can take a look around, and say "I've seen worse." and rebuild. If you're not interested in that, move.
signed:
Real American.
Translation: "People who complain or criticize the current state of affairs are whiners. 'Real Americans' are people who agree with me that things aren't so bad. And if you criticize the country or think that things are bad here, then you should leave."
Anyone care to explain how this got modded +5 insightful?
Why should the rest of society fund an entire institution entirely for the benefit of teachers?
And on that note, why should people buy from businesses that allow unions, since the unions obviously aren't working solely in the best interests of management and productivity? Why can't workers just shut up and do as they're told? How could organized labor possibly benefit society when it doesn't exist to help workplace efficiency?
(Off topic again slightly, John Lennon wrote a few songs that seemed to have a distinctly leftist bent, does anyone know if he was actually a socialist or anything similar?)
In the book Lennon in America, written by Geoffrey Giuliano, Lennon commented that the song was "an anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic song, but because it's sugar-coated, it's accepted." Lennon also described it as "virtually the Communist Manifesto".
Probably not a socialist or communist in the traditional sense, but I think he was politically very close to those ideas. Unlike most socialists and communists, I don't think he had clear ideas or plans about actually enacting change.
Actually, I'm curious how this is supposed to work. Aside from people always finding something to do, I really can't see why we couldn't be sitting by the pool. I mean, obviously, work still needs to be done. But if we get more efficient at that (e.g. by building machines that then do the work with fewer human hours involved), we _should_, on average, have more free time for a given level of prosperity, right?
Here's the reason you and I won't be sitting by the pool anytime soon: you won't get the money generated by automation. Businesses will, and the more profit is made and the more automation goes into it, the more businesses grow, and the more the people on the top will keep.
A more likely scenario of automation: the rich get richer, and everyone else is marginalized. People with money invest in, and run businesses that automate everything. The rest of society does the tasks that humans still need to do, making little in comparison.
Ubuntu with Gnome runs fine on 512MB. My main system is an Athlon 2500 with 512MB RAM, and it runs Ubuntu with Gnome and all the flashy, wobbly effects with fairly good performance.
I think people forget that Ubuntu is a tuned, fast distro. The lagging I notice just comes from Flash and Javascript on websites, not from the actual OS.
Standard Unix Shell?
on
Bash Cookbook
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
To truly master a Unix environment, you need to know a shell, and Bash is easily the most popular of them.
Bash is a fine shell, but it's certainly not the standard on Unixen today. Most versions of Unix still have the Korn/Posix Shell as the most common shell. This is certainly true in Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX. The BSD's typically don't use Bash, and favor more traditional, light-weight shells. However, some versions may package Bash in their distributions.
Bash is really only the common default shell on Linux, from what I have seen. Things learned for Bash have similar syntax in other shells, but teaching newbies that Bash is the standard shell is a very bad, Linux-centric idea that leads to Bash-isms (people trying to use Bash-specific features in other shells).
What should we have done when the Taliban didn't hand Osama over? The obvious thing -- send in special forces to assassinate him. Why is our first reaction to clumsily overthrow the entire government of the country? The Taliban weren't terrorists, just a corrupt, fundamentalist regime (like the Bush administration). The Taliban couldn't have handed us Osama even if they wanted to.
Slashdot Mirror
As a member of Virginia Anti-terrorists Anonymous, I've already cracked this code and alerted the proper authorities about this dangerous "Anonymous" group Slashdot.
However, sometimes I really think that only stupid paranoids think that there is a secret society trying to get them. I mean, people in general are too lazy to act en-masse' to disrupt things if they are comfortable. Of course, if you are creating misery and death for a group, then by all means worry. But these people are simply clutching at straws...
Fortunately, I spend so much time infiltrating these Anonymous groups and cracking their secret codes, that I can usually suppress these sort of thoughts to the back of my mind. Well, now it's time for me to go back to investigating the 4chan terrorist network.
...In the USA, much health care is funded by insurance companies that essentially serve the function of averaging medical expenditure among a group of people....
The one goal of a private enterprise, including an insurance company, is to maximize profits. It's nice to think that they have other goals or morals, but in the end, nothing they do will go against their pursuit of higher profits. Your post makes it sound as though insurance companies are victims of the health care industry, who are only doing their best to help everyone, and that's a good laugh.
