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."

Comments

The plot thickens!

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Jim Gray, Turing Award winner and developer of many fundamental database technologies ...

Isn't reiserfs organized sort of like a database?

Re:The plot thickens!

[Tsen Subversion Wrat]

I for one welcome our new Dolphin Overlords.

I know what happened....

[Anonymous Coward]

he accidently did a Cartesian Join, and flooded the boat

Re:I know what happened....

[Anonymous Coward]

What am I missing?

Do cartesian joins (or Descartes) have something to do with boats or ships or floods?

Re:I know what happened....

[Gospodin]

Sure, but sometimes you're stuck with the design you're given. :) OP used name fields, so I did, too. But the query could be improved without changing the DDL.

Say, did you hear that Jim Gray is missing? I think the topic is several miles over thataway *gesturing*.

Penguins

[Camel Pilot]

Let's hope he is saved by Penguins.

Re:Penguins

[Opportunist]

This is one of the moments when I wish the Linux mascot was a dolphin.

Re:Penguins

[drinkypoo]

Can you imagine the geek's horror when he finally sees a female that's (kinda) of the species and realizes that her lower half is ... well...

I know I'd be thinking "Okay, now hum 'the wheels on the bus go round and round'".

But anyway, this made me think of Red Dwarf, as so many things do.

HOLLY: Alright! What's happening, dudes?
CAT: We're having a really nice time. I'm dating Marilyn Monroe and also I have another girlfriend who's a mermaid. She's half woman, half fish. (He starts licking and kissing a photograph then turns round.) It's Miranda, my girlfriend.

As she comes out of the water we see the top half of her is a fish, the bottom half is a woman.

HOLLY: Somehow I'd imagined she'd be a woman on top and a fish on the bottom.
CAT: No! That's a stupid way round. (He sticks out his tongue briefly and grins and waves.)

Re:You don't think

[Anonymous Coward]

All Hans on deck...

Hm...

[Cyberax]

> SELECT loc FROM Locations loc, People p WHERE p.name="Jim Gray" AND p.loc=loc.id

The query returned 0 results.

Re:Hm...

[tedivm]

He probably drowned himself when he realized that the majority of the world learned SQL from a tee shirt, and just like the shirt [http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/coder/595d/], you forgot the semi-colon.

Re:Hm...

[Cyberax]

Actually, my development environment does not require semicolons after lone SQL statements. Besides, when you embed SQL statements in code using JDBC/DBI/... you also don't need semicolons.

And I don't like semicolons because one time I accidentally typed "DELETE FROM Table; WHERE ..." on a production database. Luckily, one entry had a constraint which forced transaction to rollback.

Sounds like...

[macadamia_harold]

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.

Re:You don't think

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor joke. I will kill you with my bare Hans for that one.

technologist needs to use technology?

[somewhere in AU]

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?

Re:It's OK

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Uh-oh.

[Jello B.]

I hope this turns out to be better than Mario is Missing.

Re:You don't think

[poopdeville]

I'd rather use a Hans held knife.

Re:It's sad really.

[Jello B.]

What's even sadder is that Ballmer & Gates weren't with him....But w

Wait, why isn't that thought finished? Did somebody mention Candlejack? Now there are two people mi

Negative comments

[Sabathius]

I heard he made an anti-microsoft comment and a chair hit the side of his boat.

Re:Negative comments

[Bruce_of_the_Cosmos]

Well that's highly unlikely, unless Ballmer's developed some kind of long range chair canno-- Oh god...

Re:Was using MS Sailor 2007 XP

[SeaFox]

Cue up the jokes about how he shouldn't have automated his sailboat using Windows. Now facing the Blue Wave of Death.

And now, the Blue Wave of Death is rendered in glass-like clarity!*
.
.
.
.
.
*Tsunami Premium or Ultimate and supported tidal card required

Pirates!

[austinpoet]

I had a funny feeling that my bittorrent of Windows Vista was a little fishy...

