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Jim Gray Is Missing
K-Man writes "Jim Gray, Turing Award winner and developer of many fundamental database technologies, was reported missing at sea after a short solo sailing trip to the Farallon Islands off San Francisco. Gray is manager of Microsoft's eScience group. The Coast Guard is searching for his vessel over 4,000 square miles of ocean, and there have been no distress calls or signals of any kind. Gray is 63 and a sailor with 10 years' experience."
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Isn't reiserfs organized sort of like a database?
http://outcampaign.org/
he accidently did a Cartesian Join, and flooded the boat
Let's hope he is saved by Penguins.
Hans had anything to do with it, do you?
What?
> SELECT loc FROM Locations loc, People p WHERE p.name="Jim Gray" AND p.loc=loc.id
The query returned 0 results.
Why can't I ever have mod points when I see a *really* good comment?
The Coast Guard is searching for his vessel over 4,000 square miles of ocean
Sounds like Gray's Anatomy is meeting up with Gray's Marine Biology.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
8 of the first 10 comments made by complete wankers
couldn't they just fly out there with a transmitter and keep trying to call him?
Seriously though, there's a good chance he's OK. The weather out here has been great today, and he hasn't been gone that long. One of the following probably happened:
For a second there, I thought Slashdot would drop this stupid anti-Microsoft bullshit and at least show some compassion.
Easy simple and cheap to hookup live GPS for realtime tracking and updating to a mapserver.. I do it in my car even when in civilisation.. let alone if I was going out to sea or up in the sky over wilderness!
If he's with Microsoft then has enough $ to buy satellite comms if *really* out of cheap-to-use standard mobile range..
I wish them all the best but if they had his track and time could concentrate in that area straight away instead of 4000 sq km of guessing and save precious time..
Why don't technologists with (or even without!) money USE the readily available technology for such basic primary safety?
For a second there, I thought Slashdot would drop this stupid anti-Microsoft bullshit and at least show some compassion.
If you come to slashdot for compassion, then I DO feel sorry for you.
Why do they call the coast guard? Isn't enough with a simple SQL query?
I hope this turns out to be better than Mario is Missing.
I truly hope he is saved in time.
On the other hand, if he doesn't make it, he might become the first person to win a Turing AND a Darwin award.
I heard he made an anti-microsoft comment and a chair hit the side of his boat.
This story covers some of his recent database work.
Several news stories say that he called his daughter Sunday morning to say he was going out of cellphone range, but he didn't indicate any problems. The weather was clear, so it's puzzling that there were no sightings.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
One little secret that most sailors don't openly talk about is how 'everyone' carries firearms with them, even around countries like Australia which don't have a gun culture.
If Gray got knocked into the water, there's a very real possibility that a great white shark attacked him. While sharks do not consume human meat, they usually mistake the form of humans for seals, which is why they attack.
I heard about this earlier this afternoon. I talked to Jim Gray just two weeks ago, when he came up to visit Berkeley.
:-/
I really hope they find him. After over 24 hours missing, though, the outlook isn't looking good
you must be new here...
There's a joke to be had including,
1) Microsoft / Linux
2) This guy
3) The front of his ship tearing through a big blue wall
I just can't quite put it together.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
don't be evil.. .. 'oh but im trying'
-Sj53
Seeing all these Slashdot posts joking about a man who may very well be dead makes me sick.
Please have some respect for the man. I can understand joking about Hans Reiser because there is a motive behind what he did.
But this man hasn't done anything (at least to the best of my knowledge) to warrant any sort of morbid humor.
The man has 10 years of sailing experience apparently, so I can only hope for the best for him.
I had a funny feeling that my bittorrent of Windows Vista was a little fishy...
That one went right over my head. Care to elaborate?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip...
Look for yourself
You sir, are a weenie. I sail out of SF Bay, and do a lot of technology work. People usually call me in to solve the tough problems they need immediate solutions for. From the bootstrap code, through the kernel, to solving IT infrastructure problems for Fortunate 1000 companies.
When you go out singlehanded, part of the thrill is it being just you and nature. I don't need some weenie tracking me, 24x7. Yes, I may die. But that's part of the risk. My fate is in my own hands, and I don't want to depend on some momma's boy back on shore who will shit bricks at the thought of getting wet.
