More and more, I'm seeing the word "Beta" slapped on the ass of released software out there on the web.  What was once considered geek speak is now relatively known by the average user.  Is putting the word "Beta" on your software now some sort of copout?  Can developers get about 80% done with projects and release them with the "Beta" moniker and get away with it?  There's a bug?  Well it's only a beta...

...I mean you're not even supposed to use it.  We're still in internal testing.  It's been two years we know, but sooner or later we're going to release the new thing which will be a release candidate.

I can see it now, after people get tired of the Beta tag, marketers will suggest that instead of "Beta" use something like "RC1" or even cooler "Beta RC1".  In fact, if we use all the internal releases names, we could start releasing Alpha's all the way up to RC4's and we could effectively stretch it out for 7 years or so.  In all that time no one could bitch about anything being broken.

What a great idea.  I'm totally slapping "Alpha" on my next website.  I will thereby be ultra-cool and not have to worry about any bugs.