Must have played through HL2 about six times, got 90% of the achievements. Also played through the episodes a few times. LOVE it.

What makes HL so much more replayable than other games? I think it comes down to: (a) story (b) environment (c) decent AI, in that order. I was bored instantly with the L4D series because it had no plot. Environment plays a big factor but missing a good story (Fallout 3 I'm looking at you) is crucial too. And even if you have both of those things and it's no fun to play the single player game because the enemies are stupid, that's a quick game killer too.

It also probably helps that I identify with the nerdy protagonist :)

BTW, Valve, you listening? Thanks alot for leaving me with the biggest cliffhanger ever and then not finishing it. It's like the end of Red Dwarf. Exciting at the time but turning into more and more of a letdown. I'm getting the feeling that I'll never know what happens after the forest strider buster battle. GAH =)

I hear this idiocy all the time on IRC. When it happens, I ask if the person if they actually know how to use autotools. The answer is *always* no. Usually with a justification like "why would I want to learn a system that sucks?"

You gave zero reasons for bashing autotools, so I put you in this same camp. Back up your assertions or GTFO.

It is actually a handy piece of software. When used properly, most projects need just one or two macros - AC_CHECK_LIB and AC_CHECK_HEADERS and then just list out your sources and flags in a Makefile.am.

There's really very little to complain about. It does it's job, does it fairly well. The only catch is that you have to RTFM.

AHA! No wonder I couldn't find that last Quantum Cola to complete the collection. Have to go to Japan for it. The machine knows what you need.

Oh heh I missed the part about the future-forward chapter 15. Heh good luck explaining the changes in one chapter though, the UI is very different in many respects.

Just when the Blender 2.5x series is nearly ready for prime time with a whole new UI.

-.-

I was hoping more for 3d entertainment and interaction than ads. Games. Wow the pessimism here makes my eyes water. It's no wonder I haven't been reading it much lately.

You're wrong, my sig works as intended! It's a trap for pedants :-P

SVG: This is the only one in your list that resembles what I mean. I've tried messing with SVG. It's only very recently that it's acceptably fast to do animation type things with it. Canvas 2d is much more lightweight and just feels simpler / easier to use. With SVG you have to stomach the XML too :-)

The rest all require plugins or server side work, so that's technically not really "drawing in a browser", it's drawing in a plugin supplied context.

Not at all acting "high and mighty". It's just - this is not related to WebGL. At all.

WebGL doesn't support video on a texture. It's based on GL ES (embedded) and has a limited set of functionality, even in GL terms.

Well, I suppose you could fake it with a texture atlas, but that would require exploit in PNG or JPEG, which probably would be noticed elsewhere too :-P

If it's exploits you're looking for, I doubt WebGL is a good vector for attack. It's a relatively small finite API. Where are you going to attack? Vertex and fragment data is only handled at all inside a shader - which you must supply. Good luck breaking out of that box. Any obvious attacks like resource over-allocation will likely be squashed quickly.

Compare this with the video spec, which has a huge abstraction right in the middle of it. This opens up any attack vectors that are already in the supported codecs.

I've wanted a way to draw in a browser - I mean really draw, not just use divs as pixels - for a long time now. Finally it's here! WebGL is really smooth now, I've been watching it in the latest minefield builds. Some guy in IRC posted a demo city drawing that had 24k faces and still rendered smooth as silk. 2d drawing on a canvas is also very nice - very easy to use.

This is the dawn of a new era of killer web content. My guess - within two years, WebGL will be the highest paying job in web dev.

A few more months is nothing, I've been waiting years for this ;-)