No tax-financed health care system could possibly be worse than what we currently have, and there are plenty of examples of countries in which they are clearly far better than our own.
It's definitely not an April Fools joke. But does this really surprise anyone? They're just going the way of DEC and just about every other Unix vendor. The only ones that are still around and thriving are Sun, IBM, and HP. But those too are slowly dying the old Unix death, done in by Linux I suppose.
:-)
When I was younger, I could have only dreamed of having one of these venerable Unix systems. But now that they're finally cheap and I can afford them, Linux now makes them seem very outdated and proprietary in nature. Kind of a sad thing to see old dreams die, but in this case I think it's also a step forward.
It's always seemed like such a shame to see old well-designed machines built around Unix (rather than just generic PC's) become a thing of the past, though. Good quality hardware and a machine that looked and ran like it meant business, with fast disks and lots of RAM...
Hey numbnuts (it's funny because your name is plasticsquirrel), I wasn't flaming tube amps. I have a tube amp. What I was trying to convey is that if you want a clean sound from guitar to ear, you would use a solid-state amp with no effects.
In the context of this article, we're assuming that signal artifacts are "lower quality" (as the parent of my original post implied).
The point of my post is that as guitarists, we like the artifacts that effects and tube amps introduce, and we have specific intentions when we use them. Which is completely different from MP3 listeners who prefer the artifacts introduced by MP3 compression. Hence, a counter-argument to the parent post.
Clean tone is just tone that isn't clipped by overdriven tubes or something meant to emulate overdriven tube distortion. "Cleanness" doesn't simply refer to how linear the amplification is. No solid state or tube guitar amps amplify linearly, because they all have EQ stages in them that drastically change the frequency response. The only way to get somewhat linear amplification of a guitar signal, is to plug into a mixer, and then (ironically) you still need to deal with potentially terrible sounding distortion if the signal is clipped at some point.
That's a little different. With guitars, THE ARTISTS add effects because the basic sound can be unexciting. Distortion/overdrive doesn't produce a high-quality, clean tone... but we don't want a clean tone. Likewise, we don't want the clean tone of a solid-state amp. We know what we're doing.
With MP3s, it's THE LISTENERS that don't want the sound that the artist intended. Because they're dumb motherfuckers!
Distortion/overdrive doesn't produce a high quality clean tone??? You've got to be kidding me. All great clean guitar tube amplifiers (like a Fender, Victoria, or Vox) distort the signal to some degree, regardless of whether the tubes are actually being overdriven. That's why a clean solid-state amp never sounds as good as a great clean tube amp.
If solid state amp manufacturers were able to replicate the exact way that vacuum tubes amplify and distort, tube amps wouldn't be at such a premium, and every guitarist wouldn't either want or use one. Every year guitar equipment manufacturers like Line6 and Roland/Boss come out with new amplifiers, effects processors, digital pedals, and analog pedals trying to reach the tube sound. After over 30 years of trying, they haven't gotten there yet, and tube amps are still the standard even for the cleanest jazz tones.
For slashdotters who aren't tuned into the music world, tubes still are the standard for guitar amps, used by all great guitarists to get their tones (Metallica, Green Day, any notable band you can think of). Big Marshall, Mesa Boogie, etc. amps you see at concerts all use ancient vacuum tube technology and tubes manufactured in Eastern Europe or Asia.
Linux.org hasn't even had a new site design in the last 10 years. I remember going to that site probably around 1997 or 1998 when I was first trying out Linux, and seeing it exactly as it looks today (old-looking, plain, disorganized). It has that boring 90's beige box sort of a look and feel to it that's an immediate turn-off.
Linux has always deserved more enticing and more helpful sites than linux.org and linux.com.
To go one step further, this is the way things naturally worked out for the PS1 as well. By the end of the 90's, early PS1 games almost looked like they were developed for a different console altogether. Compare Battle Arena Toshinden to Tekken 3, or Twisted Metal to Vigilante 8, for instance. Developers became so good at milking all the power they could out of a 33MHz CPU and 2MB of RAM.
