Why heh'ing at 4K intros though?
Piracy fueling them and making stronger multinational corporations, and killing small companies.
Absolutely, I am sure multinational corporations have the technology and ability to reduce piracy against their software especially in these days but IMO it is a matter of benefits outweighing the costs and a dirty opportunity that could made use of to stay holding the market.

If they are going to reduce piracy against their software, more and more people may start going to free and open source alternatives which is harder on these multinational companies than just using pirated software. At least pirated software although it does not have direct returns to the software producer it can still guarantee popularity in the market for that producer while smaller companies trying to compete at "competitive prices" with these giants are crushed.

I am sure, provided the economical situation in Lebanon, open source software use can flourish and become really popular here(including companies that would provide support, technical assistance and application development on new platforms such as Linux) if an only if piracy was able to be reduced.

And if you ask know that software suits such as Adobe CS and Windows will be really demanded yet their prices are high you are wrong, once these companies see that demand on their products is becoming lower and that they are about to lose the market they would automatically lower their prices. And thus you can realize how open source and free software can not only contribute as a free alternative yet also a force that can cause a balance in the market, exactly in contrast to what pirated software is doing.

If you think on the level of free and open software's reliability and features (that some people argue it lacks against commercial software), once developers and organizations that develop open source software notice the demand they would surely respond by taking the user's need into consideration. Everything can be done by programmers and developers of open source software on the level of technology and brains, never ever try to think that software engineers and computer scientists at commercial companies may be smarter or more knowledgeable than those enthusiastic and noble open source developers.

The thing is that they are just not seeing any real requests and demand from people for features that people would like to add or have and this is why users should at least try using open source alternatives, see what they like dislike and give feedback as simple as that. But most people are directly driven by marketing, they see a Windows 7 add somewhere, they like it then ask for the price, they find the price heavy on them so they go and buy a pirated copy as simple as that. Ignorance has reached a stage where when you ask some people: what computer do you have? They say Windows. And many many people who are educated, university graduates, they say excel when they mean a spreadsheet, power point when they mean a slideshow presentation and word when they mean a text document.

IMO piracy has contributed positively to companies like Microsoft, at least it kept them in control of the market and made their products get into the blood of every computer user, regardless of the economical or financial situation of a country or region. I bet if there was no piracy in Lebanon, many people wont even be even using a PC so that they wont pay (those who just buy a PC to spend time on facebooook and play solitaire all day long).
Ayman, the corporations you speak of have established products, there wont be drastic price drop at any point in time unless a competitor comes forth.

You will not easily head over to a design firm, have a quick chitchat with the CEO and expect him to drop the CS Suite.

And how is it that you guys are not blaming universities for not promoting open source?

Food for thought.
Ayman, the corporations you speak of have established products, there wont be drastic price drop at any point in time unless a competitor comes forth.

You will not easily head over to a design firm, have a quick chitchat with the CEO and expect him to drop the CS Suite.

And how is it that you guys are not blaming universities for not promoting open source?

Food for thought.
I understand your point, CEOs here are really stubborn people and many never go with any person's advice even if it was right as long as one is not higher as them in rank, I have experienced that, and surely this is part of the problem but more education should be able to deal with that in the long run and here comes the role on universities that are supposed to prepare the CEOs and IT managers of the future, but they simply aren't doing anything about it, they just enjoy buying licenses (the case of our uni). In order to have change, we need collaboration between universities, organizations and people something that never works here because even the classmates of the same class fail to collaborate.
Usually it is the other way around. When it comes to technology, universities seem to be 5-10 years behind, while the industry sets the standards, requirements and dispatch curriculum suggestions to universities.
Case in point: intel and parallelism.

As for the point about CEOs, you are assuming your points you tried to convey are true, but credibility goes to the CEO nevertheless (taking into account risks, expenses, ROI, ...) So don't expect being right to cause instantaneous change.

As for arguments regarding Lebanon, they're inconsequential as Lebanon is really a small country. A lot of geeks here are actually geeks because they had access to advanced programs that are available through pirating.

I used to play with Visual Studio, 3DS Max, Office (Geeked with Excel..), Photoshop...
As the situation stood, I am happy I was given the opportunity and won't like taking it away from budding people.

There are really two options, open source and piracy.. You being right about open source makes you righteous. Just accept that some people don't care about being so, and have some other pragmatic priorities.
Many topics:

1- Open source might not necessarily be always the case to go. It would cost a company a lot to shift from CS4 to GIMP, Windows to Ubuntu, and such. As a matter of fact, they may cut cost on licenses, but won't necessarily know how to operate the new software.

2- The role of universities in education and promotion is undeniable, when it comes to open source. But it is also our ('tech savvy people') to spread the knowledge. It could start with easy everyday apps, don't need to be high tech. VLC, Firefox, GIMP, Blender, ... These are a good start. Also getting people to know that these apps are free, not because they're less performant, but because they're meant to be shared.

3- The debate between coporate research vs academic research is exciting, but is also a bit off topic here.
1- Open source might not necessarily be always the case to go. It would cost a company a lot to shift from CS4 to GIMP, Windows to Ubuntu, and such. As a matter of fact, they may cut cost on licenses, but won't necessarily know how to operate the new software.
Agree, but just as they did learn how to use windows first of all they can learn, change does not have to be direct replacement, it could start with just one or 2 PCs with Ubuntu for example as part of a whole office with like 15 PCs, different employees can be assigned to test and try to make out their way on the new system and see if their type of work can be done on a different system for like once or twice a week for each employee, that way they would be gradually learning and testing whether a shift is as useful as it seems. Also most of the software like open office, gimp and vlc can be installed on windows systems, install it for them and assign to them some time( as part of their work) to test how much the new alternative software is different than what they are working on. Gradual change can always be managed in one way or another IMO. This would be a low cost investment for the long run in case it works out it would be great, if not cool but at least they tried and are aware of any alternatives, I am always talking about the long run, such changes can never be done between a day and night of course.
2- The role of universities in education and promotion is undeniable, when it comes to open source. But it is also our ('tech savvy people') to spread the knowledge. It could start with easy everyday apps, don't need to be high tech. VLC, Firefox, GIMP, Blender, ... These are a good start. Also getting people to know that these apps are free, not because they're less performant, but because they're meant to be shared.
Tried that but it didn't even work with some people because some don't even know that software like MS Windows is for prices that are higher than the 5000L.L. they are used to, some people are ignorant to a level that they think Windows is an almost free operating system and don't even know anything about something called piracy, such people should be prohibited from using a PC IMO(of course illogical an can never happen though).
guys its no logic if your making money through cracked softwares and in my religion its already forbidden i only use cracked softwares for testing and learning (college) i wont ever make money from cracked softwares
Aj_BlaZ wroteguys its no logic if your making money through cracked softwares and in my religion its already forbidden i only use cracked softwares for testing and learning (college) i wont ever make money from cracked softwares
If you could, you would... :)
Removed religious talk between Aj_Blaz and Kassem.