It wasn't "classy libs" that chose to use the term "teabag" to describe the actions of sending teabags to Obama, hold "teabagging" parties and the like. The clueless choice of term was quite rightly mocked, and this carries no sembleance to the results of your "thinking". As soon as you can point to official "buttfuck" parties held by Liberals, where they "buttfuck" right wingers, your "thinking" will accidentally appear insightful.
Perhaps that is what you're hoping will happen? Quite a coup if it happens, I say.
I finally gave up and started checking every configuration option one at a time, as I had a working client on another machine
So wait... you did this AFTER asking for help? You didn't START by checking YOU had done everything right, but went to IRC and DEMANDED HELP without making sure it wasn't a simple mistake on your part first? And for this you expected CONSIDERATION?
Go to your windows app instead. You won't be missed. And try that approach using your windows app and see how well support treats you then.
He pulled in work for his employer. If the thousands of out of work American software engineers did they wouldn't be out of work. Since they can't, his H1B was warranted, as was its extension, and the US government failed in this case. Provided the story is correctly retold, of course.
He did what none of the thousands of out of work American software engineers *did* do, or they wouldn't have been out of work. An H1B is not granted on potential alone, but on actual ability to accomplish.
I'm certain they mean better personal freedom. The US is a country with "free speech zones", where mixed race marriages get nixed by judges, where there are "no fly" lists which ban infants from entering airplanes, and where a person who appears to be from, say, the Middle East will be eyed with suspicion just for walking around.
It's not pleasant being an obvious foreigner living in the US, despite all the lip service paid to "personal liberty" and "human rights", which incidentally the US usually don't even ratify, much less even try to give the appearance of living up to the spirit of.
And being "backwards compatible" would mean that I can run the drivers and software written for Debian in 2001 now without recompile, can I do that?
Yes. Just install it using the Debian installer and it will run just fine.
That Linux runs "decade old shit" means that hardware is supported in Linux for decades. That means that if you buy hardware today which works with Linux, it will not break with the next version. Or the one after that. Or the one in a decade. That's what it means that "decade old shit" works in Linux. THAT is backwards compatibility.
And finally, as for why you have to have a stable ABI? Because if you will go to the big three, Walmart, Staples, and Best Buy, you will see that the vast majority of those selling to the big three won't actually play your GPL games.
And since when do those companies write hardware drivers? They don't, they never did, and they never will, is when.
All that's required for a "works with Linux" sticker is that the hardware manufacturer checks if the chips they use (you do realize hardly any of them actually design the chips in the hardware?) work with Linux. If they do, they can slap a tux on the box, and the hardware will work right now, and in the future, even when it is "decade old shit". The hardware manufacturers choose not to do this. That's not the Linux developers fault, and it has precisely nothing to do with the ABI.
Your argument is a non-argument. At least learn what the hell you're on about if you're gonna provide advice to your betters.
So now you're suddenly admitting that Linux drivers ARE backwards compatible, and that is suddenly not important; or it's even a drawback.
A couple of comments ago you were whining about how you couldn't recommend a network card even if you know it works with Linux, because it might break in a few updates. This despite that that has yet to happen - and in fact, only *can* happen if your wet dream, stable ABI's, come through.
If you could at least keep your arguments consistent you might make a teeny bit of sense. As it is you sound like a closed source shrill only arguing for arguments sake.
You still haven't explained why the hardware manufacturers who use chips supported by the kernel drivers can't slap tuxes on their boxes, but somehow need a magical stable ABI to be able to do so. Except by alluding to how you want Linux to walk down the driver hell of Windows, which is not going to happen - an unstable ABI is a feature, not a bug.
Now I see where you're coming from. You're assuming the way to go is OEM provided hardware drivers.
Compare the stability of your average Windows install with OEM drivers to the stability of your average Linux system and you'll see why this assumption is flawed. Hardware vendors are really lousy at writing software, as a general rule.
And your facts are wrong; if the network card works with the current incarnation of Linux, it will work with the next one as well. This is one of the strengths of the Linux approach, with the driver being in the kernel and not updated at the whim of the manufacturer.
You're arguing that the only way forward is to throw away the stability and strength of Linux. To abandon the approach which has made Linux stable, secure and solid, and invite the mess of hardware drivers which has made Windows a mess.