Re:Good one Slashserfs

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot.

I had the pleasure...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Was using MS Sailor 2007 XP

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Perhaps he came across a shark with a frikking laser?

Re:You don't think

[kv9]

Hans shot first? /ducks

Re:Was using MS Sailor 2007 XP

[bl8n8r]

>Cue up the jokes about how he shouldn't have automated his sailboat using Windows. Now facing the Blue Wave of Death.

Captains log 8:13am
* Nice weather, perfect day for sailing. Easy trip. Good time to upgrade sailboat using Windows today.

Captains log 8:57am
* Started Vista install on dock but it said "monitor revoked". Must need to upgrade to HD monitor. Cool, this old 20.1" LCD is a relic anyway. Off to Best Buy!

Captains log 10:17am
* Those guys at Best Buy are so helpful! They noticed I didn't have an HDMI video card and hooked me up with one that would work with Vista! It even works with the new DirectX 10, so that's cool. Just get the install restarted and we'll weigh anchor!!

Captains log 11:43am
* Install started out good but but died and box wont power up with every boot. Called those helpful people at Best Buy and they said I need to run the box down to Geek Squad. Be back in about 40 mins!

Captains log 2:32pm
* This must be some video card. They tech at Geek Squad said the GPU pulls 300 watts by itself, so my old power supply couldn't keep everything running. They put a 9000 watt shiny new power supply in it and boy did that sucker take off! Weeee! Time to weigh anchor!

Captains log 3:12pm
* Install started good again, but keeps freezing up when partitioning. Tech at Geek Squad said I should have about 1.5 gigs at least for the GPS software. Ok, one last trip to Best Buy and we can finally get sailing!!

Captains log 3:57pm
* Installer is running again and going good. Going to unhook anchor and take off. Won't have any GPS for now, but I think I can wing it by eye for a while. Everything should be installed shortly and we'll be up and sailing!!

Captains log 4:25pm
* Still no GPS (restarted install) but it sure feels good to be out at sea again! I think I could probably wing this whole trip without it anyway.

Captains log 5:30pm
* Wow Aero sure looks sweet!! Just a little more configuring and we'll have some GPS to guide us back at nightfall. Getting some weird error message that says "Operation completed succesfully" but the dialog is titled as an Error message with a big red X on it. Weird. Oh well, it will be fixed in the next service pack.

Captains log 7:16pm
* Restarted install a couple times after getting a message that boot.exe was no longer working, but all is well now! Even have the GPS software running, well kind of, a blue screen comes up saying "Restricted Content" any time I ease the boat in a North West direction.

Captains log 9:36pm
* Getting dark, should have made it to Farallon Islands by this time but nothing in sight. Hmm... I see a few lights from passing ships way off in the distance, but getting fewer and fewer. Sea is getting a bit rougher too. Think I'll check weather.com to see if storms are coming in.

Captains log 9:40pm
* Opened Internet Explorer, and got an error message saying my firewall was turned off. I went to control panel to check it and another message came up that said "due to an unidentified problem, windows cannot display windows firewall settings". I tried getting to weather.com anyway and all of a sudden the screen filled up with popups. Going to try and download spybot S&D. Must have a glitch.

Captains log 1:10am
* Well that's that. Everything looked to be cleaning up nicely (1200 infections) until the GPS software displayed a picture of somebody bent over stretching their asshole. God that was gross. The whole friggin works went overboard. That 9000 watt power supply went off like a Roman Candle when it hit the water! Heh.. that really felt good. Getting out the damn compass and sextant if I can find them....

Captains log 1:30am
* According to map, compass and sextant I am somewhere off the tip of the Baja peninsula. Explains what the border patrol plane was doing this far north last time the GPS software was "working"... uhh.. wtf... looks like a big Blue Wave coming...

Please show some respect!

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

Do not make any sick jokes until AFTER a trragedy is confirmed.

SQL to the Rescue!

[Hoi Polloi]

"...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'