5 ms·

Introducing the free Microsoft R Client

114 points by sinodin 10y ago

apathy 10y ago
Christ almighty, why not just use SAS at that point. Ross Ihaka was so disappointed by Revolution's value-subtracted offerings that he disowned the entire R project.
- worik 10y ago
  Have you a reference for that?
  - fnord123 10y ago
    I'm not sure what GP means by Ross "disowning the entire R project". Maybe it's a brain fart. But Ross does (if this is indeed him commenting on dbms2.com) want people to not use Revolution Analytics fork: http://www.dbms2.com/2010/05/04/revolution-analytics-confused/ http://www.dbms2.com/2010/05/04/revolution-analytics-confuse...
  - _Wintermute 10y ago
    Probably referring to this: https://xianblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/simply-start-over-and-build-something-better/ https://xianblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/simply-start-over-...
    - apathy 10y ago
      Bingo. I exaggerated... Very slightly. Thanks for digging that link up.
      - GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
        Six years is a long time in software.
- curiousgal 10y ago
  Isn't SAS better than R?
  - voltagex_ 10y ago
    Depends how much money you have
  - SmellTheGlove 10y ago
    I think so, at least for my use, but I'm at a large company and I don't see the licensing costs (nor do they directly come out of my budget). It's not to say R is bad, it just takes (me) longer to do similar work. Of course, we're also a Teradata shop and being able to run R in-database is awfully tempting - but I doubt we'd save any money at that point (even if its not my budget, still have to justify it), and we'd have a ton of stuff to migrate. And we're not really performance bottlenecked right now. There's a cost tradeoff there, but R has really been awesome in getting really solid statistical and data manipulation software in the hands of individuals and small businesses for free. For instance, I don't have SAS at home - my basement hacking uses R.
    - JohnDoe365 10y ago
      What I can say is that SAS allows you to get quicker at visualisations and analysis without actually knowing what you are doing. R requires you to think before and ask the questions you would like to get from the data.
      - apathy 10y ago
        Another excellent point. R, like UNIX, is user friendly. It's just very demanding towards its friends.
  - nol13 10y ago
    Kind of, in the same way that waterboarding is better than good cop bad cop.
  - apathy 10y ago
- hudibras 10y ago
  "OSS is great! Anybody can make a fork and improve the software!" "Hey guys, it's me, Microsoft. I made a fork and improved the software." "BURN THE WITCH"
  - apathy 10y ago
    I think he was under the impression that using the GPL (instead of a BSD license) would avoid commercial forks. Personally I don't care, Gentleman doesn't care, and the Revolution people (some at least) are pretty good guys. But leading with the above would be shitty click bait }:-)
    - jordigh 10y ago
      They would avoid proprietary forks (not commercial, that's not the same thing) if they actually defended the damn GPL. Instead, they kept weakening it, kept trying to change the API from GPL to LGPL (and I think they actually did it) and encouraged non-free plugins on CRAN. The license will need to a better job of protecting work donated to the commons than GPL2 seems to have done. https://xianblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/simply-start-over-and-build-something-better/ https://xianblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/simply-start-over-... The license is fine, the problem is that they didn't actually use it correctly! Well, this is what happens.
      - apathy 10y ago
        Yeah, but on the other hand the resulting project has happily eaten research statistics. It's not all bad.
- cwyers 10y ago
  They contribute source, packages, they ship an R distribution with IKML available on multiple platforms for free... what's value-subtracted here?
  - apathy 10y ago
    All of the above can be done relatively easily by any individual. And like I said, the Revolution guys aren't all bad. It's really just revo R that I find uncompelling. Even that wasn't always true, but Hadley and Rstudio have buried everyone else as far as dev/write up/presentation integrated environments go. Plus I like Hadley and Winston and joe better on a personal level. Nothing against David and his coworkers, they're great too. I just find it easy to connect as a developer and statistician with the Rstudio guys.
data_spy 10y ago
Microsoft was at the 2016 UseR conference, they're presentation 'How Microsoft uses R presentation' was a complete sales pitch.
