🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1995Nov15.105122.19333@cs.rit.edu>, bdm@cs.rit.edu (Brendan
McKay) wrote:

 > All that would be perfectly ok, except that 2.0b2 is NOWHERE NEAR
 > READY for public beta testing.  It has a large number of really obvious
 > bugs.  That's not just a nuisance, it is dangerous.  The third time
 > in the first 15-20 minutes that my Mac froze and I needed to reboot,
 > half the files on my desktop went missing.  I had to spend the best
 > part of a day fetching a disk utility from a friend and patching up 
 > the bad links that had appeared in the catalogue structure on the disk.
 > (I recovered almost everything, no thanks to Netscape Inc.)  If it
 > was something real obscure that I was trying to do, then I could
 > think "such is life and beta releases", but it wasn't.  It was just
 > normal stuff that Netscape should have tested themselves.  They think 
 > (correctly it seems after reading you guys) that their virtual
 > monopoly will see them through despite some poor saps who were suckered
 > into doing their basic testing for them.  This company needs a swift
 > kick in the nuts.

Nope, you're wrong here. Netscape releases pretty clean beta code, and you
are duly warned before running the software. All software has bugs,
especially quite a few well regarded packages. If you're not prepared to
assume the risks that come with beta software, you shouldn't run it. I've
signed a number of beta agreements, and actively participated in a few
beta programs. When I run into a bug, I document it, and forward my
comments to the developers. If they haven't already seen the bug, they
send me mail asking for further detail, and it gets fixed.

Did you bother to fill out a bug report? I reported the same bug that hit
you- it's nasty, but anyone who's worked with the Mac for a while has seen
the same thing happen before- caused by other software- it took about a
half hour to fix the second time it hit.

If you want stable software, participate in the beta. If you can't deal
with the risks, wait.

-- 
Alan Boucek       aboucek@panix.com
       New York, New York