So your argument is actually that people who pronounce it with a hard G have just never heard anyone say it.
And we're taking about dot-g-i-f, the format that is hugely shared as memes and as reactions in chats, a form so well known that it's at Kleenex level of awareness - awareness that exceeds itself - ie, all other variants of this format (apng, animated webp, even webm) are called gifs.
And you're saying that most people, which is, given the prevalence of gifs, probably most of our species at this point - most of the sentient life forms in our solar system are aware of this format's name... But we've just never heard anyone say it. Except for a small, vocal minority - who exist mostly on the Internet and are deeply online. Those are the only people who have heard it said out loud.
And, in that impossible scenario, most of our species - who have, again, never heard it said it loud - billions of people - all, independently, came up with the same, supposedly incorrect, pronunciation.
That's your argument? I feel like your case would be stronger without it.
It's like intentionally taking a Principal Skinner stance - everyone else on earth is wrong. Except, at least Skinner was oblivious.
There's simply no justification for the jif pronunciation. There's an explanation - ie, because the creator of the format wanted to float his success on the back of a peanut butter brand. And it didn't even work - no one calls it "jif" and yet it's probably got better name recognition than the peanut butter. But - even as weak as that explanation is, an explanation is not a justification. A justified pronunciation - even if it's different from the original pronunciation, is one people natively come up with, and yet is always the same.
Pronunciation of words is decided by consensus - and while of course people mispronounce things, what that means is, they pronounce it differently from the accepted cultural norm.
We don't get all in a knot because Americans prove things differently from British people - even though they originally set the rules for English. And we don't pronounce things the way we do because George Washington (being analogous to wilhite (or whatever his name was)) told us to; we pronounce things as we do because of cultural consensus.
Wilhite's intention was literally to use the name recognition of the peanut butter to further his own success - which, like, who cares - but the simple fact that he made that decision (and to be clear, regardless of our opinion on copyright, is a bad way to make the decision) strongly implies that he was aware that his pronunciation was unnatural.
The fact that this conversation even comes up is proof that culturally we reject wilhite's pronunciation. It's a lost battle - the only reason I get involved in these threads is because I have a hard time watching the same 3 talking points (on both sides) and the same 3 rebuttals - all of which attempt seem to use facts and logic to determine "correct" pronunciation - when the truth is, the pronunciation has already been decided, and soft-G pronounces deserve to understand it.
Except in gift which is the linguistically closest word to gif
Also, don't misunderstand English: as the hybrid of two very different language sources (Germanic and Latin - among many others since), there are basically no rules that don't have exceptions.
The creator of the Gradual Interface Forget wanted people to pronounce it with a J literally because he wanted it to use the name recognition of the peanut butter - and I don't exactly care about their profits or about copyright, but it's a bad reason.
So wealthy people exploit vulnerable people and coordinate to fill the airwaves with anti-human propaganda because some people mistakenly use a J sound?
The fact that this conversation exists is proof that the word is intuitively pronounced with a hard G.
The only reason to pronounce it like a J if because the creator liked it - and the reason he liked it was literally because of the (copyright-infringing) similarity to the peanut butter.
He made a huge contribution to the Internet by creating the format, and he deserves it gratitude. Mispronouncing gif is not the best approach to that.
I think the implication is that pursuing Linux development has a high opportunity cost, that, if they just bought into Windows as the foundation, they could've used that time to build HL3 or whatever
If you're serious about the Internet you'll just ping icann and get the indexes directly, search the content, and use the results. You casuals might still use Google but I've built my own engine, and it literally only takes a few hours to get a search result.
Also, that person calls themselves royalty in training so if the issue is Google's hegemony then I feel like there might be some cognitive dissonance.
The whole point of a lifetime appointment is that they can abandon all political concerns once they're in the SCOTUS - so they don't have to be political. And I've seen that happen - while they obviously stay conservative or progressive, they tend to drift away from an alignment with the parties - with exceptions, obviously.
But, as with all other branches of the US government, it's becoming clear that we've exited the era of being able to trust our leadership to support the Constitution and represent the people.