Contrast this with what the hardware vendors can do today, right now. They can look at the chips in their hardware, and see if there are drivers in Linux for them. If there are, they can slap the tux on their box, and have another market for their hardware. If there isn't, they have a choice to release the specs or not. Either case is better than a hardware vendor provided driver. Yes, no support at all is better than a driver the kind of which Windows gets. No-one wants a "Linux 32/64" folder with a broken, outdated driver. What we, and joe sixpack, actually want is a penguin on the boxes which have drivers in the kernel.
You're right. The situation won't change. The ABI won't become stable, because that will make Linux unstable. That's not "militant", there is no shooting programmers or bombing software houses, it's just common sense, and the reason Linux will steadily gain user base.
I'm curious; how is a stable ABI going to change a single thing? Right now the manufacturer can look what chip they put in their hardware, look at the kernel drivers, and slap a penguin on the box if the chip has a driver. If there is a stable ABI the manufacturer can... what exactly?
You simply do not understand emulation. WINE does not emulate anything. It implements the Win32 API. Simple as that. No emulation. Everything runs as native x86 code.
Now, emulation would be slower. However, there is zero emulation in Wine.
You can run into unexpected trouble if you compile too few modules, just as if you include too much stuff. A couple of times I've run into problems where modules were needed and I hadn't compiled them. It's rare it happens these days, and you usually get log notifications, but especially in bleeding edge support (in my case ieee1394) where the wrinkles aren't ironed out you'll still run into it.
A Radenon 9800 Pro is *much* faster than an Nvidia 5700 Ultra Pro, so I'm not surprised there...
Gnome is a desktop environment, not a WM. You can use Gnome with Windowmaker, Blackbox etc. if you want. They're not replacements for each other. Just because you use a lightweight WM doesn't mean you can't use nice GUI tools - there is zero relationship there.
Plus, if you use for example Webmin, you'll get a very powerful, easy to use and helpful GUI for all your config file editing, regardless of distro - and you can even use it from the console in Lynx.
As for having to edit/write scripts in lightweight WM's, which ones have you used that forced you to do that? I use Windowmaker, and I never have to touch anything but GUI tools to do the changes in colors, backgrounds, menus etc.; unless I want to add in scripted functionality. And for that you always have to edit scripts, even to get that in Windows or OSX.
Problems like that still exist because people (including you) don't write to specs. Rewrite the app to be POSIX compliant and the problem will go away. Right now, your app is broken (relying on (probably undocumented) nonstandard behaviour) and *will* stop working with newer versions of Linux.
Joe sixpack may not want or need to know it, but a lot of SMB people will want to at least understand what the friendly salesperson keeps calling them about. More than once have I had calls from people preparing to buy (or worse, who just bought) some fancy software because the brochure was full of buzzwords. Some basic understanding of how simple the concepts (if not implementations) really are would help avoid that.
Of course, at the same time I *do* understand that most people just wants something that works; but just as everyone need a rudimentary understanding of how to service a car (the minumum being how often to take it in for a tune-up), everyone must know basic spelling and grammar (yes, I saw your sig), so also must SMB owners understand basic economics, logistics and business machine operation. No, they don't have to be experts, but just as a SMB owner with no understanding of economics will fail, an SMB owner using computer systems and not understanding the underlying concepts enough to make proper implementation decisions (or paying someone to do that, like one might pay an accountant) will be at a severe disadvantage.
Hmm. That was quite a tangent, and a bit poorly expressed, I'm sure (had a tad much red wine, as I'm in France right now). My point is just, understanding basic underlying technology is never a waste of time, especially not something as simple as markup languages. Proper use of a WYSIWYG word processor is also a lot easier if one understands what the software does under the hood; not necessarily in detail, but conceptually.
Thanks for an interesting debate (even if I jumped in the middle of something else).
Actually, I suggest that a template based, rather strictly enforcing, yet adaptable solution would be ideal for most. LaTeX isn't there at this time, LyX notwithstanding; but with some work on support tools, it might be. At that point it's closer to the office suites of today, yet much easier to use and faster to customize. Yes, it's a dream right now, nothing that yet exists, but it's something I want so I can use it myself, so I keep working towards it.
I'm aware of that you were talking office packages in general. I was as well. I'm also aware of the psychological aspects, which is why I want a tool that is easy to understand and use, yet not as much a kludge as office suites of today are.
