Nathan's farewell

["LJSilicon" <ljsilicon@raex.com>]

In case you haven't been to Nathan's "official" FAQ lately, he has packed up
his tent and gone off wailing into the desert. Here is his farewell rant...

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It is with great regret that I must announce that I feel that the Apple II
community has been turned into a wasteland by pirates, thieves and liars.
Further, a community that refuses to stand up to these scum is participating
in their nonsense-- especially when they get suckered into believing that
politeness is more important than the truth.
The Apple II community doesn't give a shit about the constant piracy,
thievery, and hate of developers. And what's worse is that more people throw
a fit that I just used a 4 letter word instead of being angry at the pirates
that are truly killing the Apple II's future.

I have invested many thousands of hours in Apple II creations, from
programming to maintaining the best and most correct set of Apple II
resources. Thanks to the jerks, this work has been constantly maligned,
stolen, insulted and I now count that investment of time as a waste. The
Apple II community has been given up on years ago by people with more common
sense-- and now it is my turn to join them by turning my back on the
"community," shaking the dust off my feet at them and moving on.

The pirates may be able to steal various works. But, the creator has the
true power that they never can match-- the power to also destroy. To this
end, I have low-leveled all HD partitions and backups on my machines. There
will not be another GUPP update from me, no Twilight II 2.0. Many other
projects in various stages of development-- previously unannounced due to my
not wanting to promote vaporware-- will likewise never appear on the Apple
II. All files used to create this web site have been similarly overwritten;
I have *none* of those files in my posession anymore-- and they won't be
coming back. And from my opinion, that's a good thing, as I won't have to
put up with the constant barrage of lies and unappreciative users.

As long as the Apple II community is too idiotic to tell the difference
between the truth and lies couched in politeness, to tell the difference
between supporting pirates and developers, to tell the difference between
meaningless talk and actually creating, it will be cursed to have more and
more top developers leave. Less and less will be created until the platform
lies in obscurity, only the domain of a few backbiting thieves who'll never
create anything new again.

Special mentions of thieves, liars, and crooks who have tried their best to
push away developers: Charles Turley (piracy and lies), Jeff Hurlburt (aka
Rubywand and SiFan-- more lies and outright hate of developers, as the
Wolf3D incident proved), Karl Asha (running a pirate site), Patrick Kane
(same), Steve Mentzer (posting many pirated materials, then claiming for
years to not have done so). The blame for lack of Apple II development lies
firmly at their feet, but nobody seems to have cared.

And from me to the Apple II community: goodbye and good riddance. You asked
for developers to shun you, and they're too happy to oblige. Don't bother
contacting me; filters have been put in place to automatically toast such
messages.

Nathan Mates

7/14/98

***************

A saying comes to mind... "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way
out the door!" See ya, Matey.... AAArrrr