Turn all possible 3-6 character alpha-numeric combinations into popular, obscene IM shorthand. Before long, we'll need to abandon the roman character system for something a bit less obvious... like one of the alien languages from Futurama.
Just imagine the fun of trying to describe a license plate number as cryptic as the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince's symbol.
It's called the MacBook Air. People have been slicing bread and cutting cakes with the thing for over a month now. Some people even claim to have sliced themselves open on the seemingly harmless laptop.
This is probably a dumb question, but hasn't someone developed some kind of program to simulate electronic circuits constructed from virtual components, as well as virtual representations of tools commonly used to debug and test them (oscilloscope, voltmeter, etc...) similar to some of those virtual audio patching apps, where you connect software representations of effects modulators to each other via wiring onscreen?
When you really look at DRM as a whole, the only ones who actually get stuck with "playing by the rules" are the ones living in constant fear of life-destroying debt and the loss of their freedom at the hands of a multi-billion dollar corporation. Unfortunately, unless you risk severe penalties to learn how to side step all the tricks and gimmicks these companies use to catch and litigate against those who "experiment with the dark side" (or those who suggest they might be "considering" it), exactly how does one safely rebel against a system where the real "bad guys" hold all the cards (money, lobbyists, politicians, lawyers, law enforcement, DMCA-like laws, etc...) in a country like the United States, where government was once supposed to protect us from such no-win situations?
Imagine a FPS, for example, on which you could notice a sneaking bastard on an unusual angle behind you because you saw his reflection on the doorknob you were about to pull. Or maybe cursing at the newbie because he didn't pay attention to the position of a specific lamp and now your team is screwed because your shadows have been noticed.
This kind of thing can already be done without ray tracing. Projecting shadows and reflections from an object onto another in raster-based engines really isn't all that difficult to pull off in most modern game engines.
Aside from that, exactly how big of a doorknob are we talking about? It's unlikely you're going to notice a reflection on a normal sized one while rushing around, dodging enemy fire in the process. Of course this assumes your setup even has a high-enough resolution to actually make such a minor reflection recognizable as an enemy within a fraction of a second.
Although the game has a surprisingly loyal fan-base, CogniToy's MindRover definitely showing its age. The original version was a product of the 90's right about the time when BattleBots and Robot Wars were starting to gain notice here in the U.S.
What really set this game apart from the crowd though, was that you could actually construct full-fledged autonomous vehicles with fairly sophisticated AIs and weapons, all without writing any code. Instead, you were presented with a number of Lego MindStorms-like sensors / motors, which you'd then wire into a complex system of visual logic gates similar to drawing a program flow-chart.
While the game was presented in 3D, most of the actual game was limited to 2D movements and input.
Eventually though, I'd like to see a modernized version of MindRover that truly expands into the complex nature of a fully-realized 3D world, allowing for much more challenging AI development. Perhaps it could also include modes where an AI can be designed to assist within a manual control scheme.
I was just thinking, but couldn't something like this be stretched out to include games and virtual worlds... and not just verbal/text communication and static imagery. I'm talking about smug, elite gamers who go to great lengths to own/pwn everyone else playing by any underhanded manner possible. (Such as sniping a respawn point in a first person shooter.)
Considering we already know many people often develop a deep-seated attachment to their status within a game to the point that some will even go so far as to kill another person (such as the guy who killed his neighbor over a game console after suspecting him of stealing it) to preserve it, could we be facing a situation where simply being *too* good at a game can be considered a form of cyber-bullying?
It kind of makes you wonder just what would happen if the government started cracking down, demanding things like online leader board or XBox Live style gamer scores be removed in the name of public safety.
Hopefully it won't come to that, and someone with a few braincells suggests internet users start growing a backbone as a condition for connecting to it.
Although they claim Apple has no issues with VoIP, I can't see Apple allowing such an application on the iPhone when it would threaten their business model. Unless Apple literally buys this and creates a proprietary system for coordinating it that prevents a scenario where it's used only for VoIP communication anytime you're within range of any open WiFi access point.
Last I heard, gaming on a plasma display still caused a burn-in effect similar to really old CRT computer displays. Has this changed recently, or is it still far safer to use an LCD display for this sort of thing?
How difficult would it be to coordinate a spoofing system like this that is gradually directed at every used IP across the internet? If it's shown that the *entire* internet is somehow participating in acts of copyright infringement from every IP address across the board, maybe someone might actually begin questioning the current system used to identify those illegally download copyrighted material.