As for learning to read a markup language being a useless skill, I don't agree at all. Once you know TeX, it's very easy to understand HTML, XML and the like. Most of my clients view XML as something magical and scary, and when I describe how it works they look doubtful; they can't believe it's actually that simple a concept. If they knew a markup language, they'd understand immediately. Learning TeX gives you that skill, even if you promptly forget most about how it works and use a nice GUI to assemble your TeX templates later on.
I'd say we don't disagree as much as it seemed from the start, although we do disagree on some points (and it seems we always will, but that's ok).
The dogfood comment was taken from Microsoft, btw. They refer to "eating the dog food" when they use their own tools to develop their own applications and writing their own documents. How they stand it, I don't know.
Typesetting involves layout, obviously, but generally strongly template based. Envelopes are standardized, so picking a template is easy; in fact, I'd argue that a well setup base of standard templates in LaTeX would make just about any small business *more* productive.
But, it doesn't matter much. I'll keep working on making my tools work better for me, and maybe they'll work better for someone else as well some day. Most of my colleagues send PDF's instead of DOC files to each other and to clients these days, and they make them in OOo or LyX, generally. So, the changes are happening, slowly.
I really dislike this approach. If you need to read wav's from a CD, are you going to do better than cdparanoia? If not, why should I use your application when another makes use of the powerful, well developed libraries available while yours is a static implementation. When I upgrade the cdparanoia libraries to handle my broken CD's, your application will still not read them.
I agree that when something is trivial to implement and will not be inferior in performance, sure, include it. But to expect and advocate that developers reimplement functionality that takes years of experimentation to get correct instead of linking to existing libraries that get it right is sheer craziness.
But, and this is something people like you don't seem to get, most people don't need to make a new layout every 2-3 weeks, and never need lots of slight variations on it. Everyone are just conditioned to do this from using Word.
I trained people in using various word processors, did technical writing, translation and layout. What I found is, the vast majority of people still layout with spaces and returns, and redo everything all the time. I help them make a letter template, and they end up using it for everything.
For these people, LaTeX with a simple help program would be vastly superior. Just type in the text, pick a style, and hit "print". It would save immeasurable work hours.
These tools exist. I use them every day. But people like you are the reason they're not catching on more. You continue to eat and promote the dog food, and it'll continue to be what people think they should use.
Honestly though, I don't care. I save tons of time by using LyX and LaTeX for my day to day tasks, switching to Quark (and hopefully soon Scribus) when I need to layout (just about no documents need layout; they need typesetting). If you want to fiddle, be my guest. It's not my money you're spending.
and the knowledge would be completely useless for anythign other then using LaTeX.
True, markup languages are not used for anything at all these days. Much better to spend your time and brainpower on fiddling with broken layout tools in Word to get everything looking like you want, and repeat the process for each document you do.
No, I'm genuinely wondering why you accept an assumption as irrefutable proof in one case (existence), but offer skepticism in (all?) others.
There is nothing axiomatic about that we must exist to experience. can't prove I exist based on the scant evidence I have; including that I experience. There is no way. All I can do is assume that since I experience, I must exist - but I have no way to prove this, to test this assumption.
And if I exist - maybe I can cease to exist and still experience - how can I verify this?
You claim it to be axiomatic, but I don't agree; since we have no other frame of reference, how can we be so sure?
Ok, well, don't talk to me then. In that case I'm not talking to you either... =P
No, I don't get it. I don't see where the absolute irrefutable proof magically appears here.
The fact that I assume, that I think, experience, all that, is not irrefutable proof that I actually exist in some form at some point in time. It's evidence for it, but not in any way irrefutable. All it proves is that I experience, but for all I know I don't have to exist in any meaningful form to do so. How can I prove I have to? Saying I have to exist to experience is just an assumption.
Can you prove that I have to exist in order to experience things and think? So far you have treated that as axiomatic fact; why? It certainly isn't.
My existence is just an assumption based on that I experience. That's all. I have no proof otherwise, so how can I *know*?
I can't prove to anyone that I exist, nor can they prove to me that they exist. Nor can I be certain that my existence is anything but a momentary lapse of experience; it could be a figment of a larger imagination, a dream, a fluke in space/time, the fantasy of a pile of bacterialike beings; whatever. I can never know, I can only assume that my experience that I am real is actually real.