- blahi 10y ago
  Uhm... it is meant to be? Oracle and Teradata did the same thing. They paid for it.
  - data_spy 10y ago
    The session was supposed to be how they use it not how other companies can use it by paying for it
    - blahi 10y ago
      The session was called "R at Microsoft", not "How Microsoft uses R". You just had the wrong expectations.
- fnord123 10y ago
  Was at Strata London. Most of the talks were sales pitches (for Cloudera). It was absolute garbage.
- JohnDoe365 10y ago
  Companies have to understand that instead of mainly targeting the head buyers / CxOs reps in the companies they have to target the ones that really understand and work with their product. As big company investions have to be justified, CxOs can no longer buy what they want without justification. They have to sell the quality of their products to the users which will then convince the CxOs who are going to do the investment.
blahi 10y ago
Microsoft offers full featured and unrestricted developer edition or Revolution R through their Dev Essentials program. (don't change it MSFT, please!)
gnu8 10y ago
I'm disappointed that Microsoft has targeted R for embracing and extinguishing. We hardly knew ye.
- Analemma_ 10y ago
  Your evidence for this is... ?
  - sdegutis 10y ago
    Because years ago MS used to do stuff like this therefore they must still be planning to do stuff like this.
  - yarrel 10y ago
    History.
    - ksk 10y ago
      That makes no sense actually.
    - wmccullough 10y ago
      So based on this, we should still hold Germany accountable for the holocaust...got it.
      - zatoki 10y ago
        Don't forget about the two world wars; it wasn't just jews, just the heads-up if you decide to read about it someday so you won't be surprised. Nevertheless, they actively retaliate on Palestinians but who cares if it's not about jews :< Basically yes, we should remember and remind more often.
- nonfamous 10y ago
  Embracing, perhaps; extinguishing seems unlikely, given Microsoft's recent support of R in the likes of SQL Server and PowerBI.
Hansi 10y ago
I am no closed to understanding what this is. Everything listed here is already part of Microsoft R Open and the client is just standard RGui: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-r/install-r-client-windows https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-r/install-r-clien...
- blahi 10y ago
  The rx algorithms are not part of MSFT R Open, but they are severely restricted in this, so I kinda fail to see the point of having it. Perhaps someone from the team can chime in and explain the reasoning behind this?
  - ACow_Adonis 10y ago
    I'm guessing it is primarily aimed at getting people used to the interfaces/differences/quirks of using RevoR scaler functions. Will it do so? I dunno. I'm a fan of simplification. If it's resource limited I'd argue there more motivation in just sticking with the popular base R implementations and not over complicate things or tie your self to a proprietary product. Sas also offers a kind of "free" version cut down/restrictive, and I don't find I use that much either, because the restrictions (virtual machine, non-EG interface) make me rarely ever want to use it. Both companies have the challenge of how to keep themselves relevant and reach people to teach their wares in a world where they similarly try to restrict access to their products. Revor has some advantage in this sphere, given the availability and use of regular r,but there are implementation quirks and rough edges around the fact that they're trying to get R to do some things it really wasn't designed to do from the ground up.
- nonfamous 10y ago
  Microsoft R Client includes the ScaleR package (rx functions and XDF file type) for faster statistics with data up to memory size. This is larger data than R can handle, as computations are done out-of-memory. For no limits on data size, you can use Microsoft R Server, which is also available free as part of Dev Essentials http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2016/01/microsoft-r-open.html http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2016/01/microsoft-r-open... , but only for development use. Microsoft R Client can also initiate computations (of unlimited size) on a remote Microsoft R Server.
yarrel 10y ago
Ugh.
smortaz 10y ago
In case you use Visual Studio and want to write some R code, VS now has a free+oss plug-in for it: RTVS v0.4 video overview: https://youtu.be/k1_6XLyhHbo https://youtu.be/k1_6XLyhHbo Docs: http://microsoft.github.io/RTVS-docs/ http://microsoft.github.io/RTVS-docs/
_Codemonkeyism 10y ago
Reading the article, rx* feels to me like embrace and extend, or am I misguided?

