Sure; I'm assuming you're asking about my assertion that "R is the right platform ... " I've used S-PLUS fairly extensively, and I think there's a lot in common between R and S-PLUS. But R doesn't have the licensing constraints, which makes all of the difference in the world. To me, R represents a good high-level prototyping language with a very extensive native statistical library.
I would also add that I'm much more attached to the idea that web data mining is the future, than I am attached to the idea that R is the best platform. We'll see what happens!
R is essentially an open source S-Plus implementation. S-Plus licensing can be an issue, particularly when you are running on a cluster. I worked at a place that used S-Plus and they had a to limit the number of S-Plus slots to run jobs against because of licensing.
I would also add that I'm much more attached to the idea that web data mining is the future, than I am attached to the idea that R is the best platform. We'll see what happens!