
Héctor Garcia-Molina, 1953–2019 - furcyd
https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2019/12/08/hctor-garcia-molina-1953-2019/
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leeoniya
> In 2001, Garcia-Molina was invited to join the board of directors of Oracle
> Corporation, a position he held until his death. He forged personal and
> professional bonds with many leaders of the database company, including
> founder and chairman Larry Ellison, who offered this statement: “We will all
> miss his contributions. I will miss Hector’s pleasant and persuasive way of
> discussing complex ideas. Hector’s gentle and considerate personal style
> captured my enduring respect and affection.”

still trying to reconcile this with "Do not fall into the trap of
anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison."

~~~
tenpies
> trying to reconcile this

It is generally considered quite rude to speak ill of those who are no longer
with us, even if they were adversaries when they were alive. This goes doubly
when speaking publicly and in a professional setting.

On another note, that anthropomorphizing quote is quite possibly my favourite
use of the word ever.

~~~
leeoniya
> It is generally considered quite rude to speak ill of those who are no
> longer with us, even if they were adversaries when they were alive.

This was a shot at Ellison, who is still very much with us.

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peterburkimsher
In 2011, I was applying to Stanford for Ph.D. (I didn't get in, and eventually
had a bad experience starting at KAIST in Korea). At the time, I was living in
Vancouver, and I took a couple of weeks to visit friends from exchange
programme in California, and briefly passed Stanford. I emailed a couple of
professors to try to meet (and maybe get a foot in the door...).

Héctor very kindly replied to my email! He also invited me to the InfoLab
lunch, which was about MOOCs that day. He was very friendly and knowledgable,
and even though I was but fresh out of university in the UK, he welcomed me
warmly, humbly listened to some of my crazy ideas about data management, and
encouraged me to pursue serious research.

It's sad to read of his passing. I'm grateful that he's well-known enough to
be memorialised here on Hacker News; he deserves the recognition.

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mikek
Hector was on my thesis committee. In addition to being one of the most cited
authors in Computer Science ([http://lintool.github.io/scholar-scraper/index-
stratosphere....](http://lintool.github.io/scholar-scraper/index-
stratosphere.html)), he was a kind soul.

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teajunky
I still own a copy of "Database Systems: The Complete Book" (by Hector Garcia-
Molina, Jeffrey D. Ullman and Jennifer Widom). I highly recommend it. Those
books with such deep knowledge are very rare these days.

~~~
jbduler
Me too. Products cycle too fast those days so there is less need for those
great books.

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adamfisk
His p2p research group was extremely influential in the design of second
generation Gnutella search algorithms around 2002, particularly those
integrated into LimeWire. Sad to hear of his passing.

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prpl
Oh man, I totally missed this, I don’t remember seeing anything on the
Stanford report either.

I audited CS245 and my coworkers did as well, among other things I showed up
to. Hector was a wonderful person and a great teacher.

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scarejunba
Well, that's a familiar name. He wrote the intro textbook with Ullman and
Widom for Databases that so many courses use.

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spicyramen
Rest in peace, one of the most influential personalities in CS in the Valley
and an inspiration to his students

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ramanujank
Peace!

p.s. anyone else bothered by the ads on the post?

~~~
mikorym
I think the point of ads is to bother you. The more expensive the ad, the more
it bothers you.

I don't think there is a "solution" (yet) to the ad-as-a-model problem.

Edit: The only ad I see there is for their book. Maybe try Firefox?