Think of it... the most respected and powerful people in every community simultaneously getting bogus cease and desist letters. (Lawyers, judges, politicians, etc...) I'd be inclined to think *something* just might happen after that.
If there's reason to believe your machines are being compromised, then just don't use them. Paper ballots have worked effectively for several decades and are far more difficult to compromise in large numbers without actually destroying them in the process. You can avoid other practices like box stuffing by using methods similar to that used in our currency to prevent counterfeiting.
Sure, it may not be as convenient as a computer when it comes to counting the votes, but can we realistically afford to be cutting corners on something as important as voting?
As long as paper ballots are out of the equation, people will always question the integrity of the voting system, so long as the votes being cast lack a physical presence that can be counted by anyone.
This isn't the first time the artist formerly known as "the artist formerly known as 'prince'" has raised a stink affecting other artists when it comes to his image. Apparently enough so, that "Weird Al" Yankovic mentioned him specifically in a recent interview with the Biography channel as being continually unapproachable when it comes to obtaining his permission to produce parodies of his work.
While not entirely unusual in itself after the whole "Amish Paradise" conflict with Coolio, it is strange that someone who's made a career of being highly flamboyant and outrageous would turn down someone that the 1980's version of Micheal Jackson had no problem doing similar business with.
On a completely different note, "Weird Al" has come to embrace the YouTube community (versus shunning it like many other artists) and even used it as point of a distribution for his "White and Nerdy" parody video.
... of xenophobic national security laws, preventing such systems from legally connecting to networks outside of their primary country. While this might limit the loss of IT jobs to outsourcing to some extent, the legal boundaries could prevent such decentralized systems from ever functioning to their true and most efficient potential.
One only has to look at how lousy the broadband industry is performing within the United States versus most foreign nations broadband networks to get an idea of what to expect. Whether it's fears of the "mafiaa" suing network providers over piracy concerns, or simply the network providers themselves refusing to update their networks to milk the consumer as much as possible, it's not hard to imagine the countless ways we'll manage to screw ourselves based upon our own fears of each other.
You can't protect your soul from bring stolen by the paparazzi, even in the deepest, darkest regions of the Amazon!
In the meanwhile, do you suppose Jeff Bezos has something to do with this logging stuff? (All those books have to be getting paper from somewhere...) Kinda gives new meaning to the Amazon.com name.
I would imagine the mental map we have of our bodies has four limbs. This would mean that, for purposes of sensation, motor control and proprioception, we can't operate more than four limbs at once. Why would we evolve the ability to control limbs that we don't even have? I mean, brains are flexible, but I would guess that trying to push the "body control/sensation/proprioception" map past four limbs may have some unintended (and possibly bad) consequences.
Personally, I see this problem as more the case that we've only been conditioned to handle that many limbs over years of experience versus any sort of hard limit being imposed. (Not to mention it kind of runs across the grain of that whole "evolution" thing being needlessly debated...)
There have been numerous examples demonstrating that our brains are not only highly adaptive to new situations (such as the brain redistributing certain functions to different areas to overcome damaged areas), but are also highly receptive to new forms of input from external sources (such as invasive probing of the brain to create crude brain-to-computer interfaces to control simple devices, such as an on-screen cursor.)
The larger issue is really more of a case of creating a proper and convenient interface for cyborg-like add-ons. For example, do we necessarily have to invade the brain directly, or can we simply use existing connections by connecting jumper cables to the nerves running down the spine. And if that isn't an option, can we create or add extra, custom nerve sets to the spine and create connections to the brain that way?
Considering all that, a "third arm", or similar contraption is probably within the realm of possibility, but it may take time to adapt to and fine tune the system before it becomes effortless (or closer to that) to use. It's actually not all that dissimilar to the steps you have to go through for setting up a decent voice recognition system.
I would personally love to see some sort of Angelic Layer type implementation, even as video game using neural input. This is probably closer to the realm of The Sims, only with more far-reaching philosophical implications. (Such as, "can a virtual being be considered human if it's driven entirely by a human brain?", among other such questions.)
In some sense, it almost enters Ghost in the Shell territory.
Programmers will always use whichever languages they are most comfortable with for as long as they continue to be supported. As long as either a good compiler or an efficient runtime engine exists for output to whatever OS is needed, it makes no sense to switch out to a less familiar language unnecessarily based solely on it's popularity. (Especially where deadlines are concerned...)
