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Jim Gray Is Missing

Posted by kdawson on from the red-sky-at-night dept.

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."

9 of 283 comments (clear)

  1. Re:If he has his cellphone... by cryptoluddite · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No. Apparently this sort of device hasn't been invented yet, or surely they would have saved James Kim. Now why the rescue workers don't have this kind of thing is a good question. Even if it can't handle calls but can just give a direction to the phone's 'ping' it would be good enough to find people with.

  2. Was using MS Sailor 2007 XP by kbob88 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Cue up the jokes about how he shouldn't have automated his sailboat using Windows. Now facing the Blue Wave of Death.

    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:
    • Something broke and he's drifting around out there, probably to be spotted fairly soon as there's plenty of ship traffic and the Coasties are looking;
    • Got blown off course and had to put in somewhere remote on the coast (unlikely as the winds aren't bad);
    • Navigation broke down, he missed the Farallons (although you can usually see them from shore on a good day), went too far out, and is down coming back;
    • Hit a whale / whale hit him -- not good, could sink the boat; hopefully he had a liferaft and was able to get into it;
    • Hit by a ship (it's busy out there); definitely not good; but unlikely as weather has been very good
    • Accidently fell overboard -- very bad, especially with our cold water here. That's why you don't make ocean passages alone, no matter how experienced you are.
  3. Re:It's OK by DrRevotron · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For a second there, I thought Slashdot would drop this stupid anti-Microsoft bullshit and at least show some compassion.

  4. Sickening by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Sickening by AmberBlackCat · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In the last story, which was about debate over whether a small person was a separate species, a guy repeatedly threw around the term "bible thumper", presumably to refer to Christians. It was condescending enough to be a troll and definitely off-topic but he got modded insightful. The guys making fun of a guy who may have just died and presumably did nothing wrong, are getting modded funny. Somebody's going to be disgusted with what I'm saying right now and I have no idea how it will get modded or not modded. We'll all have a reason to feel sickened by Slashdot. I don't know if it's worth fighting.

    2. Re:Sickening by LordLucless · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."
              - George Bernard Shaw

      --
      Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
  5. This is Slashdot, and this is the world by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
  6. Because it's the ANSI standard... by blorg · · Score: 3, Insightful

    - 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.

  7. Re:If you are that old, ACCEPT IT! by Moofie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Listen up, not-old-people! It's not up to you what risks other people wish to undertake! If it doesn't pose an immediate danger to you, mind your own business!

    --
    Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!