At 07:39 AM 02/23/2002 -0500, Frank Harrell wrote:
... when I ditched Windows 2000 and went to the real thing (Linux) I found
out what I had been missing trying to get things working in Windows
(especially easy of installation of Emacs, LaTeX, etc., speed, true
operating system with symbolic links, etc.). -Frank Harrell
I feel rather ungracious nitpicking the generous Frank Harrell, and I am no
Windows apologist, but to me what the above suggests is mainly that those
who have developed tools under *ix have done a poor job of porting them to
Windows. If *ix is taken as the "true" operating system, all others will
forever fail to meet the standard. It is perhaps less romantic to hold
that each system has its faults and merits and that an operating system's
worth cannot be judged by how well it runs software designed for another
system and ported in someone's spare time.
I prefer operating systems that don't require of the user a working
knowledge of octal.
By the way, none of my DOS batch files run worth a d**n on Linux --
especially the ones that try to access the command line before the shell
has transformed it.
Anyway, aren't we lucky that S language implementations are available for a
choice of environments?
MHP
(None of the above is to be construed as NOAA opinion or endorsement.)
--
Michael Prager, Ph.D. <Mike.Prager@noaa.gov>
NOAA Beaufort Laboratory
Beaufort, North Carolina 28516
http://shrimp.ccfhrb.noaa.gov/~mprager/
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