However, there is something to be said of using widely known and understood programming languages versus obscure or dying languages in instances where continuous support for a piece of code is required on a regular basis. If more than one person has to be involved, you're better off staying with a mainstream language for the sake of the code's own longevity, even at the cost of time lost to cracking open a language reference every so often.
"...If you make child porn, be sure to watermark it so the people know the content is authentic."
In the meanwhile, I feel sorry for anime fans who are inevitably going to end up lumped into the same group as the weirdos who actually hang out alone in parks to watch kids play while thinking, "God I want to hit that!" because of such vague laws.
Just think, one day we might start creating life destroying "potential sex offender" lists for anyone who has "too much" anime containing young characters.
Actually, one solution to this would have been to offer an ofline browser though a dial-up BBS. User's who connected to the BBS could put in requests for data from certain servers on the internet, then at the end of the day, the BBS itself would connect to the internet and cache the requested data for the user to access when they returned the following day. (Sort of like a really slow version of an RSS feed...)
As for a realtime browser, it's possible it would have worked with HyperCard. As long as you avoided crap like sound data, something on the level of lynx would have been doable. Combine that with HyperCard's scriptable drawing tools, and you could have some fairly simple 1-bit graphics that could have been usable over such low data transfer speeds. You might have even managed a basic networked whiteboard for presentation elements. Granted, it wouldn't have been nearly as pretty as AOL or compuserve, but it would have brought a new visual approach to electronic communications well before we had things like First Class-based BBSes.
... is that we generally like to buy products we can physically handle and resell when we grow tired of it. This all-digital distribution ideology goes against the grain of our concept of "ownership". So now, when we "buy" a movie, we only get a license to view it on a proprietary piece of hardware... both of which are specifically tied to our personal identity, with no discount what-so-ever for the lack of a physical product or the ability to transfer the product to a new owner after-market. This means that, unlike DVDs or CDs, you now have zero chance of regaining at least some of the money you gave up in the initial purchase. The money simply goes away... never to be seen again.
This factor can have a huge influence on a person's hard value based upon their ability to put their possessions up as collateral. For example, let's say two people spend an equal amount of money on the same titles of music/movies/games/etc, but one of them buys only the digitally distributed, while the other buys everything on CDs/DVDs/etc. Now, let's say both of these guys suddenly end up in debt and need to make a quick buck. Our first guy probably has to resort to turning tricks in some alley, while our second guy can simply go to ebay with his collection and wait for the money to roll in.
Unfortunately, the second guy is quickly becoming a dying breed, due to demand for instant gratification and personal convenience. Digital distribution screws up the concept of trade we've used for thousands of years. We're handing over our physically-backed valuables in exchange for something that has no actual value outside our own hands.
Beta-blockers medications commonly taken by patients with varying heart conditions, such as Atenolol or Metoprolol, can also generate similar effects in brain function and memory. For example, as a child, I was regularly a D to F student during my middle school and early high school years. But after having been diagnosed with a heart murmur and placed on Atenolol, I suddenly started generating A's and B's in my classes. Although I never really pieced it together until a few years ago, I do know I was able to focus on my work far more easily due to a perceived "slow-down" in my overall personality
Also, it seemed to improve my ability to work with logic problems, making programming a far simpler task... especially when it came to tracing/debugging my own code.
Unless you're a voice actor on The Simpsons, you don't count!
It kinda helps to know the battle conditions before you pick a fight. Because obviously, you have no idea how far the odds are stacked against you on this one...
Unlike the other mediums listed, the game industry doesn't harbor foolish attachments to voice actors. To them, you're just another sound effect... an asset that can, if needed, be replaced without a care. After all, it's not like anyone's going to refuse to play a game as well known as the Grand Theft Auto series, simply because they don't like the voices. As long as the gameplay is good, you, the voice actor, are irrelevent to the experience outside of being "a nice gesture" for the price.
And even in the case of GTA4, despite all those hours of dialogue record for the game, the reality is that the average gamer is going to hear it over a fraction of the game's total lifespan in their collection.
Now, if GTA4 had been made into a rigid, missions-only game, you might have some relevence to the player, should the character re-emerge in a future version of the game. However, since the game is a giant sandbox and is online multi-player... no one really cares!
Slashdot Mirror
Turn all possible 3-6 character alpha-numeric combinations into popular, obscene IM shorthand. Before long, we'll need to abandon the roman character system for something a bit less obvious... like one of the alien languages from Futurama.