Let me clue you in. If something bad happens, you don't want to depend on the Coast Guard. By the time they get out there, the odds are you'll already be dead. Survival time is about 15 minutes in that water. The Coast Guard is more interested in tearing up boats arbitrarily doing bogus drug searches than they are interested in jeopardizing their fat asses looking for lost sailors.
In short, if you're depending on the Coast Guard for a rescue, you shouldn't be out there. Period.
What probably happened to him is either a freighter hit him, or a sneaker wave got him as he was coming back in. Or he fell off the boat.
There's some chance that his boat was disabled, but I'd think even the Coast Guard would've spotted it by now.
But those are the risks you take. One knows that, and accepts it. That's part of the fun.
I know this is a strange, scary thought to most of the momma's boys here, whining about how this crap would be good insurance. God, what pathetic whimps.
I salute you, Jim Gray. And I hope you're still alive. But if not, I'll raise a toast to you. Sailing out to the Farallons is fun and exciting. You were a real man.
He went out in a 40-foot C&C 121 yacht. That's a very nice boat, with a epoxy resin laminate hull, carbon fiber reinforcement and masts, Kevlar sails, and a 38HP engine. There hasn't been any weather lately bad enough to give a boat like that any serious trouble. If it ran aground it would probably survive the experience.
But between San Francisco and the Farralon Islands is a major shipping lane. One with fog. Container ships and oil tankers come through there. Sizable fishing boats have been run down and sunk without anyone on a large ship even noticing. There's a USGS Vessel Traffic Service station and established traffic lanes for large ships, but small boats aren't required to check in with traffic control.
At the very least how about some logic and reason instead of agenda pushing? We all know if "Jim Gray" was substitute in the title with either "Steve Jobs" or "Linus Torvalds" half of the "comedians" would be out there in scuba gear, while the other half would be certain the rapture was near.
I heard he stopped off at Alcatraz for a while to visit Hans Reiser.
Logic and reason -- at least on the part of slashdotters -- aren't going to bring Gray back. Jokes are fun. Get over it.
In any event, I wish Linus were on the boat with Jim. Just for the lulz.
After all, I am strangely colored.
He's working for MS. This by itself does not really endear him to a sizeable portion of the people here. Besides, few people know him, and those who do (read the comments, a few people here actually met him) do show compassion.
Do you show compassion for people you don't know? Or at least heard about? I have a hunch the reaction would be slightly different if, say, Hawking was gone missing or even dead.
People dying is no longer something that bothers us. That's not even a Slashdot phenomenon. We see and hear it all the times, in the news. People die. Deal. That's what we get told, and thus death (as long as it's not someone we care about) has become something to shrug off. When you get told that people dying in a war as innocent bystanders are brushed aside as collateral damage, you tend to get quite cold inside.
So I wouldn't really wonder how that comments come into existance. It's simply the normal flow of operation.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It makes me sick to see ignorant readers trying to be smug with their "+3 funny" remarks. Jim Gray is one of the great minds in computer science, a Turing award recipient and has published some of the seminal works in transactions and serializability theory. Cut out the Microsoft bashing and show some respect.
"Show me your tables and I won't usually need your flow charts; they'll be obvious".
When a "technologist" is off-duty, he want to get as far *away* from technology as possible?
a solo sailor with 10 years of experience should probably have known to bring an EPIRB that is either activated manually or when getting in contact with water, even though they're still quite expensive, there's no faster way of getting help out there.
Humor during a disaster or crisis is not always a sign the joker is being flippent or mean spirited. One of the ways people deal with a situation thats unpleasent or distressing is to attempt a joke or humor because it helps creates some emotional distance from the situation. Not knowing the people making the jokes, I can't say thats the case here but it is possible.
Who cares what the guy does for a living or what company he works for. Some of you are extremely obnoxious and quite frankly ought to be punched in the mouth. A man is missing, his family is certainly frantic and you are making lame jokes about Microsoft.
Piss off.
of meeting Jim a number of years ago. He struck me as a very thoughtful, very conscientious, and very nice man. My thoughts are with him and his family.
The rest of you modding and getting modded funny can die in a fire.