114 points by sinodin 10y ago

Christ almighty, why not just use SAS at that point. Ross Ihaka was so disappointed by Revolution's value-subtracted offerings that he disowned the entire R project.

worik 10y ago
Have you a reference for that?
- fnord123 10y ago
  I'm not sure what GP means by Ross "disowning the entire R project". Maybe it's a brain fart. But Ross does (if this is indeed him commenting on dbms2.com) want people to not use Revolution Analytics fork: http://www.dbms2.com/2010/05/04/revolution-analytics-confused/ http://www.dbms2.com/2010/05/04/revolution-analytics-confuse...
- _Wintermute 10y ago
  Probably referring to this: https://xianblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/simply-start-over-and-build-something-better/ https://xianblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/simply-start-over-...
  - apathy 10y ago
    Bingo. I exaggerated... Very slightly. Thanks for digging that link up.
    - GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
      Six years is a long time in software.
curiousgal 10y ago
Isn't SAS better than R?
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  Depends how much money you have
- SmellTheGlove 10y ago
  I think so, at least for my use, but I'm at a large company and I don't see the licensing costs (nor do they directly come out of my budget). It's not to say R is bad, it just takes (me) longer to do similar work. Of course, we're also a Teradata shop and being able to run R in-database is awfully tempting - but I doubt we'd save any money at that point (even if its not my budget, still have to justify it), and we'd have a ton of stuff to migrate. And we're not really performance bottlenecked right now. There's a cost tradeoff there, but R has really been awesome in getting really solid statistical and data manipulation software in the hands of individuals and small businesses for free. For instance, I don't have SAS at home - my basement hacking uses R.
  - JohnDoe365 10y ago
    What I can say is that SAS allows you to get quicker at visualisations and analysis without actually knowing what you are doing. R requires you to think before and ask the questions you would like to get from the data.
    - apathy 10y ago
      Another excellent point. R, like UNIX, is user friendly. It's just very demanding towards its friends.
- nol13 10y ago
  Kind of, in the same way that waterboarding is better than good cop bad cop.
- apathy 10y ago
hudibras 10y ago
"OSS is great! Anybody can make a fork and improve the software!" "Hey guys, it's me, Microsoft. I made a fork and improved the software." "BURN THE WITCH"
- apathy 10y ago
  I think he was under the impression that using the GPL (instead of a BSD license) would avoid commercial forks. Personally I don't care, Gentleman doesn't care, and the Revolution people (some at least) are pretty good guys. But leading with the above would be shitty click bait }:-)
  - jordigh 10y ago
    They would avoid proprietary forks (not commercial, that's not the same thing) if they actually defended the damn GPL. Instead, they kept weakening it, kept trying to change the API from GPL to LGPL (and I think they actually did it) and encouraged non-free plugins on CRAN. The license will need to a better job of protecting work donated to the commons than GPL2 seems to have done. https://xianblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/simply-start-over-and-build-something-better/ https://xianblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/simply-start-over-... The license is fine, the problem is that they didn't actually use it correctly! Well, this is what happens.
    - apathy 10y ago
      Yeah, but on the other hand the resulting project has happily eaten research statistics. It's not all bad.
cwyers 10y ago
They contribute source, packages, they ship an R distribution with IKML available on multiple platforms for free... what's value-subtracted here?
- apathy 10y ago
  All of the above can be done relatively easily by any individual. And like I said, the Revolution guys aren't all bad. It's really just revo R that I find uncompelling. Even that wasn't always true, but Hadley and Rstudio have buried everyone else as far as dev/write up/presentation integrated environments go. Plus I like Hadley and Winston and joe better on a personal level. Nothing against David and his coworkers, they're great too. I just find it easy to connect as a developer and statistician with the Rstudio guys.

data_spy 10y ago

Microsoft was at the 2016 UseR conference, they're presentation 'How Microsoft uses R presentation' was a complete sales pitch.