Just imagine the fun of trying to describe a license plate number as cryptic as the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince's symbol.
It's called the MacBook Air. People have been slicing bread and cutting cakes with the thing for over a month now. Some people even claim to have sliced themselves open on the seemingly harmless laptop.
This is probably a dumb question, but hasn't someone developed some kind of program to simulate electronic circuits constructed from virtual components, as well as virtual representations of tools commonly used to debug and test them (oscilloscope, voltmeter, etc...) similar to some of those virtual audio patching apps, where you connect software representations of effects modulators to each other via wiring onscreen?
When you really look at DRM as a whole, the only ones who actually get stuck with "playing by the rules" are the ones living in constant fear of life-destroying debt and the loss of their freedom at the hands of a multi-billion dollar corporation. Unfortunately, unless you risk severe penalties to learn how to side step all the tricks and gimmicks these companies use to catch and litigate against those who "experiment with the dark side" (or those who suggest they might be "considering" it), exactly how does one safely rebel against a system where the real "bad guys" hold all the cards (money, lobbyists, politicians, lawyers, law enforcement, DMCA-like laws, etc...) in a country like the United States, where government was once supposed to protect us from such no-win situations?
Imagine a FPS, for example, on which you could notice a sneaking bastard on an unusual angle behind you because you saw his reflection on the doorknob you were about to pull. Or maybe cursing at the newbie because he didn't pay attention to the position of a specific lamp and now your team is screwed because your shadows have been noticed.
This kind of thing can already be done without ray tracing. Projecting shadows and reflections from an object onto another in raster-based engines really isn't all that difficult to pull off in most modern game engines.
Aside from that, exactly how big of a doorknob are we talking about? It's unlikely you're going to notice a reflection on a normal sized one while rushing around, dodging enemy fire in the process. Of course this assumes your setup even has a high-enough resolution to actually make such a minor reflection recognizable as an enemy within a fraction of a second.
Although the game has a surprisingly loyal fan-base, CogniToy's MindRover definitely showing its age. The original version was a product of the 90's right about the time when BattleBots and Robot Wars were starting to gain notice here in the U.S.
What really set this game apart from the crowd though, was that you could actually construct full-fledged autonomous vehicles with fairly sophisticated AIs and weapons, all without writing any code. Instead, you were presented with a number of Lego MindStorms-like sensors / motors, which you'd then wire into a complex system of visual logic gates similar to drawing a program flow-chart.
While the game was presented in 3D, most of the actual game was limited to 2D movements and input.
Eventually though, I'd like to see a modernized version of MindRover that truly expands into the complex nature of a fully-realized 3D world, allowing for much more challenging AI development. Perhaps it could also include modes where an AI can be designed to assist within a manual control scheme.
Kinda gives a new "ewww" factor to concepts like a "primordial ooze".
I was just thinking, but couldn't something like this be stretched out to include games and virtual worlds... and not just verbal/text communication and static imagery. I'm talking about smug, elite gamers who go to great lengths to own/pwn everyone else playing by any underhanded manner possible. (Such as sniping a respawn point in a first person shooter.)
Considering we already know many people often develop a deep-seated attachment to their status within a game to the point that some will even go so far as to kill another person (such as the guy who killed his neighbor over a game console after suspecting him of stealing it) to preserve it, could we be facing a situation where simply being *too* good at a game can be considered a form of cyber-bullying?
It kind of makes you wonder just what would happen if the government started cracking down, demanding things like online leader board or XBox Live style gamer scores be removed in the name of public safety.
Hopefully it won't come to that, and someone with a few braincells suggests internet users start growing a backbone as a condition for connecting to it.
Although they claim Apple has no issues with VoIP, I can't see Apple allowing such an application on the iPhone when it would threaten their business model. Unless Apple literally buys this and creates a proprietary system for coordinating it that prevents a scenario where it's used only for VoIP communication anytime you're within range of any open WiFi access point.
Last I heard, gaming on a plasma display still caused a burn-in effect similar to really old CRT computer displays. Has this changed recently, or is it still far safer to use an LCD display for this sort of thing?
How difficult would it be to coordinate a spoofing system like this that is gradually directed at every used IP across the internet? If it's shown that the *entire* internet is somehow participating in acts of copyright infringement from every IP address across the board, maybe someone might actually begin questioning the current system used to identify those illegally download copyrighted material.
