They did not add the OS, they added the kernel. Big difference.
Nope, no difference. The idea that the kernel is not the OS is a myth passed around in recent years without any explanation; it's just assumed that if you say it loud and often it will become true. It doesn't.
The origin of this myth seems to be the idea that in a sea of API's, the ones exported by the kernel are just nothing special, the whole ensemble is the OS. This is certainly MS's argument in court.
Of course, it doen't hold water. The OS is the kernel for the simple reason that if you remove it nothing else works. The kernel sits astride the OS/User barrier and controls all access across it in a way no other API does. What other part of what you call the OS can you say that of?
What is it that you say distinguishes a non-kernel OS component from a non-kernel, non-OS component, the touch of the magic finger of RMS?
Remove all of the GNU tools and what can you do with the kernel??
Bad news for you on this one. I program in Forth on my Linux machine at home and I don't need any GNU tools to do so. I don't link to any libraries and I only access even IO through the kernel. I wrote the Forth compiler myself using NASM and ald for debugging; neither are GNU tools.
In 25 years of programming I've never written a C or C++ program, although of course I have compiled them. I use Perl (not GNU), Forth (not GNU), and PHP (not GNU) for almost all my work now. Not because I'm avoiding GNU tools (I sometimes use Sed) but I just don't need them. Even programs like "uniq", "chmod" and "ls" have started to be replaced by my own Forth version on my system, just for the practice.
If GNU is part of the OS how could this possibly be? How can I write fully functioning programs without using GNU components, and why is it I can't do that with the kernel missing? It's almost as if the GNU stuff was just a bunch of apps!
What shell would you use??
Korn?
A Linux system always includes GNU tools, just as it always includes TeX (not GNU), which I use for all my document production now, from letters to setting my Forth code and comment blocks neatly onto pages for listing. Does this mean that it's now Knuth/GNU/Linux?
If the FSF had really been like M$, they would have sold the GNU tools to pay for HURD development and released the Hurd as "Linux XP".
Lack of money was not the problem for Hurd, it was lack of talent in the sense that no talent on Earth would have been enough to take it out of the realm of myth in any realistic timescale.
The kernel != the OS. If God makes the body, and the Devil makes the feet, do we worship the devil for creating man?? If GOD makes the body and the devil the brain??
This is the first time I've seen fantasy beings invoked as an argument in CS! I'll ignore it and hope you've sobered up by the time you read this.
Linux the kernel would not have been born without the FSF.
This is true. But then it's true that GNU would not have existed without Unix and Bell Labs. So we're up to "BellLabs/Knuth/GNU/Linux" now. That's progress: everyone's getting their due credit.
Without the FSF Linux would probably be lockedaway in a room at IBM even had it managed to get finished.
True. But it assumes that nothing else would have taken its place. Like BSD, for example. GNU was used, but it didn't have to be.
To Stallman this becomes bigger than it needs to be because Linus has no moral center when it comes to the world of Proprietary software.
This is also almost true. I think that actually it becomes bigger to RMS because he's lost all sense of proportion on the subject, but Linus is definitely ethically adrift.
The stupidity of this statement lies in the fact that you have incorrectly id'ed the kernel as the OS.
There is no evidence that I have seen, other than what passes for it in MS's court cases, that there is anything outside of the kernel which is part of the OS. Simply waving at some programs and saying "that's OS" and others and saying "that's an application" is not good enough. In fact it is bullshit.
I assume that you consider yourself technically literate, so why do you confuse the kernel with the OS??
I am clearly more technically literate than yourself and less prone to be blinded by buzzwords that have no meaning.
So continue to lionize Torvalds while demonizing Stallman if you must,
It's becoming increasingly clear that both are arseholes of the highest order. Clearly, being an arsehole doesn't get in the way of technical ability.
but time will tell who was the true champion of the cause.
Well, Stallman is of course. At least he was but his incredible ability to annoy those who would otherwise support him, apparently to feed his ego, is undermining that cause. Fatally if he continues in this way.
And for all of the "GNU couldn't exist without Linux" people out there,
All two of them...
without "gcc" Linux couldn't compile.
Circular logic. Linux is written for gcc, including some bugs and quirks. If gcc had not existed then it would have been written for and around some other compiler.
So all the GNU did was produce the necessary tools, and this distracted them from creating a next generation kernel.
You sad, sad man. Saint Stallman slaving away at these tools all day thinking "I wish I could get on with my next generation kernel, but that bastard Torvalds just won't let the pressure up for a new version of AWK".
