Very disturbing news: Jim Gray is missing!!!
According to the San Jose Mercury News:
A pioneering Bay Area computer scientist is missing after he left Sunday morning for what he told family was a day sailing trip to the Farallon Islands to dispose of his mother's ashes.
Jim Gray, 63, founder and manager of Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center, had left early Sunday in his 40-foot C&C yacht, Tenacious, from a marina near San Francisco's Fort Mason.
A U.S. Coast Guard spokeswoman said Gray called a family member on his cell phone about 10:30 a.m. to say he was sailing out of cell-phone range and would call when he returned in range. His wife reported him missing shortly after 8:30 p.m. Sunday when he did not show up and calls to his cell phone went unanswered.
I hope he is safe and will return. Jim is one of the sharpest mind and nicest person I had the pleasure to meet, and I would be a great loss to his friends and family and the community at large.
[Update 2007-02-01: Still no news :(. A friend at Oracle told me that they are providing satellite imagery processing to the search. I truely hope that he is ok and will be found.]
[Update 2007-02-01: Additional articles:
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[Update 2007-02-03: Private search efforts and how you can help looking through satellite and plane images at Amazon's Mechanical Turk:
Jim’s friends and colleagues have gathered a large collection of satellite images from the search area. They need volunteers to look through the satellite images and flag an image if the image looks like it contains a boat.
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[Update 2007-02-13: Go to the "Help find Jim" website for seeing how to help]