Think of it... the most respected and powerful people in every community simultaneously getting bogus cease and desist letters. (Lawyers, judges, politicians, etc...) I'd be inclined to think *something* just might happen after that.
If there's reason to believe your machines are being compromised, then just don't use them. Paper ballots have worked effectively for several decades and are far more difficult to compromise in large numbers without actually destroying them in the process. You can avoid other practices like box stuffing by using methods similar to that used in our currency to prevent counterfeiting.
Sure, it may not be as convenient as a computer when it comes to counting the votes, but can we realistically afford to be cutting corners on something as important as voting?
As long as paper ballots are out of the equation, people will always question the integrity of the voting system, so long as the votes being cast lack a physical presence that can be counted by anyone.
Have you never seen the incredibly bad B-flick "Space Truckers"? It pretty much defines robo-penis to a fault.
This isn't the first time the artist formerly known as "the artist formerly known as 'prince'" has raised a stink affecting other artists when it comes to his image. Apparently enough so, that "Weird Al" Yankovic mentioned him specifically in a recent interview with the Biography channel as being continually unapproachable when it comes to obtaining his permission to produce parodies of his work.
While not entirely unusual in itself after the whole "Amish Paradise" conflict with Coolio, it is strange that someone who's made a career of being highly flamboyant and outrageous would turn down someone that the 1980's version of Micheal Jackson had no problem doing similar business with.
On a completely different note, "Weird Al" has come to embrace the YouTube community (versus shunning it like many other artists) and even used it as point of a distribution for his "White and Nerdy" parody video.
... of xenophobic national security laws, preventing such systems from legally connecting to networks outside of their primary country. While this might limit the loss of IT jobs to outsourcing to some extent, the legal boundaries could prevent such decentralized systems from ever functioning to their true and most efficient potential.
One only has to look at how lousy the broadband industry is performing within the United States versus most foreign nations broadband networks to get an idea of what to expect. Whether it's fears of the "mafiaa" suing network providers over piracy concerns, or simply the network providers themselves refusing to update their networks to milk the consumer as much as possible, it's not hard to imagine the countless ways we'll manage to screw ourselves based upon our own fears of each other.
You can't protect your soul from bring stolen by the paparazzi, even in the deepest, darkest regions of the Amazon!
In the meanwhile, do you suppose Jeff Bezos has something to do with this logging stuff? (All those books have to be getting paper from somewhere...) Kinda gives new meaning to the Amazon.com name.
I would imagine the mental map we have of our bodies has four limbs. This would mean that, for purposes of sensation, motor control and proprioception, we can't operate more than four limbs at once. Why would we evolve the ability to control limbs that we don't even have? I mean, brains are flexible, but I would guess that trying to push the "body control/sensation/proprioception" map past four limbs may have some unintended (and possibly bad) consequences.
Personally, I see this problem as more the case that we've only been conditioned to handle that many limbs over years of experience versus any sort of hard limit being imposed. (Not to mention it kind of runs across the grain of that whole "evolution" thing being needlessly debated...)
There have been numerous examples demonstrating that our brains are not only highly adaptive to new situations (such as the brain redistributing certain functions to different areas to overcome damaged areas), but are also highly receptive to new forms of input from external sources (such as invasive probing of the brain to create crude brain-to-computer interfaces to control simple devices, such as an on-screen cursor.)
The larger issue is really more of a case of creating a proper and convenient interface for cyborg-like add-ons. For example, do we necessarily have to invade the brain directly, or can we simply use existing connections by connecting jumper cables to the nerves running down the spine. And if that isn't an option, can we create or add extra, custom nerve sets to the spine and create connections to the brain that way?
Considering all that, a "third arm", or similar contraption is probably within the realm of possibility, but it may take time to adapt to and fine tune the system before it becomes effortless (or closer to that) to use. It's actually not all that dissimilar to the steps you have to go through for setting up a decent voice recognition system.
I would personally love to see some sort of Angelic Layer type implementation, even as video game using neural input. This is probably closer to the realm of The Sims, only with more far-reaching philosophical implications. (Such as, "can a virtual being be considered human if it's driven entirely by a human brain?", among other such questions.)
In some sense, it almost enters Ghost in the Shell territory.