The results of developers becoming better and better and programming these systems are truly impressive. Of course, the only thing that kills these systems off is the next one in line. I'm sure we would have even more amazing Square RPG's today, for instance, if we were limited to the 32-bit PS1, and developers had to rely more on gameplay and innovation.
Sony is just going with the usual plan of not babying the developers too much. It will help their console mature in age too, just like it did with the last two.
That's a problem in the U.S. because the FDA won't allow it -- it's illegal here. If it were possible (and the federal government weren't in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry), then this would be happening now. People do cross over into Canada and Mexico now to buy cheaper medication, but they can't resell it.
The embargo is only between the U.S. and Cuba. They no doubt buy from another country, and there's no real reason Microsoft would want to lose them as customers. Corporations aren't really moral entities with benevolent scruples about freedom of the press, good vs. evil, etc.
Looking at the record of foreign policy, privacy, and civil liberties in this country, we also have to ask ourselves if we really have the moral high ground to make judgments about other countries like this, as well. When was the last time Cuba started an international conflict? The expression "Physician, heal thyself" springs to mind.
What of the Confucian concept of loyalty and the Mandate of Heaven? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism#Loyalty
"But a ruler who reigns humanely and takes care of the people is to be obeyed strictly, for the benevolence of his dominion shows that he has been mandated by heaven."
What Confucius is saying is that when people see leaders who are acting out of goodness and humanity, they should obey them because they are doing good for the people and for their kingdom. Note that none of this departs from the person's own judgments, though. If a person sees a ruler who is not acting out of benevolence, then none of this may apply. It's always at the discretion of the person and their best judgment. After all, who decides if a ruler is benevolent and humane? Ultimately, every person does. This is why Confucians cultivate awareness and become knowledgeable, so they can make informed judgments about their own thoughts and actions.
Rulers who are acting out of benevolence and wisdom are said to have the mandate of heaven because their actions are essentially natural and good. It's an ancient expression that reflects pre-Confucian times, and is tied in with the concept of the ideal ruler, who is not just an ordinary person, but a sage. Someone who does not display this benevolence, wisdom, essential goodness and naturalness, etc. does not have the mandate of heaven, and so nothing associated with it need apply because they are nothing beyond ordinary people.
I'm going to go out on a limb to say that you've never actually read the Four Books of classical Confucianism mandated by the imperial examinations. Or are familiar with the exact Daoist influences on government either.
Confucius taught that the first steps to being successful were to 1.) cultivate essential goodness and humanity 2.) study one's own actions as well as history and literature.
There is nothing about conformance or dogmatism in the classical works of Confucianism. In fact, from The Great Learning, the most important Confucian book on governance, we can see that the Confucian view on governance is rooted in sincere study.
It's a tragedy that something so noble has been smeared so much in the West, where everyone professes to "know" that Confucianism was responsible for any and all backwardness in imperial China. Confucianism has absolutely nothing to do with controlling others, and everything to do with cultivating honesty, responsibility, and broad knowledge. The fundamental approach to Confucian governance is that people ought to regulate themselves, and a harmonious society would result from that. Confucius said nothing about people needing to maintain their positions in society, or being subservient to others. According to classical Confucianism, all laws were ultimately a reflection of failure on the part of individuals.
Unfortunately uninformed people such as yourself take Confucianism to simply be the catch-all social structure of China, responsible for all forms of rigid hierarchical control (or as the "bad" school of thought relative to Daoism). In reality, the rigid social structure of imperial China reflects a Chinese culture that pre-dates both Confucianism and Daoism, and does not belong any one philosophy or system of governance. But if one had to be assigned to it, they most accurately reflect the legalism of the Qin dynasty.
"A democratic, earth-caring nation?" What country are you talking about, again?
I generally agree, but frankly, OpenOffice.org Writer is still not a drop-in replacement for MS Word if you're doing anything non-trivial. And I've worked on OpenOffice.org Writer -- it has a couple of advantages and a bunch of glaring omissions even today. I haven't tried Word in Wine, but if it's made such strides, then great.
If you're doing anything non-trivial, why would you be working in Word to begin with? Word is just a little WYSIWYG word processor for student papers and unimportant documents. It's not capable of real typesetting or controlled document structure. For anything serious, more specialized software is absolutely necessary.
