Between the Lines

HRH Prince Penguin

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Open Source
Hardware Infrastructure
Linux
Green Tech

Did anyone else happen to notice that Prince Charles is a closet Penguin?

On our UK-based sister site, ZDNet.CO.UK our British colleague Andrew Donoghue quoted His Majesty as follows:

“Many of the case studies we received highlight the business benefits of developing and incorporating a low carbon strategy - not least the real, tangible, bottom-line savings that would delight the heart of even the frostiest finance director,” he said. “The recruitment company, Reed, for instance, has reduced its PC power use by 80 percent by replacing 4,500 PCs and 400 laptops with ‘thin-client terminals’.”

Clearly, we in the Colonies have something to learn from the Mother Country.

But if you read Between the Lines, you could easily change the words “Thin-Client terminals” with “Open Source”. Because that’s where the real benefits of Cloud Computing and Desktop Virtualization actually come in. The idea of Open Source thin clients certainly isn’t new to England — a British Open Source project called Ndiyo has made successful trials in 3rd-world countries with its “Nivo” technology using a very thin client protocol and very Green hardware. Right now, they are in limited production and have not reached economies of scale, but its possible that Nivo’s could be built for 50 bucks apeice, sans monitor and keyboard and mouse. When built into an LCD OLED 15″ screen, it could be brought down to $150 or less.

In another publication, I discussed the possibility of getting this technology in the hands of 3^rd world countries and on every classroom desktop as an alternative to the unmitigated disaster that is the OLPC.

I don’t know if the Prince is an Hardy Heron user, but I’d love to see the Crown adopt Ubuntu as the Official Operating System of The Royal House of Windsor — in the same vein as Bollinger Champagne , Hine Cognac and Bentley Motorcars.

Is the Prince a Penguin? Talk Back and Let Me Know.

posted by Jason Perlow
May 9, 2008 @ 12:15 pm

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