The fact that the majority of the GNU tools were in place when Linus started rather undermines this particular work of fiction.
Meanwhile some guy does a this-generation Monolithic kernel faster (of course) and he's the great hero of the day.
Of course you are using loaded language. It's not at all clear that the micro-kernel is "next-generation" as opposed to "dead-end waste of time". If we'd waited for Hurd Unix would be dead and there would be no machines running any GNU tools anywhere.
There are two sides to every story, but don't even know one of them.
I know many sides to this story and I've been involved in the industry long enough to have seen how stories grow and develop into myths and legends with only a passing resemblance to the original truth. The whole Hurd thing has been a fiasco from start to the present day. Have you used it? Do you actually know anyone that has? Do you know when it will be ready for running OpenOffice on?
"Just consider: the GNU Project starts developing an operating system, and years later Linus Torvalds adds one important piece.
Ie, the actual operating system!
Stallman's claims are that he doesn't get enough credit. How many people DON'T know of his involvement and what he did? There may be some small tribes in the Amazon, I suppose.
The next one is that the system should be called GNU/Linux because of all the work he did on, wait for it, programs that run on it. Well, woop-de-fuck. The programs in question were reverse-engineered from the Unix utilities that many of them share their names with. Should the writers and designers of the original utilities not get credit? Should we call the system "Unix/GNU/Luinx"? Get real.
Stallman claims that Linux is "The system is a variant of GNU, and the GNU Project is its principal developer,". Always lie big, or don't lie at all, eh? Linux is a varient of Unix and GNU is a supplier of application programs for it.
Linux is the kernel. Redhat is a distribution, GNU is a software house. How hard are these to understand?
The most hateful thing about RMS is that, when he's off the subject of his ego, he is right most of the time. Linus' dismissal of concerns about Bitkeeper is foolish and there is a broader issue at stake when non-free software is used. But these issues are clouded by RMS' ability to talk utter shite about giving GNU more credit when it is already a living legend!
The cause of free software would be greatly helped if Stallman would just fuck off. We need rational argument, not rabid ego-stroking.
I think this shows one problem: people mix the documentation and the code. Long comments in code make life difficult/anoying for people that know the code. Comments in the code itself should be short and consist mainly of hints.
The documentation should ideally be in a separate document which explains each subroutine/function. But this much discipline is way beyond most programmers!
One of the reasons I like Forth is that any decent Forth system allots an equal amount of space for comments as code but in a way which does not interfere with the code. A Forth editor can then display a block of code with the corresponding block of comments beside it. Also, since the comment block is assigned anyway you feel you should put something in it so I find I comment Forth programs quite well as I go along.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with BSD licensed code...
I'll repeat it again for the hard of thinking: the BSD license means helping people who are totally opposed to the bulk of programmers being able to make a living. It's not the intent of the BSD license but it is the effect.
Its like making bullets and giving them away for free to a room full of people only one of whom (MS) has a gun (monopoly). It's pretty obvious whose going to get shot.
Think once, think twice, think "don't help the bastard that's trying to kill you".
That's not a good idea at all. That encourages rambling pointless text, not quick precise explanations.
Quick explanations are rarely precise explanations when programmers are involved.
Anyway, keeping documentation longer than the code encourages shorter code more than it encourages rambling text, unless you know programmers that like typing more than I do.
Short code with a good explanation is always better than long code with poor explanation. In fact, short code is always better, period. Every line of code beyond what is needed for the task should be rooted out; it is a source of bugs and inefficiency.
Write code that is easy to understand and comment about wierd / unusual sections
Nice idea; never works in practice. The reason is that what you think is easy to understand is not always what other people think is easy to understand.
The code you are writing now might have to be modified in the future by someone just out of university which means, generally, someone with very little experience. Your red-black binary tree might be "easy to understand" for you and a novelty to them.
Also, mature highly-factored, optimised code that has been improved over several years can be very hard to follow even when the original code was quite straight-forward (but perhaps too slow).
Finally, as a philosophical point, source code is supposed to be terse in comparison to natural language so it should take longer to describe the code in your own language than in the programming language.
Their general policy is to prevent anyone working in the software industry unless it's for them, Gates has actually said in a speech that he can't see why, in the future, anyone would produce software other than MS.
Seriously, get a job at Microsoft if your smart enough...
