After reading Perry’s post about NexusDB V2 public beta, I surfed over to the NexusDB site, to find that their embedded (v1.08) database is now free. You don’t get the source (optionally available for US$250), but other than that it’s there for you to use. They even updated it to be used with Delphi 2005. That’s great!
When I look at the statistics for this weblog, recently a lot of searches for Bejeweled 2 Deluxe point to my website. Not surprisingly, because I wrote about it. What I don’t like, is that ALL searches include a hint of “I don’t want to pay for it, so where is the crack / keygen / hacked version”! I bought Bejeweled 2 Deluxe, although I didn’t like Popcap’s new 60-minutes-trial strategy. And I don’t regret buying it. The software is immediately activated after the buying-transaction, and you get 5 installs, in case something goes wrong with your PC, or you just want it installed on another one. The original Bejeweled was addictive, but with the new Powercubes and Hypercubes this version will even take more of your time!
Be a good computeruser, and buy it. Don’t hack it. Good games deserve to be bought. I bought a lot of games that cost 2 or 3 times what Bejeweled 2 costs, and I have played them only a fraction of the time I now spend with Bejeweled 2.
Speaking about Java (see previous post): Sun is releasing early builds of Java 6.0 to the public via Early Access. If you’re into Java, you can’t miss out on this one.
Really old versions of Oracle supported procedures in PL/SQL, later compiled Java was added. With release 2 of Oracle 10g the .NET CLR will be supported, meaning that you can store whatever compiled C#/VB.NET/J# or any other .NET-language into the database. Of course I don’t expect everything to work with this first release, but I like this move better than Oracle’s move to include Java. I’m just not into Java.
Read more about Release 2 here. The current planned date for Release 2 is around the middle of 2005.