I've been a mostly daily reader since '98-99 or so. I don't post or comment much, but I've been with you most of the time. Just want to say thanks.

This "Apple is a business" argument is stupid. That's like saying, "The mafia is a business". Yes, it's true. But the argument doesn't address the behavior. As a society, we don't allow mafia type businesses with their murder and extortion. We don't have to allow Apple's closed garden. Business so often means "amoral amassing of profit". Where it could, and to my mind should be, an engine for providing the financing to do good works. Why people think that because an organization is a "business" that they should be free from moral constraints, is beyond me.

Actually, the material takes dyes very easily. Suzanne's work is dyed and protected from microbial degradation by Kakishiburi which is aged, fermented juice of green persimmons, and a traditional Japanese process.

My mom uses Skype to video chat with my aunt in Ecuador, and I'd really like to get her an open source/open protocol alternative. I have my own Linode VPS I could use for SIP, Jingle, or XMPP server, but I don't know a) what server b) what cross platform win/linux/mac clients are skype equivalents in ease of use and video quality. Can someone recommend the awesomest open source Skype alternative? I'd have thought video chat would be built into pidgin and empathy by now, and on every Ubuntu desktop. Also, where are y'all finding these awesome cheap SIP providers?

IT workers could certainly benefit from strong, rank & file controlled unions, but I think culturally most are not ready for them. Employers have no problem banding together and exploiting every trick to maximize profitability for shareholders. And generally it's the workforce, we the people, who are downsized, mismanaged, have our benefits cut, jobs moved overseas, etc. Without unions of working people, the employers have no counterpoint to their own power (except the government, yeah right).

But most IT people believe the hype that the "free market" should not be interfered with. We, more than trade or unskilled breatheren tend to identify with the employers and internalize their culture. We ignore that workers banding together to improve their barganing position, in no way undermines the "free market" There's a free market for labor too. You're free to negotiate individually with your employer if you want to. But you'd clearly have more barganing power if you cooperated with your co-workers and negotiated together to protect the things that make a real difference in your lives, ie. working conditions, schedules, compensation, benefits, training, etc.

IT workers don't like to think of themselves as workers in the same way as a steel worker is a worker. We think our shit don't stink. We think we're somehow too smart to be members of the working class. But the working class is anyone who doesn't own the "means of production". This sense that we were somehow special was at a peak during the dot com bubble when it was a sellers market for labor, and should have died during the burst and outsourcing epidemic. IT people need to get a clue and realize that by aggregating our labor power, we would have so much more power to protect the things that are important to us, like the net neutrality, privacy, time with our families, patent reform, etc. It's one thing to have EFF out there fighting with whatever staff and budget they can scare up. It would be quite another to have an SEIU size Tech Workers Union wade into some of those debates with a pile of dues cash, and the threat of work stoppage or other on the job actions. Want to take away network neutrality SBC and Comcast? Well then, we can't be bothered to keep your routers patched.

At it's basic level, a union is merely a group of workers aggregating to advance common goals. In practice, trade unions have become big, often corupt bureaucracies. This is where unions get a bad name, well besides employer propaganda (which is huge). The solution to bad unions is rank and file control. Get rid of the bad bureaucrats. It's really that simple. American individualism really reaches it's zenith with IT workers. It's hard to imagine IT folks rare enough to see IT folks cooperating over lunch, much less their livelihoods. I think we're too lame to do it.

I used to be involved in Tech Worker organizing for the old school revolutionary union, the IWW (www.iww.org). That's the union that won the eight hour work day, which we dumb shits have voluntarily abandoned (so we can work 12 hour days, wheeee....) There are many cool strategies that can be tried. One we worked on, but didn't get very far, was a hiring hall for tech workers. It worked much like an employment agency, but everybody was in the union, and had a willingness to support each other's struggles. I've also started a unionized and worker owned web development business. I think workerer ownership is probably the smartest way to organize production so that it meets human needs, not arbitrary stockholder needs. In our business, we had a managment structure that people had to follow, so that the buck stopped with someone. But if that someone was really lame, workers could vote to remove them. We setup our processes how we wanted. We reaped all the profit from our work. We earned a base salary, and then yearly dividends based on what profit the company had made.

There are also all sorts of workplace solidarity actions that can be done even without a formal union. For example I worked at a dot com run by to rich girls with daddy's money. The CEO would lord over the artists, hovering over their shoulders and back seat driving the mouse. "Oh, I think it looks better over there, move it", etc. I asked the designer who got the most of this treatment if she liked it when the CEO did that? She looked at me like a bug in her drink and said, "Hell no". I asked her why she didn't ask the CEO not to do that. She said she was afraid she'd get fired. I said how about if we all agreed that we'd ask the CEO to stop hovering. She said that would make her feel better. So we all asked her to stop when she hovered, and she did. We also set up an "IT Team meeting" where all the peons and middle managers got together to decide how we wanted to run our affairs. For example one big problem was the website updating schedule. Top management would jerk us around constantly with tiny change orders, and we all felt powerless to stop them, until we got together, figured out an appropriate schedule, and informed managment of the change. We had no formal power to do so, but seeing that we were united, management backed down.

Try workplace solidarity on your job. You'll be glad you did. But first we've got to stop pretending that IT workers are somehow immune to the mechanics of the global economy. A little humility and cooperation can go a long way.