Thursday, June 26, 2008
Unintended consequences
I first heard about ICE numbers from Spring as I was looking through her cell phone for a particular number and came across such an entry.
It's a nice idea, but …
I received that e-mail [about ICE numbers —Editor] forwarded by another officer who happened to be in the office with me when I opened my e-mail account. I read the e-mail, paused for a second, turned and asked, “Didn't you tell me once that it's best to keep your cell phone keypad locked?”
“Yes,” answers he, “If someone steals my cell, I don't want them to be able to access all that personal information.”
“Huh,” sez I, and returned to vetting my e-mail. A couple of minutes later, I hear quiet beeping behind me. Without turning around, I ask: “Unlocking your keypad, or removing the ICE number?”
“Oh, be quiet,” responds he.
ICE numbers are great—if you leave your phone unlocked.
In another post, LawDog mentions another potential problem with cell phones—people don't remember phone numbers any more:
Every day, someone will be booked into our jail, who when it comes time for those famous Two Completed Phone Calls, tells the officer, “I want to call Soandso.”
Officer sez, “Okay, what's that number?”
Bookee, in a stricken whisper, “It's in my cell phone.”
Which, naturally, has already been sealed inside a plastic property bag, that being locked inside a property box.
Heh.
Not the source code to the database, the data in the database …
I received a call from R today. It had been awhile since I last worked with him (we parted ways due to market change) but he knew I could help him out in a pinch.
He's taken over the maintenance of a sizable website and needed some help in setting up a development server. No big deal (well, except for the control panels but I was able to at least point him in the right direction), and I even set up a revision control system when he threw me a curve ball—a significant portion of the site lives in a database, so is there any way to do revision control of stuff in the database?
And that's … something I've never thought of before. How do you do version control of data in a database?
Update on Friday, June 27th, 2008
JeffC weighs in with some suggestions.
