So England are out of the World Cup. Perm any one of the following excuses as to why :-

– It was Rooney’s fault
– It was Erikkson’s fault
– It was Lampard’s fault
– The weather was too hot
– Crouch is rubbish
– We’re rubbish at penalties
– It was Ronaldo’s fault

All of which are utterly pointless. You get what you earn in life, and England just aren’t good enough, pure and simple. We’re all armchair pundits who become experts overnight, so my opinion is just as valid/invalid as the rest, but that’s life, get over it. At least drunk people didn’t smash up city centres again. Maybe we’re getting used to it now!

On a lighter note, I’ve read SLED10 ships on the 17th July, barring any major disaster with the public beta. I’ve installed it at home and work, and like it a lot. I’m becoming massively anti-Microsoft as every day passes. They are obviously still a very powerful company, but I detect a shift in attitudes now.

Users are wiser now than they have ever been, and are looking at what their alternatives are. I like Macs, but don’t like the price point. If I can have the software functionality on general purpose PCs, I’d be happy with that. Throw in Open Office for free, and I’m a happy camper. SLED10 does everything I want, and turning on XGL makes it a fun environment in which to work.

I’ve even got to the bottom of the Linux DVD player. Novell aren’t going to throw one in, but I can recommend Xine. Go to http://www.xinehq.de and download the RPM/deb for your system. I used the ones from the Brazilian maintainer.

Installs in minutes, no mind numbing compiling from source. I’m just not down with that at all, it has to pass the idiot test and install with a few clicks and no cryptic build errors. I’m thinking of writing a Cool Solution about it.