NULL

A California security researcher who cheekily selected the custom license plate of “NULL” paid the price for that when he was hit with oodles of traffic tickets intended for other motorists. When an officer forgets to fill in the license plate of an offender, the database system codes that cell as “null” or not containing any value. Factor in a state contractor enforcing the actions and the DMV being the sole defense between this man and these tickets and you can quickly see why Joseph Tartaro was at one point facing $12,049 in traffic fines for actions he almost certainly did not do, unless his Nissan Infiniti is in fact a Transformer. Some chit chatting with the DMV got that down to $6,262 as of last weekend, and once there was a Wired reporter on the other end of the line that dropped to $140 pretty quick. I would say that the lesson here is that official legal databases are hardly the place for tomfoolery, but I am also legally a marriage officiant in the city of New York because of an internet church, so glass houses and what not.