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It wasn't "classy libs" that chose to use the term "teabag" to describe the actions of sending teabags to Obama, hold "teabagging" parties and the like. The clueless choice of term was quite rightly mocked, and this carries no sembleance to the results of your "thinking". As soon as you can point to official "buttfuck" parties held by Liberals, where they "buttfuck" right wingers, your "thinking" will accidentally appear insightful.
Perhaps that is what you're hoping will happen? Quite a coup if it happens, I say.
Quick, name one technology MS has invented.
So wait ... you did this AFTER asking for help? You didn't START by checking YOU had done everything right, but went to IRC and DEMANDED HELP without making sure it wasn't a simple mistake on your part first? And for this you expected CONSIDERATION?
Go to your windows app instead. You won't be missed. And try that approach using your windows app and see how well support treats you then.
He pulled in work for his employer. If the thousands of out of work American software engineers did they wouldn't be out of work. Since they can't, his H1B was warranted, as was its extension, and the US government failed in this case. Provided the story is correctly retold, of course.
Your friendly browser read Slashdot with you!
He did what none of the thousands of out of work American software engineers *did* do, or they wouldn't have been out of work. An H1B is not granted on potential alone, but on actual ability to accomplish.
I'm certain they mean better personal freedom. The US is a country with "free speech zones", where mixed race marriages get nixed by judges, where there are "no fly" lists which ban infants from entering airplanes, and where a person who appears to be from, say, the Middle East will be eyed with suspicion just for walking around.
It's not pleasant being an obvious foreigner living in the US, despite all the lip service paid to "personal liberty" and "human rights", which incidentally the US usually don't even ratify, much less even try to give the appearance of living up to the spirit of.
And being "backwards compatible" would mean that I can run the drivers and software written for Debian in 2001 now without recompile, can I do that?
Yes. Just install it using the Debian installer and it will run just fine.
That Linux runs "decade old shit" means that hardware is supported in Linux for decades. That means that if you buy hardware today which works with Linux, it will not break with the next version. Or the one after that. Or the one in a decade. That's what it means that "decade old shit" works in Linux. THAT is backwards compatibility.
And finally, as for why you have to have a stable ABI? Because if you will go to the big three, Walmart, Staples, and Best Buy, you will see that the vast majority of those selling to the big three won't actually play your GPL games.
And since when do those companies write hardware drivers? They don't, they never did, and they never will, is when.
All that's required for a "works with Linux" sticker is that the hardware manufacturer checks if the chips they use (you do realize hardly any of them actually design the chips in the hardware?) work with Linux. If they do, they can slap a tux on the box, and the hardware will work right now, and in the future, even when it is "decade old shit". The hardware manufacturers choose not to do this. That's not the Linux developers fault, and it has precisely nothing to do with the ABI.
Your argument is a non-argument. At least learn what the hell you're on about if you're gonna provide advice to your betters.
PS. Deus Ex runs fine in Debian as well.
So now you're suddenly admitting that Linux drivers ARE backwards compatible, and that is suddenly not important; or it's even a drawback.
A couple of comments ago you were whining about how you couldn't recommend a network card even if you know it works with Linux, because it might break in a few updates. This despite that that has yet to happen - and in fact, only *can* happen if your wet dream, stable ABI's, come through.
If you could at least keep your arguments consistent you might make a teeny bit of sense. As it is you sound like a closed source shrill only arguing for arguments sake.
You still haven't explained why the hardware manufacturers who use chips supported by the kernel drivers can't slap tuxes on their boxes, but somehow need a magical stable ABI to be able to do so. Except by alluding to how you want Linux to walk down the driver hell of Windows, which is not going to happen - an unstable ABI is a feature, not a bug.
Now I see where you're coming from. You're assuming the way to go is OEM provided hardware drivers.
Compare the stability of your average Windows install with OEM drivers to the stability of your average Linux system and you'll see why this assumption is flawed. Hardware vendors are really lousy at writing software, as a general rule.
And your facts are wrong; if the network card works with the current incarnation of Linux, it will work with the next one as well. This is one of the strengths of the Linux approach, with the driver being in the kernel and not updated at the whim of the manufacturer.
You're arguing that the only way forward is to throw away the stability and strength of Linux. To abandon the approach which has made Linux stable, secure and solid, and invite the mess of hardware drivers which has made Windows a mess.