(For me, it wasn't even Trump that snapped me out of that mindset. It was when they were talking about outlawing congressional insider trading. One of the Republicans said, out loud and in public, that the notion of prohibiting congressional sick trading was off the table, because it was a core part of the job. He said something like, "half of us wouldn't be here" - as though that was a bad thing.)
You're right that that's extremely unambiguous, but I still don't love the idea that users don't get to decide what's in $HOME, like, maybe we could call it "$STORAGE_FOR_RANDOM_BULLSHIT" instead?
If anything in computing conventions implies "user space" it's a global variable named HOME. And it makes sense that there should be a $STORAGE_FOR_RANDOM_BULLSHIT location too - but maybe not the same place? Then users could symlink the dotfiles they personally find relevant.
I know you're not Linus, but, I just had to express that.
Personally while I think all states should be abolished and all resources should be shared on a global scale, I also think that the company that serves my house with Internet should be forced to compete so that we (the people in my city) can get the benefits of capitalism: improved prices and service.
I also believe that the latter is actually a step towards the former - though it's just a guess.
There's a gaping and dangerous misunderstanding in there. Having money or being successful under capitalism doesn't mean you don't see its flaws. The idea that rich people can't be communists is like saying that only gay people can support gay rights.
Believing that the world would be a better place if we pooled our resources has nothing to do with whether you created an operating system that all of global computing relies on.
Imo "scammer" is the wrong word. "Hustler" is more accurate in my experience.
Under certain circumstances, those iFixit places are exactly what it says on the tin - but if rent's coming up and they haven't had many walk ins, you might end up with a new Flux Capacitor in your JavaScript Microlibrary, since the old one looks like it started sending unhandled exceptions to the teraflop reader - but don't worry, they put in a new 6-charge teraflop reader that should future proof it for years.
Very few of them were even useful for anyone but myself
Most developers learn and grow by doing - which means learning by making mistakes, googling their error messages, and looking at examples of other people doing what they're trying to do - which is why you should always open source your code unless there's a specific reason not to. If you've ever made something that works, then your cube would be useful.
I've never felt dependent on public code repos for my own career before,
I hope you don't actually believe this. The entire Internet, and computing itself, is built on the foundation of open source. This is like saying "why do I gotta pay taxes" when you and everyone you've never met has relied on roads etc. And that's just the basic example - the real importance of, say, public education, is that, while you personally may not have used it, many many many other people have - and their education has pushed the quality of your collegues higher - which pushes you to be better, either as competition or cooperation. This is the actually accurate meaning of "the rising tide raises all ships."
Even if you've never used Linux, or any open source software at all, the rest of us have, and we're pushing your job and your career to new heights.
So your argument is actually that people who pronounce it with a hard G have just never heard anyone say it.
And we're taking about dot-g-i-f, the format that is hugely shared as memes and as reactions in chats, a form so well known that it's at Kleenex level of awareness - awareness that exceeds itself - ie, all other variants of this format (apng, animated webp, even webm) are called gifs.
And you're saying that most people, which is, given the prevalence of gifs, probably most of our species at this point - most of the sentient life forms in our solar system are aware of this format's name... But we've just never heard anyone say it. Except for a small, vocal minority - who exist mostly on the Internet and are deeply online. Those are the only people who have heard it said out loud.
And, in that impossible scenario, most of our species - who have, again, never heard it said it loud - billions of people - all, independently, came up with the same, supposedly incorrect, pronunciation.
That's your argument? I feel like your case would be stronger without it.
It's like intentionally taking a Principal Skinner stance - everyone else on earth is wrong. Except, at least Skinner was oblivious.
There's simply no justification for the jif pronunciation. There's an explanation - ie, because the creator of the format wanted to float his success on the back of a peanut butter brand. And it didn't even work - no one calls it "jif" and yet it's probably got better name recognition than the peanut butter. But - even as weak as that explanation is, an explanation is not a justification. A justified pronunciation - even if it's different from the original pronunciation, is one people natively come up with, and yet is always the same.