You would think that Governments--who exist to serve the people...
I think this is where it starts going wrong. Government institutions are basically working in their own self interest, and the only thing that makes government in check is the pressure put on it by people.
When legislators are looking over bills, in the back of their minds, there is the question, "Will this help me get elected again?" If it doesn't give them money or support, it's a bad move for them politically. How can any good government exist in such a system, except through constant pressure from voters?
And you give an example of how students should program, in C++? That's is the exact sort of language a student should not be learning first -- an overly-complicated, inconsistent hybrid language with a terrible object system. Say what you will about Java, but it's fairly consistent, portable, and closer to a pure OO language.
But personally, I'd rather see introductory programming courses taught in Python or Scheme. Those languages are small enough that students can focus on program design without being encumbered by syntax and semantics.
"rm -rf knights"
rm: cannot remove `knights': No such file or directory
Ummm.....
Correction: socialism for the rich, and for big business. The rest of us just get a kick in the teeth and a bill.
... it's being commercialized. Leave it to a U.S. institution to be concerned with profiting from a possible cure for HIV.
Dear Ralph:
There's four borders in this country. Pick one and head out. We don't need whiners like you in a small mess like this. Real Americans can take a look around, and say "I've seen worse." and rebuild. If you're not interested in that, move.
signed:
Real American.
Translation: "People who complain or criticize the current state of affairs are whiners. 'Real Americans' are people who agree with me that things aren't so bad. And if you criticize the country or think that things are bad here, then you should leave."
Anyone care to explain how this got modded +5 insightful?
Why should the rest of society fund an entire institution entirely for the benefit of teachers?
And on that note, why should people buy from businesses that allow unions, since the unions obviously aren't working solely in the best interests of management and productivity? Why can't workers just shut up and do as they're told? How could organized labor possibly benefit society when it doesn't exist to help workplace efficiency?
(Off topic again slightly, John Lennon wrote a few songs that seemed to have a distinctly leftist bent, does anyone know if he was actually a socialist or anything similar?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagine_(song)
Probably not a socialist or communist in the traditional sense, but I think he was politically very close to those ideas. Unlike most socialists and communists, I don't think he had clear ideas or plans about actually enacting change.
Actually, I'm curious how this is supposed to work. Aside from people always finding something to do, I really can't see why we couldn't be sitting by the pool. I mean, obviously, work still needs to be done. But if we get more efficient at that (e.g. by building machines that then do the work with fewer human hours involved), we _should_, on average, have more free time for a given level of prosperity, right?
Here's the reason you and I won't be sitting by the pool anytime soon: you won't get the money generated by automation. Businesses will, and the more profit is made and the more automation goes into it, the more businesses grow, and the more the people on the top will keep.
A more likely scenario of automation: the rich get richer, and everyone else is marginalized. People with money invest in, and run businesses that automate everything. The rest of society does the tasks that humans still need to do, making little in comparison.
Ubuntu with Gnome runs fine on 512MB. My main system is an Athlon 2500 with 512MB RAM, and it runs Ubuntu with Gnome and all the flashy, wobbly effects with fairly good performance.
I think people forget that Ubuntu is a tuned, fast distro. The lagging I notice just comes from Flash and Javascript on websites, not from the actual OS.
Bash is a fine shell, but it's certainly not the standard on Unixen today. Most versions of Unix still have the Korn/Posix Shell as the most common shell. This is certainly true in Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX. The BSD's typically don't use Bash, and favor more traditional, light-weight shells. However, some versions may package Bash in their distributions.
Bash is really only the common default shell on Linux, from what I have seen. Things learned for Bash have similar syntax in other shells, but teaching newbies that Bash is the standard shell is a very bad, Linux-centric idea that leads to Bash-isms (people trying to use Bash-specific features in other shells).
What should we have done when the Taliban didn't hand Osama over? The obvious thing -- send in special forces to assassinate him. Why is our first reaction to clumsily overthrow the entire government of the country? The Taliban weren't terrorists, just a corrupt, fundamentalist regime (like the Bush administration). The Taliban couldn't have handed us Osama even if they wanted to.