Nixta Sinks

Beta is.

Gmail, Flickr, Tagcloud, Froogle (actually, just about everything Google does).

There was a time Beta meant something, like "use this at your own risk, and you might have to rebuild your computer afterwards" - Microsoft still more or less stick to that, but perhaps it's a legal ploy to allow companies to make money and provide services cowering behind every excuse for poor performance or availability.

Friendster no longer is beta, after about 3 years, though Fiendster now links to AdultFriendFinder (is there any escape from those bastards?) so presumably that never made it into prodution.

This is one of the reasons I want to get out of the industry. Most software that's delivered is produced (I nearly said engineered, but that would give engineers a bad name) in such a haphazard way that it ends up with the client in at best beta form, and rarely drags itself beyond that. At least that's my experience. Certain target areas of the software industry require certification and approval of their systems and that will of course extend to the software behind them (I'll take a guess at banks and aircraft control systems being amongst them). Some others require that the software works or they won't sell much (consumer software, in particular, though barely and by the skin of their teeth). But not mine. Oh, no. The shame of it! Though it makes my job easier.