FC2 test2 is a BAD joke

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Tue, 30 Mar 2004, William Hooper wrote:

> 
> Robert P. J. Day said:
> [snip]
> >
> > but all of that assumes you can get the software onto your machine in the
> > first place.  this suggests that, more than anything else, the
> > installation procedure has to be flogged pretty hard before getting out
> > the door to make sure it works.
> 
> Isn't testing the installation procedure the reason there are test
> releases?  A failed test is no less of a test.

i'm not disagreeing.  my point was that it was understandable that the 
inability to even *install* the beta software might explain the higher
frustration level among some of the folks who have posted on the subject.

in addition, in a lot of cases, when the installation fails, the poor user 
is left wondering if it's something *they* did wrong, and they spend a lot
of time trying again before they finally realize that it's not their 
fault.

one final point.  traditionally, the whole testing cycle suggests that, as 
one gets closer and closer to the official release, beta releases are 
theoretically supposed to get more and more reliable.  put another way, 
it's a bit unnerving to suddenly discover that something that worked just 
fine in test1 is broken in test2, *especially* something as critical and
fundamental as installation.

anyway, i'm not ranting about this, just making some observations about 
why some of the previous posters on this topic might be just a bit edgy
about it, that's all.

rday