Alphonse Bertillon and 19th Century Databases

Earlier I described an idea that I called the Software Provenance Database. The essence of the idea is a database of information on how to tell what version of a piece of software you're using.

I didn't like the name though, and remembered reading about Alphonse Bertillon, a French police employee who in 1882 presented "anthropometry", a technique of identifying a person based on body measurements and other observations of unchanging features such as scars.

Hence I'd like to consider using Messr. Bertillon's name or story for this database.

Further, I wanted to add that this database certainly should not be limited to determining versions of an executable. The idea is to gather in one spot any information about how you can dynamically determine the state of your computer, and this can include configuration information (how much memory is installed?) and data schemas or file formats.

If you have a few moments, it would be interesting to read this account of how Bertillon's method works, and to think about a database search which involves no computational machinery. Notice his method for partitioning the records into equal portions, for example to make the search quicker. It is to me a good example of what I think Dijkstra meant when he said "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."

Rantlet: Look who (or what) knows so much

My CD is dirty or damaged. I knew this already. My computer knows it too:



So it knows the problem. I'm impressed. But I don't know how to turn on error correction. Why doesn't it do something about it? Why isn't there a button labelled "So turn on error correction already!"? I don't want to get my hopes up here, but maybe they could even just turn on error correction for me, if they think that might help.

OK, I'm calming down. I had popped in a familiar CD to help me focus, and now I'm having to write to get out my frustration. If you click "More information", it does at least tell you how to turn on error correction. And the error correction, as they tell you, doesn't always work and might cause your CD to skip when it wasn't skipping before. OK, so there's a legitimate choice involved that is best left to the user. And I'll allow that this dialog may be fitting into a standardized error dialog which always has those two buttons, "Close" and "More information". OK, no more to say. Just a vague, undefined dissatisfaction that will probably induce me to try something different if it comes along.