I noticed in university that, when MS came around to recruit people, the mediocre programmers were the only ones that went to see them. Part of being a good programer, or a good anything, is pride in your work. Since quality control is non-existant at MS it follows that they can only employ mediocre programmers.
because the BSD people (the ones who actually *wrote* it) don't give a flying fuck... why should you?
Because, as a working programmer, they are activley supporting a company which is committed to putting me out of work by pushing various legal and illegal tactics to make it hard for non-MS companies to survive. I do give a flying fuck about that, even if BSD programmers don't.
The GPL makes it difficult for programmers to make money from their code but BSD makes it impossible, in the long run, for any programmer to make money unless they have the gracious permission of people like Gates who have plenty of cash to buy government policy and national markets.
One more thing, don't forget that MS has threatened to build a reference implementation of.NET for FreeBSD
Gates must have a good laugh everytime a new BSD comes out - more quality code he can use for free leaving money free to shit on programmers everywhere. It's a small price to pay to port.net across and encourage all the BSD saps to keep the effort up.
If I'd written a similar review of Fellowship of the Ring (and I could, no problem), would it have been accepted or rejected?
I think I can guess. It's okay to have a rip at a crap film that we're all agreed was crap but not to have a go at a crap film that lots of people here liked for some reason.
So, what about a halfway house: a review of "Titanic", a crap film that loads of "normal" people liked, would that get on?
You were saying that Westerners would have trouble accepting a game that ended with consensus, but I just don't see why this would be true.
Well, I don't see any evidence that they are. If you look at the FIDA rules for tournament play, for example, they basically assume that the players hate each other and will never agree to anything. Everything is prescribed and a non-consenting approach is assumed throughout.
My feeling and experience is that this is the norm for tournament-level play in all games and sports in the West.
Babbster - no, you cannot use your friend's novel nor on Star Wars, or any other existing licenced or copyrighted content for the basis of a module. This is prohibited by the EULA.
You need new lawyers, mate: the one's you're using know NOTHING about copyright. If my friend gives me permission to use his novel it is none of your business. You can write any crap you like in your EULA but it isn't a magic document that suddenly allows you to interfere in other people's copyright.
They must be written this way to protect both the companies involved and the end users. I am serious. Read the EULAs of those other games.
Yadda yadda yadda. What a load of fucking bullshit. You people are all the same, "I can steal your code/ideas but you can't use mine; it's for your own good". Who do you think believes this crap? 5-year-olds? You're just another pirate trying to hide behind legal-sounding claptrap.
Saying there is a cognitive limitation on westerners that inhibits their understanding of the game isn't.
I'm claiming a cultural bias in the way people approach certain things; the limitation is not cognitive in the sense of there being some difference inherent in the person.
Do you agree that culture can create such bias? If not, what is culture?
As regards the 50-move rule I don't think it's normally regarded as a volutary rule. obviously, if there is no referee then both players can ignore it or any other rule.
That's just wrong. The midgame is where humans beat chess programs by forcing them into an endgame where their huge superiority in brute force analysis due to the low branching factor is neutralised by lack of material.
Several endgames were only proven as wins or draws once computers were applied to them and computers have always played best in the endgame both in Chess and Shogi.
There are far more moves that need inspecting in the midgame and each ply makes the work harder than a ply in the endgame.
I always get very suspicious when people make sweeping declarations about the thought processes of the "East" and the "West"
As long as one is aware that it is a generalisation then there's nothing wrong with it. It is fair enough to say that Americans prefer American Football to Association Football as long as you are not saying "All Americans", The former is a reasonable generalisation and the latter is racism.
That's not really a problem with the rules as with simple English comprehension.
No, it is a real fact of the rules. Chess has a finite length (1500 turns) beyond which the players can not possibly prolong it, Go does not.
These are two games from Japan, not the East
Go is Chinese, Shogi is Japanese.
In Shogi you apparently can't offer a draw;
That's basically correct but there is a complex limbo arising out of the rules whereby a termination of the game can be forced by player A, letting player B win while a forced termination of the game by player B causes a draw. Therefore neither player wishes to end the game and neither are required to make the final move. In practice games such are almost impossible to arise and the players would be expected to abandon the game and play again.
I guess that depends on your choice of religion now doesn't it? No, all religions are NOT like Judaeo/Christianity.
No, they're not, but I don't see what that has to do with it; what religion(s) are you thinking of that do offer an explanation of the world that holds water?
Huh? "Westerners" have trouble handling it? Why exactly?
