I can't tell you how often I end up editing the database just to change the 'siteurl' and 'home' options.
Recently on the hackers list Matt suggested that it might have been a good thing to have put the those options in wp-config.php, and I agree.
My patch allows you to set the constants "WP_HOME" and "WP_SITEURL" in wp-config.php, in which case they will override the db settings (and gray out those fields in the admin options page).
As far as I can tell, this is something that would have to be done with a core change like this, because plugins are read too late after 'home' and 'siteurl' have already been used in wp-settings.php.