No, really. Why? Does it matter at all for correctness? (answer, no). True, some databases will optimize one type of join differently than another type and if you know the intricacies of these you can optimize operations. Is there any other reason? Style?
My other first post is car post.
Is there anything anyone here can actually do to help rescue Jim Gray? I'd say almost certainly not.
So what are we to do? Those who have a connection with the man (knew him, worked with him, admire his work, etc.) will have serious and informative comments to make. But for the rest who've never heard of him, there's just nothing to discuss -- the story's not about technology in any way, it's just about a human being who happens to be related to technology. And death is easiest thing in the world to come up with jokes about -- "I bet he died because [a common failure in whatever area of technology he is related to]...ha,ha". Yes, the Microsoft/bluescreen jokes are pretty lame, but the SQL/database ones get a chuckle out of me.
What's the harm?
I am not sure this is the place to post such information, but, I saw many of his papers just posted to the CS preprint archive, just a three or four days ago. This may indicate some sort of preparation... Just a thought.
Let's get ready for the conspiracy theories!
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
- It's the standard, vendor extensions for outer joins (+) are non-standard. Hence helps with code portablity.
- It's a lot easier to read.
- It keeps operations that are conceptually seperate (joins and filtering the data set) syntactically seperate.
- A few other advantages, including: full outer joins are possible which had to be fudged with UNIONs before, and cartesian products cannot be created accidentally but have to be explicitly specified.
Making jokes about a situation such as this might not be considered acceptable by everyone, but let's look at the facts here. A small percentage of Slashdotters know this guy. A small percentage of people react with shock/grief upon hearing of the possible death of someone they do not know, and possibly have never heard of. It is scarcely reasonable to expect everyone to treat the situation with as much gravity as you guys are doing. If any of us here had the opportunity to actually rescue this man, I'm sure none of us would hesitate. However, on a computer many miles away from the problem, do you really expect us to light a candle and pray? Also, some of the jokes were fucking hilarious.
The boat is a cheapy. He could do a better job in buying a high-end boat.
For a second there, I thought Slashdot would drop this stupid anti-Microsoft bullshit and at least show some compassion.
Oh... yeah, I'm full of compassion for a guy who knew what he was getting into.
Meanwhile, I don't care about insane number of children dying every day because of war, hunger, torture, trafficking - and who have no choice in their lives.
Welcome to Slashdot.
No no.. it's only funny if linus gets hit by a bus!
I hope I'm not the only one who read the title and thought it said Grey 17 is missing.
Life is like that, in many ocassions the only thing left is to joke about tragedy.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Very impressive. It appears he will be the world's first recipient of both the Turing Award, and the Darwin Award!
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Most of us come from the exact-reasoning world -- but most of our clients are now asking questions that require approximate or probabilistic answers.'
Indeed. But the technology to answer those questions has been around for decades, it's just that the database vendors (and academics) were on such a gravy train with relational databases that they simply didn't let anything else in. Gray's own efforts to move in new directions have been far behind the state of the art, but because of his name recognition, he's been getting a lot of press coverage.
Maybe it's true that paradigms only change when their old, powerful proponents retire (or, sadly, get lost with their sailboats).
I sail offshore and solo frequently (almost exclusively), and have no EPIRB, nor any desire to have an EPIRB.
If I get into a situation where my life is threatened, I don't want to make Joe Coast Guard have to come risk his life to save my own. I am single, no dependants. It is my choice to enter an environment where I am responsible for my own pelt. I will rely on my own skill, knowledge, and choice of appropriate gear to ensure that, having gone to sea, I will return.
If I make/made a mistake, I don't want someone else to suffer because of it.
Part of the reason I go to sea is to be in a place where *I* have ultimate responsibility for myself.
What you 2 guys say sounds great, really 'official' and knowledgable, like a sales brochure. But I'll bet you've never done it yourself, or you would know.
Good luck to the lost sailor.
Do not make any sick jokes until AFTER a trragedy is confirmed.
The latest Slashdot meme.
who the fuck cares? i don't.
Is this becoming the slashdot of funerals? Possible deaths?
okay......how about thermonuclear war? huh? oh....any posts on that after it happens? I guess...NOT.
Very few computers will be operational after that one.
Too bad this dude who I never met or ever will has possibly died or whatever.
