USB prosthetic finger gives new meaning to thumbdrives
(Credit:
Jerry Jalava)
This is a story about Jerry Jalava, a Finnish software developer who lost part of his finger in a motorcycle accident last July. According to his friend, Henri Bergius, when the surgeon assigned to work on Jalava's prosthetic finger discovered his hacking history, he made a clever suggestion: incorporate a USB key into the new digit.
The prosthetic finger contains a 2GB USB key, and Jalava also loaded it with Billix distribution, CouchDBX, and Ajatus to run off the drive, throwing even more geek cred into the mix.
When Jalava needs the drive, he simply pulls it off his left hand, plugs it in, and comes back to pick it up after the transfers are finished. That dispels any parallels to that scene in "Robocop" when he uses the giant spike that comes out of his hand to transfer data from the OCP criminal database to the computer in his head.
Check out more pictures of Jalava's cybernetic finger in the slideshow below, and be sure to listen to Thursday's episode of The 404 Podcast to hear 30 jokes in a row about what would happen if this were to go on another part of the body.
Justin Yu covers desktop computers, printers, and peripherals for CNET. When he's not scouring eBay for useless ephemera or eating hot dogs for breakfast, he spends his time making fun of Internet culture every morning on The 404 podcast. E-mail Justin. 
Even if I don't do it myself, I have a great idea for a children's show now. Think Inspector Gadget, only horrifying.
I'd imagine his girlfriend wouldn't be too keen on... y'know, anymore.
He really can give you the finger now... oh i couldn't resist.
This is the best finger ever!
I just hope it is removable, from his finger, would suck if the drive died and it needs surgery to get it out / replace it.
would be a pain at the airport.
Just an ordinary finger?
What's the point of a thumbdrive in your hand if it's not in your...well, you get the point.
And do you really want your hand to be unusable, plugged into your computer, while you're accessing the files? I think I'll pass on this one, thank you very much.
But guess what computers doesn't sense that pleasure!
- by mrgunny40 May 25, 2009 7:34 AM PDT
- What the hell!! Is that even legal?
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