Cyberunions Podcast: Episode 55 Quit Your Mumble*ing

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0:30 the Good the Bad and…

Rainy Scotland vs Rainy/Sunny Mexico City
Walton chooses the bad first…Stephen was mugged at knife point and received cuts from the fight and lost his awesome Nokia N900
The good…Stephen’s activism with Mayfirst has led to the organization asking him to attend the World Social Forum on Palestine in Brazil
The important thing is Stephen has to learn Drupal, quickly…it’s a good project to work on

9:54 the Interesting

Walton goes to two conferences Unite political school and to Global Labor Institute summer school
Northern College a leftwing college with an interesting tour
Interaction with activists was a great experience and interesting stories about the Arab Spring and Greece uprising and future of activism
Walton was with people with similar perspective to Cyberunions
The economic game has changed…Porche highly profitable in auto manufacturing but they make more by gambling in the financial markets
Stephen wants capitalists to listen so they can understand their own fucking system….Walton is sick of explaining the capitalist system to capitalists….it’s a short term gain not long term
Stephen comrades from Labornotes attended as well as Cornel Labor program that Stephen read the books of but not taught by

22:24 Walton Sounds Reallly Good Despite the Mumble 😉

We are using Mumble and Stephen quickly had Walton install it right before the show
We have nice people that listen to the show?
The sound quality at time of recording was really good
Stephen gives <sad face> cause the N900 had mumble support
Walton didn’t listen to Stephen and just setup the application by following the startup audio wizard
Best built in recording ability in comparison to skype and jitsi

26:24 For The Win is For The Real

Diablo 3: The Blizzard sweatshop describes a similar economy to For The Win (The Hard Cover or the Free digital copy)
Blizzard has made a market out of buying and selling weapons online with a direct link to paypal accounts
If you sell something in the game you can cash out but you have to pay a 15% tax to Blizzard.net which means they make money off of your sale.
This lessens the dependency on selling the software and instead creates a market that Blizzard makes even more money off
This is exactly what For The Win was talking about building an economy that people who don’t play can make money off of it.
Walton ask will Stephen dive into the game and try to organize the players into a union
Stephen won’t buy the game now but might try it if it becomes free
Mumble is a way to organize since it is used to communicate with players in multi-player games
Crazy when fiction becomes reality…but it is usually the depressing stuff wins in reality
It’d be great to see in the end the players get paid instead of players paying Blizzard