$75K Prosthetic Arm Is Bricked When Paired iPod Is Stolen 194
kdataman writes U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Ben Eberle, who lost an arm and both legs in Afghanistan, had his Ipod Touch stolen on Friday. This particular Ipod Touch has an app on it that controls his $75,000 prosthetic arm. The robbery bricked his prosthesis: "That is because Eberle's prosthetic hand is programmed to only work with the stolen iPod, and vice versa. Now that the iPod is gone, he said he has to get a new hand and get it reprogrammed with his prosthesis." I see three possibilities: 1) The article is wrong, possibly to guilt the thief into returning the Ipod. 2) This is an incredibly bad design by Touch Bionics. Why would you make a $70,000 piece of equipment permanently dependent on a specific Ipod Touch? Ipods do fail or go missing. 3) This is an intentionally bad design to generate revenue. Maybe GM should do this with car keys? "Oops, lost the keys to the corvette. Better buy a new one."
I see three possibilities (Score:2, Informative)
Who?
The guy in the article?
The article?
The editor?
The submitter?
At least start a new paragraph..
Hmmm ... (Score:5, Informative)
You know, given the terrible kind of software we see in embedded software, and the terrible security implemented by most companies ... I'm perfectly willing to believe this is an incredibly bad design, because there's plenty of evidence that these kinds of things tend to have incredibly bad designs.
Between companies using 10 year old Linux kernels, to having unpatchable systems, or just having really bad understandings of security, I've come to conclude this is the norm.
If true, it is no longer the case with new devices (Score:5, Informative)
i-limb software (Score:2, Informative)
According to the user manual for i-limb,
To make changes to the limb, it either requires loading the software on a pc with blue-tooth or getting an ipod touch setup by i-limb.
Not a $75,000 loss by any means, sounds like the factory has to set up the ipod touch though. It is a pain in the rump, but most robberies are.
Re:Bad Planning (Score:4, Informative)
Last time I checked, the government doesn't earn money. Taxpayers do.
Well, you know what they say:
For those who cannot print money,
earning is the next best option.
Re:Bad Planning (Score:4, Informative)
There are reasons to discourage that, and have them focus on things that the private sector can't do or does poorly; but those are pragmatic considerations, not fundamental obstacles.
Everyone is a taxpayer (Score:2, Informative)
Then they aren't taxpayers, are they?
Sure they are. I assure you that the priest who is fully supported by his congregation is taxed on his "earnings". A housewife still has to file and is responsible for the taxes on the spouses income even if they had no role in actually earning it. All those people still pay sales, use, gasoline, excise, etc taxes. It's essentially impossible to not be a taxpayer on some level.
Re: Hmmm ... (Score:4, Informative)