Most Westerners expect games to have clearly defined end-points. Many people respond to rules like "The game ends when both players agree" with "well, what if I refuse? Huh? What are you going to do about it?".
There are two examples here (Go and Shogi) of such games from the East, can you name similar game rules from the West that appear in games played for money?
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, no difference. The idea that the kernel is not the OS is a myth passed around in recent years without any explanation; it's just assumed that if you say it loud and often it will become true. It doesn't.
The origin of this myth seems to be the idea that in a sea of API's, the ones exported by the kernel are just nothing special, the whole ensemble is the OS. This is certainly MS's argument in court.
Of course, it doen't hold water. The OS is the kernel for the simple reason that if you remove it nothing else works. The kernel sits astride the OS/User barrier and controls all access across it in a way no other API does. What other part of what you call the OS can you say that of?
What is it that you say distinguishes a non-kernel OS component from a non-kernel, non-OS component, the touch of the magic finger of RMS?
Remove all of the GNU tools and what can you do with the kernel??
Bad news for you on this one. I program in Forth on my Linux machine at home and I don't need any GNU tools to do so. I don't link to any libraries and I only access even IO through the kernel. I wrote the Forth compiler myself using NASM and ald for debugging; neither are GNU tools.
In 25 years of programming I've never written a C or C++ program, although of course I have compiled them. I use Perl (not GNU), Forth (not GNU), and PHP (not GNU) for almost all my work now. Not because I'm avoiding GNU tools (I sometimes use Sed) but I just don't need them. Even programs like "uniq", "chmod" and "ls" have started to be replaced by my own Forth version on my system, just for the practice.
If GNU is part of the OS how could this possibly be? How can I write fully functioning programs without using GNU components, and why is it I can't do that with the kernel missing? It's almost as if the GNU stuff was just a bunch of apps!
What shell would you use??
Korn?
A Linux system always includes GNU tools, just as it always includes TeX (not GNU), which I use for all my document production now, from letters to setting my Forth code and comment blocks neatly onto pages for listing. Does this mean that it's now Knuth/GNU/Linux?
If the FSF had really been like M$, they would have sold the GNU tools to pay for HURD development and released the Hurd as "Linux XP".
Lack of money was not the problem for Hurd, it was lack of talent in the sense that no talent on Earth would have been enough to take it out of the realm of myth in any realistic timescale.
The kernel != the OS. If God makes the body, and the Devil makes the feet, do we worship the devil for creating man?? If GOD makes the body and the devil the brain??
This is the first time I've seen fantasy beings invoked as an argument in CS! I'll ignore it and hope you've sobered up by the time you read this.
Linux the kernel would not have been born without the FSF.
This is true. But then it's true that GNU would not have existed without Unix and Bell Labs. So we're up to "BellLabs/Knuth/GNU/Linux" now. That's progress: everyone's getting their due credit.
Without the FSF Linux would probably be lockedaway in a room at IBM even had it managed to get finished.
True. But it assumes that nothing else would have taken its place. Like BSD, for example. GNU was used, but it didn't have to be.
To Stallman this becomes bigger than it needs to be because Linus has no moral center when it comes to the world of Proprietary software.
This is also almost true. I think that actually it becomes bigger to RMS because he's lost all sense of proportion on the subject, but Linus is definitely ethically adrift.
The stupidity of this statement lies in the fact that you have incorrectly id'ed the kernel as the OS.
There is no evidence that I have seen, other than what passes for it in MS's court cases, that there is anything outside of the kernel which is part of the OS. Simply waving at some programs and saying "that's OS" and others and saying "that's an application" is not good enough. In fact it is bullshit.
I assume that you consider yourself technically literate, so why do you confuse the kernel with the OS??
I am clearly more technically literate than yourself and less prone to be blinded by buzzwords that have no meaning.
So continue to lionize Torvalds while demonizing Stallman if you must,
It's becoming increasingly clear that both are arseholes of the highest order. Clearly, being an arsehole doesn't get in the way of technical ability.
but time will tell who was the true champion of the cause.
Well, Stallman is of course. At least he was but his incredible ability to annoy those who would otherwise support him, apparently to feed his ego, is undermining that cause. Fatally if he continues in this way.
And for all of the "GNU couldn't exist without Linux" people out there,
All two of them...
without "gcc" Linux couldn't compile.
Circular logic. Linux is written for gcc, including some bugs and quirks. If gcc had not existed then it would have been written for and around some other compiler.
