They have charged for several "beta programs" in the past -- Win98 beta, and
Win2k beta. They claim it costs them $29.95 for shipping and handling, but
it doesn't. I can ship the same thing to you for $5.00 in the same amount of
time... so they are making @$20-25 per CD that they ship to their beta
testers. This means that they are charging people for beta testing for them.
Apple is doing the same thing with Mac OS X Public Beta right now. $49 for
the Beta CD (I received mine about a week ago. It's very beautiful. I still
like Linux better because I don't *have* to use Aqua if I don't want to!).
I hope this clears things up for you.
-Steven Hatfield
-Reformed Microsoft Beta Tester
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Ben Reser
> Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2000 12:37 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [Cooker] Beta???
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 02, 2000 at 03:02:37PM -0400, Steven R. Hatfield wrote:
> > Microsoft proudly charges money for this pleasure.
>
> While I dislike Microsoft products have beta tested for them in
> the past I can
> assure you they not only do *NOT* charge their beta testers. But
> they actually
> ship CDs to us on a regular basis. Comes in a nice little brown shipping
> envelope via airborne express for the unintiated.
>
> Please don't spread lies or misrepresent things in order to
> further Linux. It
> only makes us all looks stupid.
>
> --
> Ben Reser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> http://ben.reser.org
>
> "EXTREMELY SERIOUS WARNING: Unless you are as smart as
> Johann Karl Friedrich Gauss, savvy as a half-blind Calcutta
> bootblack, tough as General William Tecumseh Sherman, rich
> as the Queen of England, emotionally resilient as a Red Sox
> fan, and as generally able to take care of yourself as the
> average nuclear missile submarine commander, you should
> have never been allowed near this document. Please dispose
> of it as you would any piece of high-level radioactive waste
> and then arrange with a qualified surgeon to amputate your
> arms at the elbows and gouge your eyes from their sockets"
> - Neal Stephenson, Crytonomicon
>