blahi 10y ago
Uhm... it is meant to be? Oracle and Teradata did the same thing. They paid for it.
- data_spy 10y ago
  The session was supposed to be how they use it not how other companies can use it by paying for it
  - blahi 10y ago
    The session was called "R at Microsoft", not "How Microsoft uses R". You just had the wrong expectations.
fnord123 10y ago
Was at Strata London. Most of the talks were sales pitches (for Cloudera). It was absolute garbage.
JohnDoe365 10y ago
Companies have to understand that instead of mainly targeting the head buyers / CxOs reps in the companies they have to target the ones that really understand and work with their product. As big company investions have to be justified, CxOs can no longer buy what they want without justification. They have to sell the quality of their products to the users which will then convince the CxOs who are going to do the investment.

blahi 10y ago

Microsoft offers full featured and unrestricted developer edition or Revolution R through their Dev Essentials program. (don't change it MSFT, please!)

gnu8 10y ago

I'm disappointed that Microsoft has targeted R for embracing and extinguishing. We hardly knew ye.

Analemma_ 10y ago
Your evidence for this is... ?
- sdegutis 10y ago
  Because years ago MS used to do stuff like this therefore they must still be planning to do stuff like this.
- yarrel 10y ago
  History.
  - ksk 10y ago
    That makes no sense actually.
  - wmccullough 10y ago
    So based on this, we should still hold Germany accountable for the holocaust...got it.
    - zatoki 10y ago
      Don't forget about the two world wars; it wasn't just jews, just the heads-up if you decide to read about it someday so you won't be surprised. Nevertheless, they actively retaliate on Palestinians but who cares if it's not about jews :< Basically yes, we should remember and remind more often.
nonfamous 10y ago
Embracing, perhaps; extinguishing seems unlikely, given Microsoft's recent support of R in the likes of SQL Server and PowerBI.

Hansi 10y ago

I am no closed to understanding what this is. Everything listed here is already part of Microsoft R Open and the client is just standard RGui: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-r/install-r-client-windows https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-r/install-r-clien...

blahi 10y ago
The rx algorithms are not part of MSFT R Open, but they are severely restricted in this, so I kinda fail to see the point of having it. Perhaps someone from the team can chime in and explain the reasoning behind this?
- ACow_Adonis 10y ago
  I'm guessing it is primarily aimed at getting people used to the interfaces/differences/quirks of using RevoR scaler functions. Will it do so? I dunno. I'm a fan of simplification. If it's resource limited I'd argue there more motivation in just sticking with the popular base R implementations and not over complicate things or tie your self to a proprietary product. Sas also offers a kind of "free" version cut down/restrictive, and I don't find I use that much either, because the restrictions (virtual machine, non-EG interface) make me rarely ever want to use it. Both companies have the challenge of how to keep themselves relevant and reach people to teach their wares in a world where they similarly try to restrict access to their products. Revor has some advantage in this sphere, given the availability and use of regular r,but there are implementation quirks and rough edges around the fact that they're trying to get R to do some things it really wasn't designed to do from the ground up.
nonfamous 10y ago
Microsoft R Client includes the ScaleR package (rx functions and XDF file type) for faster statistics with data up to memory size. This is larger data than R can handle, as computations are done out-of-memory. For no limits on data size, you can use Microsoft R Server, which is also available free as part of Dev Essentials http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2016/01/microsoft-r-open.html http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2016/01/microsoft-r-open... , but only for development use. Microsoft R Client can also initiate computations (of unlimited size) on a remote Microsoft R Server.

yarrel 10y ago

Ugh.

smortaz 10y ago

In case you use Visual Studio and want to write some R code, VS now has a free+oss plug-in for it: RTVS v0.4 video overview: https://youtu.be/k1_6XLyhHbo https://youtu.be/k1_6XLyhHbo Docs: http://microsoft.github.io/RTVS-docs/ http://microsoft.github.io/RTVS-docs/

_Codemonkeyism 10y ago

Reading the article, rx* feels to me like embrace and extend, or am I misguided?