Contrast this with what the hardware vendors can do today, right now. They can look at the chips in their hardware, and see if there are drivers in Linux for them. If there are, they can slap the tux on their box, and have another market for their hardware. If there isn't, they have a choice to release the specs or not. Either case is better than a hardware vendor provided driver. Yes, no support at all is better than a driver the kind of which Windows gets. No-one wants a "Linux 32/64" folder with a broken, outdated driver. What we, and joe sixpack, actually want is a penguin on the boxes which have drivers in the kernel.
You're right. The situation won't change. The ABI won't become stable, because that will make Linux unstable. That's not "militant", there is no shooting programmers or bombing software houses, it's just common sense, and the reason Linux will steadily gain user base.
I'm curious; how is a stable ABI going to change a single thing? Right now the manufacturer can look what chip they put in their hardware, look at the kernel drivers, and slap a penguin on the box if the chip has a driver. If there is a stable ABI the manufacturer can ... what exactly?
I'll get fired over the contents of the cash register over taking a bullet any day, thankyouverymuch.
You simply do not understand emulation. WINE does not emulate anything. It implements the Win32 API. Simple as that. No emulation. Everything runs as native x86 code.
Now, emulation would be slower. However, there is zero emulation in Wine.
You are arguing against a straw man.
I've been using LAB color in GIMP for years. Works great. You'll find it in the Decompose filter.
You can run into unexpected trouble if you compile too few modules, just as if you include too much stuff. A couple of times I've run into problems where modules were needed and I hadn't compiled them. It's rare it happens these days, and you usually get log notifications, but especially in bleeding edge support (in my case ieee1394) where the wrinkles aren't ironed out you'll still run into it.
...
A Radenon 9800 Pro is *much* faster than an Nvidia 5700 Ultra Pro, so I'm not surprised there
Gnome is a desktop environment, not a WM. You can use Gnome with Windowmaker, Blackbox etc. if you want. They're not replacements for each other. Just because you use a lightweight WM doesn't mean you can't use nice GUI tools - there is zero relationship there.
Plus, if you use for example Webmin, you'll get a very powerful, easy to use and helpful GUI for all your config file editing, regardless of distro - and you can even use it from the console in Lynx.
As for having to edit/write scripts in lightweight WM's, which ones have you used that forced you to do that? I use Windowmaker, and I never have to touch anything but GUI tools to do the changes in colors, backgrounds, menus etc.; unless I want to add in scripted functionality. And for that you always have to edit scripts, even to get that in Windows or OSX.
Problems like that still exist because people (including you) don't write to specs. Rewrite the app to be POSIX compliant and the problem will go away. Right now, your app is broken (relying on (probably undocumented) nonstandard behaviour) and *will* stop working with newer versions of Linux.
That is *your* fault, not Linux's fault.
Joe sixpack may not want or need to know it, but a lot of SMB people will want to at least understand what the friendly salesperson keeps calling them about. More than once have I had calls from people preparing to buy (or worse, who just bought) some fancy software because the brochure was full of buzzwords. Some basic understanding of how simple the concepts (if not implementations) really are would help avoid that.
Of course, at the same time I *do* understand that most people just wants something that works; but just as everyone need a rudimentary understanding of how to service a car (the minumum being how often to take it in for a tune-up), everyone must know basic spelling and grammar (yes, I saw your sig), so also must SMB owners understand basic economics, logistics and business machine operation. No, they don't have to be experts, but just as a SMB owner with no understanding of economics will fail, an SMB owner using computer systems and not understanding the underlying concepts enough to make proper implementation decisions (or paying someone to do that, like one might pay an accountant) will be at a severe disadvantage.
Hmm. That was quite a tangent, and a bit poorly expressed, I'm sure (had a tad much red wine, as I'm in France right now). My point is just, understanding basic underlying technology is never a waste of time, especially not something as simple as markup languages. Proper use of a WYSIWYG word processor is also a lot easier if one understands what the software does under the hood; not necessarily in detail, but conceptually.
Thanks for an interesting debate (even if I jumped in the middle of something else).
Actually, I suggest that a template based, rather strictly enforcing, yet adaptable solution would be ideal for most. LaTeX isn't there at this time, LyX notwithstanding; but with some work on support tools, it might be. At that point it's closer to the office suites of today, yet much easier to use and faster to customize. Yes, it's a dream right now, nothing that yet exists, but it's something I want so I can use it myself, so I keep working towards it.
I'm aware of that you were talking office packages in general. I was as well. I'm also aware of the psychological aspects, which is why I want a tool that is easy to understand and use, yet not as much a kludge as office suites of today are.
