Liked this a lot, though it was basically my view already, so I'm decidedly biased.
Interestingly, I don't think he bluntly said the (perhaps) most fundamental part of his position: what the color red looks like is a fact about Mary's brain, not about the color red. This also explains how qualia are essentially incommunicable: I don't have Mary's brain, so I can't really observe what it is like for information to be processed in that brain.
It seems that, in theory, an intelligence capable of reconstructing brains, wiring them into its own consciousness, and running them through stimuli could in fact understand their qualia, though such a procedure may not be meaningfully possible.
Interestingly, I don't think he bluntly said the (perhaps) most fundamental part of his position: what the color red looks like is a fact about Mary's brain, not about the color red. This also explains how qualia are essentially incommunicable: I don't have Mary's brain, so I can't really observe what it is like for information to be processed in that brain.
That doesn't explain why qualia are incommunciable, since others stuff that happens in brains is communicale. We expect Mary to understand everything except qualia.
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1192#more-1192
ADDED: Even if you disagree with ESR's take, and many will, this is the clearest definition I have seen on what qualia is. So it should present a useful starting point, even for those who strongly disagree, to argue from.