(Ted Harding) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: [...]
> There's something of a hidden assumption that R users > can readily download whatever they need from CRAN. [...] > What I'd like to suggest, for consideration, is that along > with the stirling work done at many centres to set up and > maintain mirrors of CRAN, some might consider offering also > the service of burning CDs on request, for a reasonable > charge. The difficulty, of course, is that it's going to > take someone's time om something which may well not be > their proper business. I have been in a similar situation a fair bit in the past and understand your position. Now I'm back in the UK and have a reasonably fast broadband connection at home I'd be willing to help out now and then. I guess that to make this work more generally we would need to work out how to make sure that only the CDs get burned and not the prospective "customer" or "supplier". As for charges, I think I'd only be interested in covering costs of the CDs and postage. I don't have industrial strength hardware so I could not get into mass production. Perhaps we could establish informal groups of "R buddies" where, for example, I help you and a small number of other people out each time there is an update and we establish some kind of trust between ourselves, rather than new people coming to me each time. People could sign up to be "suppliers" and be allocated or choose a group of people they provide the service to. I would feel comfortable with something like this working for people who have been on the R-help list for a while and have some recgonised identity, and something to lose in terms of reputation if they take advantage. But, it is possible that new users might need it the most and, by definition, we might not feel comfortable dealing with new people. Dave -- David Whiting University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
