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.
]
[Update 2007-02-13: Go to the "Help find Jim" website for seeing how to help]
The last year has been though on many. Many people have been and are getting killed in wars and conflicts (Iraq, Sudan/Dafour), got devastated by Tsunamis, starve due to famines and loose their lively-hood and sometimes even lives due to Hurricanes and Taifuns such as Kathrina and Stan. And now we have the devastating earthquake in the northern Pakistan/Indian/Afghanistan area. My thoughs and wishes are with all the people that have suffered greatly and I hope they will be able to rebuild.
I am glad that Microsoft is very generous in matching donations (and now even time) and that it has a yearly Giving Campaign (hint: it is currently on. MS employees: please consider giving [internal link]). I would recommend that everyone who can give, thinks about giving to at least one of the causes to help the affected and asks his or her employer to provide matching funds. As often, unless you can provide a specifically needed skill, it is often better to donate money.
Here is a list of some organizations that can benefit (feel free to add in the comment section, but please only list no-strings attached, well-regarded organizations):
And please do not forget the long-term issues (refugee issues, long-term famines, forgotten wars, inequality and injustices, the need for environmental protection of our biosphere) over the short term catastrophs.
Thanks.