You know of all the slashdot that I have read, very few if no articles that go beyond this universe.
IMO Death is an illusion. The physical body dies, but that is nothing but a shell.
Human body = biological robotics.
Watching a machine breathe for a human being is disgusting. Let him/her DIE. That is not normal.
If you have to have a machine breathe for you, your pretty much useless.
oh and the people who think emotions are so fucking important, stop right now.
You emotional douche bags. Go tell someone who cares about your "emotions".
Like your dog.
Any more death notices? Bill gates choking on a cherry?
Bush die on airforce 1 ?
LOL
As he sailed off he announced he was determined to find at least one beautiful vista today.
Just a couple bits of information for those not familiar with sailing in the SF bay. I used to own a small sailboat in the SF bay, a Cal-20. Just about the smallest (and slowest) real keel boat you can find. The SF Bay has some of the finest sailing in the world. Between April and October, the wind at the gate is a nice steady 7 to 10 knots all day long.
Most people think of California and picture the sunny beaches and warm water off LA. This doesn't exist north of Santa Cruz. California north of Santa Cruz has a rocky cliff shore. The water off SF is chilled by a current that comes down from Alaska. This time of year, it's probably 40 deg/F (4.5 deg/C), in the summer, it's not much warmer. The cold water kills people very fast. You fall in this time of year, and you have maybe 15 minutes before you're dead. They've lost experienced sailors to hypothermia inside the bay, where the water is slightly warmer, in the amount of time it takes the crew to pull down the sheets and do a man overboard 180. If he fell overboard without some kind of wetsuit or thermal protection, he's done. A 40 foot boat set up for solo would probably have some kind of steering autopilot, and would sail outside the initial search area on it's own in just a few hours.
The sea will try very hard to kill you. A fellow geek made the good life, and appears to have been settling in to enjoy his golden years. Most of us have similar dreams and aspirations. I don't know him, but I'm going to think good thoughts for him and his family, and hope for the best.
It is a long trip from Galapagos Islands (the far-North penguins habitat), but it may be doable for an elite commando unit dedicated to punish Microsoft...
Ubcr, ur vf nyvir naq jryy, bs pbhefr...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Vista's released today, and he's missing...
Take the money and run...
People... read the ad. He works for Microsoft. He probably has his entire ship rigged to run Vista Ultimate Business for Ships. And it crashed... or maybe the UAC just drove nuts the captain or maybe the ship's monitors and video cards couldnt run Aero and it frieds his circuits.
Or maybe his ships database crashed because its not 100% compatible with Vista, and he couldnt talk to the battery management part, so the engines didnt turn on, so he is probably just sitting at dock trying to solve the problem of why the registry doesnt even run.
Chill out, he is fine.... probably having a crack because we are goofing him while he is presumably lost at sea.
Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d encule de ta mere.
Microsoft was a sinking ship...
--
On a more serious note.
Our prayers are with Jim and his family.
"Jim Gray, Turing Award winner and developer of many fundamental database technologies, was reported missing at sea after a short solo sailing trip to the Farallon Islands off San Francisco."
So it's probably calloused to be talking about the Darwin award, but this is something you simply have to expect when you go on these solo sailing expeditions. Sure, there's the allure of "one man against the sea," but the sea often wins (has a very long history of wins, in fact), and if you don't take the necessary precautions, well... when you want to take your life into your own hands like that, by definition everything that happens to you is your own fault.
We all know if "Jim Gray" was substitute in the title with either "Steve Jobs" or "Linus Torvalds" half of the "comedians" would be out there in scuba gear, while the other half would be certain the rapture was near.
Bullshit.
I'd dance (and most people here would dance) on their graves even more readily.
Linus (and definitely Jobs) are not sacred cows. Get real.
Hehe. I know what you're getting for christmas.
This reminds me of the Challenger disaster. At the time, Budweiser ads were running where somebody would get a flaming torch, or a blinding splot-light in their face, etc., and the tagline was, "No, I wanted a Bud Lite". So that got picked up and rolled into one of the most popular "sick jokes" associated with Challenger. The way I see it, this is a common way of coping with death. Morbid humor seems to be particularly popular around puberty, when kids are just becoming aware of their own mortality (and usually, they make sick jokes and continue to believe they're immortal for the next few years). A lot of adults continue to employ this little coping mechanism throughout their lives.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Honestly... the ocean should have been indexed to allow for faster searching.
