Now this is interesting:

Here's a list of how long it took to read the same file in various versions
of R:

R version 2.10.1 (2009-12-14)     3.97
R version 2.12.0 (2010-10-15)    24.53
R version 2.13.0 (2011-04-13)    24.48
R version 2.14.0 (2011-10-31)     3.75

I think that the even numbered releases of R are generally faster with
read.table (except 2.12), kind of like how Beethoven's odd numbered
symphonies are generally more popular (except 6)

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