No, control must be in the far left: you don't hit control with a finger, you use the meat of your hand.

This only works if you have a real keyboard, not one of the imitations that come with laptops and Macs.

That's why I use Kinesis Advantage keyboards.

Maybe the ideal keyboard would also not have a huge space bar, but two thumbs keys that would act as both space and a modifier if hold.

Have you considered an Ergodox, or one of the other programmable keyboards supported by the http://qmk.fm/ project?

I have an Ergodox Ez that I've created a custom key-map targeted towards my vim and i3-wm: left of "a" is a key that if I tap it does ESC and if I hold it does the Windows key. Right of ";" is quote/Win. "z" and "/" if I hold them become control. Among other things.

It took me around 2 weeks of un-learning some bad habits I had, to become really proficient at the Ergodox. Some of it was that I used to hit the "b" with my right hand but Ergodox only has it on the left. A large part was that I was borrowing a friend's keyboard with blank keycaps and though I was a touch typist, I would regularly look at the keyboard to "get my bearings". Plus, I always looked to do numeric entry. Plus, moving keys around for enter/space/backspace/tab took some getting used to.

If you think "my ideal keyboard would", Qmk firmware plus one of the dozens of supported keyboards may just get you there.

As another commenter said, QMK is the gateway. If you really want a lot of thumb buttons, look at an xd75, atomic/planck if you are not afraid of having many layers, or mitosis if you are feeling experimental. The customisation is off the charts. I have space and arrow layers in one key, and enter and number layer in another.

Am I the only guy whose pinky doesn't get bothered reaching to control?