LX
Windows it not the answer, Windows is the question; The answer is NO
"Logic and reason -- at least on the part of slashdotters -- aren't going to bring Gray back."
If this forum was half as smart as they thought they were? They'd be hacking a satellite from their parent's basement, causing it to emit a unique frequency, that would resonate on the yacht's hull. Making it much easier for the Coast Guard to find.
BTW it hasn't been proven that he's dead. So why the assumption? Maybe the only thing that's dead is hope.
"Jokes are fun. Get over it."
Let's put that to a test. I dare you to go over to his families house and tell those jokes, and if they complain, yell. Get over it!
I hope this faggot Jim Gray is shark meat.
How 'bout them apples you niggers?
The Coast Guard didn't recognize his distress signal, because he sent it in Gray code instead of Morse.
(Yes, I know they're different people.)
I think the baseline should be; would you tell these jokes to his family? I know etiquette and manners is essentially dead, but at least one could try.
In addition to water temperature and ships posing lethality, there is one rarely talked about for any typical yacht. In my earlier years I designed sailboats, before I figured out it was all fun and no money.
I have a friend in high places at the Port of Los Angeles, and though the shipping companies do NOT like to talk about it, the ship grounding on the U.K. coast just a week ago illustrated the problem. Some dozens or a hundred containers or so came off the ship when it listed, and then some FLOATED ashore.
The numbers I have heard is about 10,000 containers a year 'go missing' overboard as a result of all sorts of problems in bad weather usually. I don't remember whether that was the Pacific only or worldwide.
Lots of these containers floating right near the water surface with any waves at all, are virtually impossible to see from any distance.
If you hit one in a fiberglass or a thin-skinned metal boat boat, you can take on water and sink in a minute or two if it is bad.
Lots of small boats go missing every year with no explanation.
I worked at a tourist bureau a few years ago. An amazingly fit, yet very old (60-ish) guy came in asking about the town. He said he was doing some kind of canoe trip along the rivers, by himself, for hundreds of miles. I congratulated him, shook his hand, and hoped I could do that when I'm that old.
The next day a body was found washed up on the side of the river.
Listen up old people! Your cardiovascular system will age no matter how well you eat and exercise! Accept that fact and quit doing the extreme sports already!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
OK, this is not a joke or flamebait, is it possible that he simply got sick of corporate life and wanted to live 'off the grid' ??
I mean, it's possible, just throwin it out there. Doubtful, but possible.
If it's not the case, then I sure hope he turns up OK.
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
Why was this modded troll?
"...and developer of many fundamental database technologies..."
SELECT latitude,longitude FROM t_location WHERE ocean='PACIFIC' AND first_name='JIM' AND last_name='GRAY' AND status='F*CKED'
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
What if satellite images of the search area were distributed to the internet community? With enough people searching the "sectors" in parallel, couldn't finding his boat be a very tractable problem? Anyone know how to get a hold of the necessary data?
When Ballmer "Buries a guy" its not like he does a half-assed job of it! That'll teach HIM for thinking about going to work on the Google Omnipotent Database!
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
On the morning news in San Francisco, his daughter said that he had a marine radio aboard and a rubber dinghy. Let us hope for the best.
rover has removed him to bicycle island.
Looks like I was the only to read it 'Jean Gray' missing at sea.
World!!, be prepared for our new Level 5 Mutant Overlords.
Eclipse PDE and Me
Great choice! I own two of these for use on my personal watercraft (2 watercraft, one for each craft). Nice durable radio, 5W output, long battery life and they definitely stand up to a swim as I keep it on my vest, even when I jump in.
DSC (digital selective calling) is nice, but the radio needs to have GPS receiver built-in or integrated in some other way. IIRC, Garmin is getting close to this as they have already integrated a FRS radio with a GPS receiver. It would seem to me that the next logical step is to do the same with VHF marine guts instead. You are correct that there are hand-helds that do DSC, but I remember if they are equipped with a GPS to report their position (they can do the rest of the DSC stuff).