So all the GNU did was produce the necessary tools, and this distracted them from creating a next generation kernel.
You sad, sad man. Saint Stallman slaving away at these tools all day thinking "I wish I could get on with my next generation kernel, but that bastard Torvalds just won't let the pressure up for a new version of AWK".
The fact that the majority of the GNU tools were in place when Linus started rather undermines this particular work of fiction.
Meanwhile some guy does a this-generation Monolithic kernel faster (of course) and he's the great hero of the day.
Of course you are using loaded language. It's not at all clear that the micro-kernel is "next-generation" as opposed to "dead-end waste of time". If we'd waited for Hurd Unix would be dead and there would be no machines running any GNU tools anywhere.
There are two sides to every story, but don't even know one of them.
I know many sides to this story and I've been involved in the industry long enough to have seen how stories grow and develop into myths and legends with only a passing resemblance to the original truth. The whole Hurd thing has been a fiasco from start to the present day. Have you used it? Do you actually know anyone that has? Do you know when it will be ready for running OpenOffice on?
TWW
So how exactly did he not get his fair share of the credit?
Does he think that he's famous for his dress-sense or something?
TWW
If you die, can I have it?
TWW
And if it wasn't for Office for Mac the Mac would be dead; do you suggest OS X should be called Microsoft OS X because of this?
TWW
Ie, the actual operating system!
Stallman's claims are that he doesn't get enough credit. How many people DON'T know of his involvement and what he did? There may be some small tribes in the Amazon, I suppose.
The next one is that the system should be called GNU/Linux because of all the work he did on, wait for it, programs that run on it. Well, woop-de-fuck. The programs in question were reverse-engineered from the Unix utilities that many of them share their names with. Should the writers and designers of the original utilities not get credit? Should we call the system "Unix/GNU/Luinx"? Get real.
Stallman claims that Linux is "The system is a variant of GNU, and the GNU Project is its principal developer,". Always lie big, or don't lie at all, eh? Linux is a varient of Unix and GNU is a supplier of application programs for it.
Linux is the kernel. Redhat is a distribution, GNU is a software house. How hard are these to understand?
The most hateful thing about RMS is that, when he's off the subject of his ego, he is right most of the time. Linus' dismissal of concerns about Bitkeeper is foolish and there is a broader issue at stake when non-free software is used. But these issues are clouded by RMS' ability to talk utter shite about giving GNU more credit when it is already a living legend!
The cause of free software would be greatly helped if Stallman would just fuck off. We need rational argument, not rabid ego-stroking.
TWW
The documentation should ideally be in a separate document which explains each subroutine/function. But this much discipline is way beyond most programmers!
One of the reasons I like Forth is that any decent Forth system allots an equal amount of space for comments as code but in a way which does not interfere with the code. A Forth editor can then display a block of code with the corresponding block of comments beside it. Also, since the comment block is assigned anyway you feel you should put something in it so I find I comment Forth programs quite well as I go along.
TWW
Alphaville - Not seen it.
Metropolis - classic, everyone should see it once.
TWW
I'll repeat it again for the hard of thinking: the BSD license means helping people who are totally opposed to the bulk of programmers being able to make a living. It's not the intent of the BSD license but it is the effect.
Its like making bullets and giving them away for free to a room full of people only one of whom (MS) has a gun (monopoly). It's pretty obvious whose going to get shot.
Think once, think twice, think "don't help the bastard that's trying to kill you".
TWW
Quick explanations are rarely precise explanations when programmers are involved.
Anyway, keeping documentation longer than the code encourages shorter code more than it encourages rambling text, unless you know programmers that like typing more than I do.
Short code with a good explanation is always better than long code with poor explanation. In fact, short code is always better, period. Every line of code beyond what is needed for the task should be rooted out; it is a source of bugs and inefficiency.
TWW
Nice idea; never works in practice. The reason is that what you think is easy to understand is not always what other people think is easy to understand.
The code you are writing now might have to be modified in the future by someone just out of university which means, generally, someone with very little experience. Your red-black binary tree might be "easy to understand" for you and a novelty to them.
Also, mature highly-factored, optimised code that has been improved over several years can be very hard to follow even when the original code was quite straight-forward (but perhaps too slow).
Finally, as a philosophical point, source code is supposed to be terse in comparison to natural language so it should take longer to describe the code in your own language than in the programming language.