William Gibbons' Cyber-Simian
Programmers will always use whichever languages they are most comfortable with for as long as they continue to be supported. As long as either a good compiler or an efficient runtime engine exists for output to whatever OS is needed, it makes no sense to switch out to a less familiar language unnecessarily based solely on it's popularity. (Especially where deadlines are concerned...)
However, there is something to be said of using widely known and understood programming languages versus obscure or dying languages in instances where continuous support for a piece of code is required on a regular basis. If more than one person has to be involved, you're better off staying with a mainstream language for the sake of the code's own longevity, even at the cost of time lost to cracking open a language reference every so often.
"...If you make child porn, be sure to watermark it so the people know the content is authentic."
In the meanwhile, I feel sorry for anime fans who are inevitably going to end up lumped into the same group as the weirdos who actually hang out alone in parks to watch kids play while thinking, "God I want to hit that!" because of such vague laws.
Just think, one day we might start creating life destroying "potential sex offender" lists for anyone who has "too much" anime containing young characters.
Actually, one solution to this would have been to offer an ofline browser though a dial-up BBS. User's who connected to the BBS could put in requests for data from certain servers on the internet, then at the end of the day, the BBS itself would connect to the internet and cache the requested data for the user to access when they returned the following day. (Sort of like a really slow version of an RSS feed...)
As for a realtime browser, it's possible it would have worked with HyperCard. As long as you avoided crap like sound data, something on the level of lynx would have been doable. Combine that with HyperCard's scriptable drawing tools, and you could have some fairly simple 1-bit graphics that could have been usable over such low data transfer speeds. You might have even managed a basic networked whiteboard for presentation elements. Granted, it wouldn't have been nearly as pretty as AOL or compuserve, but it would have brought a new visual approach to electronic communications well before we had things like First Class-based BBSes.
... is that we generally like to buy products we can physically handle and resell when we grow tired of it. This all-digital distribution ideology goes against the grain of our concept of "ownership". So now, when we "buy" a movie, we only get a license to view it on a proprietary piece of hardware... both of which are specifically tied to our personal identity, with no discount what-so-ever for the lack of a physical product or the ability to transfer the product to a new owner after-market. This means that, unlike DVDs or CDs, you now have zero chance of regaining at least some of the money you gave up in the initial purchase. The money simply goes away... never to be seen again.
This factor can have a huge influence on a person's hard value based upon their ability to put their possessions up as collateral. For example, let's say two people spend an equal amount of money on the same titles of music/movies/games/etc, but one of them buys only the digitally distributed, while the other buys everything on CDs/DVDs/etc. Now, let's say both of these guys suddenly end up in debt and need to make a quick buck. Our first guy probably has to resort to turning tricks in some alley, while our second guy can simply go to ebay with his collection and wait for the money to roll in.
Unfortunately, the second guy is quickly becoming a dying breed, due to demand for instant gratification and personal convenience. Digital distribution screws up the concept of trade we've used for thousands of years. We're handing over our physically-backed valuables in exchange for something that has no actual value outside our own hands.
Beta-blockers medications commonly taken by patients with varying heart conditions, such as Atenolol or Metoprolol, can also generate similar effects in brain function and memory. For example, as a child, I was regularly a D to F student during my middle school and early high school years. But after having been diagnosed with a heart murmur and placed on Atenolol, I suddenly started generating A's and B's in my classes. Although I never really pieced it together until a few years ago, I do know I was able to focus on my work far more easily due to a perceived "slow-down" in my overall personality
Also, it seemed to improve my ability to work with logic problems, making programming a far simpler task... especially when it came to tracing/debugging my own code.
Unless you're a voice actor on The Simpsons, you don't count!
It kinda helps to know the battle conditions before you pick a fight. Because obviously, you have no idea how far the odds are stacked against you on this one...
Unlike the other mediums listed, the game industry doesn't harbor foolish attachments to voice actors. To them, you're just another sound effect... an asset that can, if needed, be replaced without a care. After all, it's not like anyone's going to refuse to play a game as well known as the Grand Theft Auto series, simply because they don't like the voices. As long as the gameplay is good, you, the voice actor, are irrelevent to the experience outside of being "a nice gesture" for the price.
And even in the case of GTA4, despite all those hours of dialogue record for the game, the reality is that the average gamer is going to hear it over a fraction of the game's total lifespan in their collection.
Now, if GTA4 had been made into a rigid, missions-only game, you might have some relevence to the player, should the character re-emerge in a future version of the game. However, since the game is a giant sandbox and is online multi-player... no one really cares!