Another thing that is emerging are personal EPIRB's (Emergency Position-Indicating Rescue Beacon) that mariners (primarily commercial, but also available for private use) can keep on their vests/belts. The ones that I see on the market now are 121.5MHz only, which they are trying to phase out in favor of the 406MHz versions that also transmit location information from an integrated GPS receiver. Unfortunately, they're just like life vests. They're only good if you're wearing it.
He might not have radar, but he certainly should have a radar reflector.
It would be crazy not to hoist a radar reflector if sailing around major shipping lanes. They only cost a few dollars. They are easy to assemble, stow, and hoist. Even in the open waters, every sailing cruiser has one.
Take a look:
www.davisnet.com/news/photos/marine/safety.asp
Anyone remember back in late 2000 when Scott Smith, the former bassist from the rock band "Loverboy", was swept off his 37' sailboat by a wave nearly 30' tall just outside the Golden Gate bridge? Apparently the wave "came out of nowhere" all by itself, and Scott broke the steering wheel off the boat trying to hang on with all his might. His body never was found. Two friends onboard the boat did survive the incident to live and tell what happened.
There's another story on this at sfgate, and it confirms what I thought: visibility was unrestricted. I was in the Presidio around noon and it was in the 60's with no fog.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
To hell with you, you mindless little idiots.
1) He fell overboard. With or without a PDF (life jacket) he'd be dead. Th water is cold up there, low 50's I think so hypothermia will get him even if he does not drown.
2) A common danger is the boom. If the boat does an unplanned jibe and the sailor forgets to duck he can get hit hard on the head with a fairly massive chunk of aluminum boom. This could knock him out, kill him outright (not likely) or (more likely) knock him overboard. (see #1 above)
3) His boat could have hit something and sunk. Then we are back to #1 above. If he was very lcky he could have goten a life raft out. But them most rafts are equipted with a GPS and a radio.
4) some kind of a medical problem. Then it's not really a boating accident but just not a good place to have such a problem
It's hard to understand how any of this could happen. An experienced sailor would have himself tethered to the boat at all times with a tether short enough that he could not fall into the water. He would know not to let a boom hit him and would maintain a watch for ship traffic.
But you can be that Microsoft will STILL blame piracy...
The last few dozen yachts Larry Ellison bought were equipped with advanced torpedo launch systems. I wonder if these two events are related? At the time, this didn't catch my attention, but when I read they were also equipped with laser-guided, gas-engine-powered facial hair trimmers and a 20-year supply of Risperidol, I started to wonder.
A local radio station used to prove this point with tongue-in-cheek, and oodles of irony. Specifically, they had a 30-second bit, made out to sound like a commercial, for the Foreign Death Conversion Chart, which would compare how many foreign deaths equated with American deaths. A horrible way to look at things, but very pertinent, if one watches the local news.
In Korea, only old people sail solo.
What was once true, is no longer so
"Now facing the Blue Wave of Death."
Is that a new offline mail reader?
(You have to be an old BBS hack to get that one.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
"A 40-foot yacht is not so small as to disapear easily that close to shore..."
You ever been up next to a big container ship? I mean like a super-panamax ship? Those things can (and have) run over small sailboats and not even notice. 40-foot might well be a bit too big for that, but I don't know, and I certainly wouldn't bet my life on it -- or Mr. Gray's...
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Reindexing the ocean yet?
Do not reply to this thread! You could be in deadly da
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Judging from ssec and noaa info, it looks like a high north, a low to the south are almost straddling the bay. Some sea fog and/or low clouds extends well past the farallons. I would've expected a W-NW wind gradually clocking around to N NE but depending on day/night temperatures, near shore sea or land breeze might counter this and extend out 5 miles or so. Can any sailors in the area give local conditions for the past 48 hours? People have already speculated on things that can go wrong but quite a few failures can put you out of touch but still be surviable:
Cell phones really can't be expected to work 26 miles offshore, my old analog toshiba didn't even make it 1/3 across lake Michigan.
If as this NOAA bouy indicates, the wind has been moderate NW-westerly, we can hope that he'll be found in a raft or disabled boat along the shore. It might even be worth slashdotting highway 1 from Pt. Reyes to Monteray and look for him. I once called in a dismasted catameran I found with a telescope I'd just picked up at a FL rummage sale. It was dusk and the crew were on the horizon paddling furiously against an offshore wind.
