Right Index Finger
Just two days ago, I never imagined that the question "What is the most important organ of your body?" would make me think twice. But, the arrival of the new IBM T43 laptop changed it all. This cool thingie comes with a bio metric security system and has a finger print scanner embedded into it which accepts you right index finger print for a password. "It's not without flaws but, you'll get used to it." said the IT guy when my swipe didn't succeed till the fourth attempt. I told him that all these failed swipes could annoy me over a period of time and I wanted him to disable the reader. He said it's against the "acceptable usage" policy of the company to turn it off. Heck, I'll have to live with it now :(. Trust me! this finger print thingie is nothing like they show in the movies. Logging on to a computer has never been such a pain in my life. I swipe and I pray and it comes back with a finger print and a red box on it saying please swipe again. Sometimes as if in an attempt to lift your dampened spirits it asks you to swipe a bit to the right or left. Just when you are on the verge of running out of patience with all the instructions it humors you with a new kind of instruction - Wow! slow down brother you are too fast for me, it politely asks you to "Swipe slowly". But, when you swipe slowly it will present you with a big, bold red cross on the finger print as if it's mocking at your foolish ass for having believed it and actually siwping slowly. Finally, after fiddling with your mind and patience for a while it opens up the doors for you with a bold green tick mark on the finger print. Hmm! those of you who think you haven't been so lucky in your life (and who don't own an IBM laptop with a finger print reader), consider yourself very very lucky 'coz you don't have an annoying finger print reader to deal with every 5 minutes you leave your computer idling aroud. Our company's net worth is in billions of dollars and the company makes millions a day but, frankly I think they would have made much more suing IBM for all the mental trauma and the loss of precious productive hours that the employees have to go through using these damn things everyday. Also, before arriving at some numbers I would urge the jury to take into account the amount of time and love spent in taking care of the right index finger just so that it is clean, it doesn't have any cuts, bruises or burns. I know that the skin ridges grow back irrespective of all the afore mentioned affects but, I wouldn't want an accidental cut while chopping the vegetables to lock me out of my computer for days now would I!? :)

07-Jun-2006 - Eureka! The trick with the right index finger is to swipe it till the tip otherwise, register your thumb and almost all border line careless swipes will be accepted too. May be because the thumb has a better surface area than the index finger and contour matching of partial scans is easy and effective. Once you unlock this baby it's all Vroom! Vroom! 2 GHz processor, 1GB RAM, etc., etc.

/PhaKuDi