TWW
TWW
Their general policy is to prevent anyone working in the software industry unless it's for them, Gates has actually said in a speech that he can't see why, in the future, anyone would produce software other than MS.
Seriously, get a job at Microsoft if your smart enough...
I noticed in university that, when MS came around to recruit people, the mediocre programmers were the only ones that went to see them. Part of being a good programer, or a good anything, is pride in your work. Since quality control is non-existant at MS it follows that they can only employ mediocre programmers.
And it's "if you're smart enough".
TWW
At least they'd have to live in fear of a disgruntled employee blowing the whistle. It's not much but it is something.
TWW
Because, as a working programmer, they are activley supporting a company which is committed to putting me out of work by pushing various legal and illegal tactics to make it hard for non-MS companies to survive. I do give a flying fuck about that, even if BSD programmers don't.
The GPL makes it difficult for programmers to make money from their code but BSD makes it impossible, in the long run, for any programmer to make money unless they have the gracious permission of people like Gates who have plenty of cash to buy government policy and national markets.
TWW
Gates must have a good laugh everytime a new BSD comes out - more quality code he can use for free leaving money free to shit on programmers everywhere. It's a small price to pay to port .net across and encourage all the BSD saps to keep the effort up.
TWW
I think I can guess. It's okay to have a rip at a crap film that we're all agreed was crap but not to have a go at a crap film that lots of people here liked for some reason.
So, what about a halfway house: a review of "Titanic", a crap film that loads of "normal" people liked, would that get on?
TWW
Well, I don't see any evidence that they are. If you look at the FIDA rules for tournament play, for example, they basically assume that the players hate each other and will never agree to anything. Everything is prescribed and a non-consenting approach is assumed throughout.
My feeling and experience is that this is the norm for tournament-level play in all games and sports in the West.
TWW
You need new lawyers, mate: the one's you're using know NOTHING about copyright. If my friend gives me permission to use his novel it is none of your business. You can write any crap you like in your EULA but it isn't a magic document that suddenly allows you to interfere in other people's copyright.
They must be written this way to protect both the companies involved and the end users. I am serious. Read the EULAs of those other games.
Yadda yadda yadda. What a load of fucking bullshit. You people are all the same, "I can steal your code/ideas but you can't use mine; it's for your own good". Who do you think believes this crap? 5-year-olds? You're just another pirate trying to hide behind legal-sounding claptrap.
In closing: stick it up your arse, you crook.
TWW
TWW
I'm claiming a cultural bias in the way people approach certain things; the limitation is not cognitive in the sense of there being some difference inherent in the person.
Do you agree that culture can create such bias? If not, what is culture?
As regards the 50-move rule I don't think it's normally regarded as a volutary rule. obviously, if there is no referee then both players can ignore it or any other rule.
TWW
Kaplan takes 50 pages of utter waffle to say that he finds himself competent, to no one's surprise.
I remember being quite optimistic at the time the motion was made that he obviously would have to stand aside after this came out. Oh, well.
TWW
Several endgames were only proven as wins or draws once computers were applied to them and computers have always played best in the endgame both in Chess and Shogi.
There are far more moves that need inspecting in the midgame and each ply makes the work harder than a ply in the endgame.
TWW
As long as one is aware that it is a generalisation then there's nothing wrong with it. It is fair enough to say that Americans prefer American Football to Association Football as long as you are not saying "All Americans", The former is a reasonable generalisation and the latter is racism.
That's not really a problem with the rules as with simple English comprehension.
No, it is a real fact of the rules. Chess has a finite length (1500 turns) beyond which the players can not possibly prolong it, Go does not.
These are two games from Japan, not the East
Go is Chinese, Shogi is Japanese.
In Shogi you apparently can't offer a draw;
That's basically correct but there is a complex limbo arising out of the rules whereby a termination of the game can be forced by player A, letting player B win while a forced termination of the game by player B causes a draw. Therefore neither player wishes to end the game and neither are required to make the final move. In practice games such are almost impossible to arise and the players would be expected to abandon the game and play again.
TWW
No, they're not, but I don't see what that has to do with it; what religion(s) are you thinking of that do offer an explanation of the world that holds water?
TWW
Most Westerners expect games to have clearly defined end-points. Many people respond to rules like "The game ends when both players agree" with "well, what if I refuse? Huh? What are you going to do about it?".
There are two examples here (Go and Shogi) of such games from the East, can you name similar game rules from the West that appear in games played for money?
TWW