If the wind/currents were moving offshore, he could be well over 100 miles offshore, trying to get back. VHF radio is basically line of site, you might get 50 miles on a good day from a high coast guard tower, if his radio were working well. But more typically I only get 5 miles boat-boat.
If something went wrong with the boat, fire, dismasting, rudder break... he might be busy heaving to and doing whatever he can to keep from running aground. The bushing which attaches the rudder to the tiller on my 24' C&C eventually went bad. We replaced it, but offshore failure wouldn't have been fun. A larger sailboat sank near scotland when its wheel steering cable broke and the rudder slammed hard enough to crack its housing.
But it wouldn't take a sinking to be lost, if the wind took him out of VHF range, it wouldn't matter if he knew exactly where he was, no one else would unless he had a working activated EPIRB.
There is a small chance that his navigation equipment went wrong and he doesn't know where he is. The california coast is very unforgiving. I think I heard that Francis Drake sailed right past SF bay because from offshore it looks just like another pices of rocky unforgiving shoreline.
There is still hope. My prayers go out to his family and friends. Any computer expert interested in sailing and astronomy must be a good guy, even if he works for Microsoft.
Seriously. Making fun of someone who may fallen in harm's way just because he chose to work at Microsoft???
Jim Gray is a brilliant guy who I had the pleasure of meeting and working with several times while I worked at Microsoft. Once had a great, lengthy discussion with him at a WinHEC conference in Seattle. Very sharp, enjoyable guy to talk to. My best wishes go out to Jim and his family - I hope for the best.
Something about your version of selective compassion doesn't sit well with me. I guess I just figured that compassion was a part of humanity shown towards everyone, not just the people we know (or are well known). You know, something that encourages one to show a little shred of respect towards a (possibly) dead man, even if he does work for Microsoft.
Don Dodge had this to about Jim on Robert Scoble's blog:
Do you know enough about him to show him that respect now?
It's not a matter of dealing. We're all doing that. We're just not all as cold inside as you.
Jaws!
Do regional phone carriers have information regarding his last whereabouts based on the last successful ping (or call) from his cell phone?
Why not offer your help to find Jim Gray? Visit http://www.mturk.com/mturk/preview?groupId=J0XZ58S TDWJZ5QY4F9M0
8 STDWJZ5QY4F9M0) for more details.
For those who want more background info of this search effort, I am posting an email from Werner Vogels (without his permission):
Through a major effort by many people we were able to have the Digital Globe satellite make a run over the area on Thursday morning and have the data made available publicly. We have split these images into smaller tiles that can be easily scanned visually and stored into the Amazon S3 storage service. We then created tasks for reviewing these images and loaded then into the Amazon Mechanical Turk Service.
This is where you come in. We need your help in reviewing these images to see whether you can locate Jim's boat in any of these images. Please go to the Amazon Mechanical Turk site and help us find Jim Gray.
The weather conditions were not ideal as some areas were cloudy, but we can still look for him in those places where there is a somewhat clear view. We hope to get more satellite data in the coming days of a wider area. The current images are panchromatic with a 0.82m, and Jim boat would be about 6 pixels in size. Please visit the Amazon Mechanical Turk site (http://www.mturk.com/mturk/preview?groupId=J0XZ5
I have to stress that many individuals and companies are to thank for making this possible; many academics friends relentlessly worked around the clock to get access to the data, many industry friends of Jim functioned as connectors to hook up officials and individuals, and people from NASA, Digital Globe, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Amazon and others worked hard get to the data collected and available on a very short time scale. The Mechanical Turk team worked deep into the night to make this work.
Now it is your turn, go find Jim Gray.
Jim Gray was closely associated with a number of satellite and aerial imaging projects. A group of his friends have been putting together a set of satellite images covering the area where he disappeared. They are looking for people to help sift through the images in the hope of spotting the boat. If you're interested in helping, Amazon have set up a site here:
http://www.mturk.com/mturk/preview?groupId=J0XZ58S TDWJZ5QY4F9M0
You can register with an existing Amazon account, or create a new one. In any case, it doesn't cost anything, and if you're really concerned, it's an easy way to help out.