3D APIs

Last week I dowloaded Microsoft DirectX SDK to attempt to mess around with 3D programming, and possibly make my own game. What I quickly learned was that DirectX was very confusing and difficult. I did several tutorials, and it seems like everything you want to do requires different code, nothing is the same from program to program. Why can't they make a 3D API that is just as easy to use as C# windows programming? Maybe I will make this my life long "for fun" project. My "vision" is to have code that would look something like this:

C# code

mesh myMesh = ("C://myDocs/mesh.obj");
camera myCamera = new camera;

scene myScene = (myCamera(X,Y,Z)), (myMesh(X,Y,Z));

render(24fps).myScene;

X,Y,Z would be the location of the object.

Computer Science Community's adopted emblem

I came across this today. It is called a "glider" and is taken from "the game of life". I don't fully understand what it is, but the computer science community has adopted it as their emblem. I would like to find out more about it, and what it stands for.

Free Computer Science Ebooks

Today I came across a website with several free ebooks on computer science. They can be appreciated by everyone because most are not based on speciffic languages or platforms, they are just about theory and the complex ideas behind being a successful programmer. Here's the url:http://www.techbooksforfree.com/index.shtml

Enjoy!

What info does a hacker need to access my computer?

This is a question I've been trying to find out for a while. Every where I look I can't find a direct answer. What I have peiced together is this. If you know the true answer please post a comment.

Have you ever remotely accessed your computer? I don't want to get into explaining this, just look at Jon's blog (blog.rjmolesa.com). He has a big right up on it. Basically how a hacker gets into your system is by installing a server (similar to tight vnc, but one they usually make themselves that is invisible) when you visit a site created by a hacker or hacked by a hacker. It automatically downloads and installs itself on your computer. Then the information a hacker needs is your IP address (to the server they installed) and the password to the server they installed. Both of these are easy to get (they choose the password when they install the server, and you can remotely see a computers IP address).

This is just what I could peice together so, please let me know if you know the true answer. I believe if people knew how hackers were able to do this, they would be able to help protect themselves more.

Microsoft Sam

Well, I don't have much to talk about at the moment, but I like to post things often, so here it is...

I was messing around in my control panel today and met Microsoft Sam. He is really neat, and is a Great way to get on little sisters nerves. If you are a windows xp user, you should have Sam on your computer right now, whether you know it or not. Sam's job is to assist the visually impaired by reading what is displayed on your screen, however I found a way to use him to talk for you. Go under control panel->speech. Type something in the textbar and click preview voice, and it will say what you put. You can also adjust the speed to make it super annoying (if that is your intention :)

I got to messing around, and if you use punctuation (like ! and ?) you can change his tone. If you add about three exclamation marks to the end of your sentence, sam will try to speak with excitement. It is fun to just play around with.

Enjoy!