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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.
All Hans on deck...
> SELECT loc FROM Locations loc, People p WHERE p.name="Jim Gray" AND p.loc=loc.id
The query returned 0 results.
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
Poor joke. I will kill you with my bare Hans for that one.
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.
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.
I hope this turns out to be better than Mario is Missing.
I'd rather use a Hans held knife.
After all, I am strangely colored.
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
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...
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.
You must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot.
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.
cost benefit analysis probably showed that a human life isn't worth the cost of such a device.
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.
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.
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?
- 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.
Hans shot first? /ducks
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
Do not make any sick jokes until AFTER a trragedy is confirmed.
The latest Slashdot meme.
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.
"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.
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.
"...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's to accept? These days '60-ish' isn't exactly old, never mind 'very old'. My parents are far healthier at this age (mid-60s) than their parents ever were. Also, sailing isn't an 'extreme sport'. Sailing solo is inherently risky, regardless of age, and regardless of the size of the boat.
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.
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!
Sterling Hayden departed for a day voyage with a dozen or more friends on Wanderer out of San Francisco, and the next time anyone saw the yacht was when it entered Tahitian waters.
None of the guests had any idea they were being "Shanghaid". He didn't give them any choice.
See his book titled after his boat's name.
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.
Heh. Funny you should mention it. A couple of weeks ago I rescued some young fool who thought it would be a good idea to go kayaking in the Pacific without proper gear. He fell off, got wet, got himself into a serious hypothermic crisis and had to be rescued by yours truly, an old fart who *was* properly prepared and knows his limitations. I guess I'm lucky that my cardiovascular system held up to the challenge, one more time. I'll head off to my rocking chair now. Thanks for the heads-up.
Try telling all that to the 43 people aged 65 or older who finished the IronMan triathlon last year...
Not that it needs saying, but these people all swam 2.4 miles, biked 112 miles and then ran a marathon (26.2 miles). Also keep in mind there are cutoff times that every competitor must achieve in order to be allowed to continue and everyone who finishes made each cutoff time.
All three parts of the race, on their own, would be beyond the capabilities of most 20-somethings. Most can't even swim 1 mile, let alone 2.4. Most can't ride 50 miles, let alone 112. And most can't run 10 miles, let alone a whole marathon.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
You think drowning on a canoe trip at age 60+ is a bad way to die? I think it was a pretty good one considering some of the alternatives I've seen. Perhaps you'd prefer spending your last decade from age 85 to 95, bed-ridden, incoherent and pissing yourself in a nursing home with one visitor a week (or month or year for that matter)?