As for learning to read a markup language being a useless skill, I don't agree at all. Once you know TeX, it's very easy to understand HTML, XML and the like. Most of my clients view XML as something magical and scary, and when I describe how it works they look doubtful; they can't believe it's actually that simple a concept. If they knew a markup language, they'd understand immediately. Learning TeX gives you that skill, even if you promptly forget most about how it works and use a nice GUI to assemble your TeX templates later on.
I'd say we don't disagree as much as it seemed from the start, although we do disagree on some points (and it seems we always will, but that's ok).
The dogfood comment was taken from Microsoft, btw. They refer to "eating the dog food" when they use their own tools to develop their own applications and writing their own documents. How they stand it, I don't know.
Typesetting involves layout, obviously, but generally strongly template based. Envelopes are standardized, so picking a template is easy; in fact, I'd argue that a well setup base of standard templates in LaTeX would make just about any small business *more* productive.
But, it doesn't matter much. I'll keep working on making my tools work better for me, and maybe they'll work better for someone else as well some day. Most of my colleagues send PDF's instead of DOC files to each other and to clients these days, and they make them in OOo or LyX, generally. So, the changes are happening, slowly.
I really dislike this approach. If you need to read wav's from a CD, are you going to do better than cdparanoia? If not, why should I use your application when another makes use of the powerful, well developed libraries available while yours is a static implementation. When I upgrade the cdparanoia libraries to handle my broken CD's, your application will still not read them.
I agree that when something is trivial to implement and will not be inferior in performance, sure, include it. But to expect and advocate that developers reimplement functionality that takes years of experimentation to get correct instead of linking to existing libraries that get it right is sheer craziness.
But, and this is something people like you don't seem to get, most people don't need to make a new layout every 2-3 weeks, and never need lots of slight variations on it. Everyone are just conditioned to do this from using Word.
I trained people in using various word processors, did technical writing, translation and layout. What I found is, the vast majority of people still layout with spaces and returns, and redo everything all the time. I help them make a letter template, and they end up using it for everything.
For these people, LaTeX with a simple help program would be vastly superior. Just type in the text, pick a style, and hit "print". It would save immeasurable work hours.
These tools exist. I use them every day. But people like you are the reason they're not catching on more. You continue to eat and promote the dog food, and it'll continue to be what people think they should use.
Honestly though, I don't care. I save tons of time by using LyX and LaTeX for my day to day tasks, switching to Quark (and hopefully soon Scribus) when I need to layout (just about no documents need layout; they need typesetting). If you want to fiddle, be my guest. It's not my money you're spending.
and the knowledge would be completely useless for anythign other then using LaTeX.
True, markup languages are not used for anything at all these days. Much better to spend your time and brainpower on fiddling with broken layout tools in Word to get everything looking like you want, and repeat the process for each document you do.
No, I'm genuinely wondering why you accept an assumption as irrefutable proof in one case (existence), but offer skepticism in (all?) others.
... =P
There is nothing axiomatic about that we must exist to experience. can't prove I exist based on the scant evidence I have; including that I experience. There is no way. All I can do is assume that since I experience, I must exist - but I have no way to prove this, to test this assumption.
And if I exist - maybe I can cease to exist and still experience - how can I verify this?
You claim it to be axiomatic, but I don't agree; since we have no other frame of reference, how can we be so sure?
Ok, well, don't talk to me then. In that case I'm not talking to you either
No, I don't get it. I don't see where the absolute irrefutable proof magically appears here.
The fact that I assume, that I think, experience, all that, is not irrefutable proof that I actually exist in some form at some point in time. It's evidence for it, but not in any way irrefutable. All it proves is that I experience, but for all I know I don't have to exist in any meaningful form to do so. How can I prove I have to? Saying I have to exist to experience is just an assumption.
Can you prove that I have to exist in order to experience things and think? So far you have treated that as axiomatic fact; why? It certainly isn't.
My existence is just an assumption based on that I experience. That's all. I have no proof otherwise, so how can I *know*?
I can't prove to anyone that I exist, nor can they prove to me that they exist. Nor can I be certain that my existence is anything but a momentary lapse of experience; it could be a figment of a larger imagination, a dream, a fluke in space/time, the fantasy of a pile of bacterialike beings; whatever. I can never know, I can only assume that my experience that I am real is actually real.
Nothing irrefutable about it at all.