Last night, I was upset about an issue that had arisen in Omnimaga forums, where Cemetech was being bashed because of the comments of a single user. I tried to refute this argument, but had no way to do so due to my ban. When I saw a forum user take a rap for trying to be civil, I fumed. I then willingly and irresponsibly made a hateful descision which had far-reaching consequences. A letter written to that forum's admin was made public. It was embarrasing, but in the end was probably for the best, since I may have not been prompted to write this apology otherwise. I have more to answer for than one letter. I figured that since the letter was publicized, it should be only fitting that my apology should be too, because you're not the only person I've wronged.

Before I begin, I wish to clarify that I have not been coerced in any way to write this letter, and my views, opinions, and statements in no way represents Cemetech or any other community member(s). After a day of calming down and really beginning to think, I realized I did something very wrong, something I cannot simply justify with my opinions or intentions. I have been treading this path for three years. While I stand by certain points I intended to make, this post is not the place to discuss them. I only humbly request that KermM allows this topic to be discussed uncensored, and to remain open for as long as there are no arguments or altercations.

DJ_O, first and foremost, I am incredibly sorry, and I regret those hateful, critical, and personally insulting remarks in that letter I sent you. There was absolutely nothing in that letter that could not have been discussed rationally and politely, the hyperbole was a spiteful addition and was completely evil and unnecessary. I should have never, in ANY circumstance, made insults about your personal life and beliefs. It was totally immature, a childish temper tantrum I'd expect from a brat toddler. That was the most direct offense this apology is based on, but there is more to this.

Secondly, I am sorry for trying to dictate how you should run your forum. This egregious trespassing was completely my fault, and I did everything I could for three years to justify it. But it was wrong, I was wrong. That is YOUR SITE, they are YOUR RULES. I do not have the RIGHT to criticize how you run your state of affairs. You made it clear to me that my presence was no longer desired or tolerated, and I lashed out. I was completely in the wrong the whole time, and ironically, was guilty of creating the drama and hostility that I blamed you for. And what's more, I'm guilty of the slander and libel I spouted on other forums and channels. That was purely out of hate, there is no justification for that, not even the reasons I pretended to have.

DJ, this has to stop. EVERYONE is tired of my problems with you, and my flames, spam, and trolling has benefitted no one. So as of now, I am no longer going to involve myself with any of your sites like this. I will immediately cease picking fights with you and your community members. I will stop criticizing your site administration. I will no longer berate your site or your community, nor take part in such discussions on any forum or channel. I will cease from ban evading and will no longer visit your irc channel. Most importantly I will no longer harrass you, your staff, or your community about your forums, chat, or individual projects. What you have is an amazing thing and all I've done is brought grief to your community. In hindsight, I was almost in shock, but this ill-guided attempt to improve your site has been probably the most harmful and destructive series of events I have ever commited. The forums may never really recover, and I will always have that as my biggest regret.

Netham45, you were right. All that time ago I was a complete jerk and I deserved everything I got from Omnimaga. I was especially rude and disrespectful to you of all the admins in that time. It got even worse when I started insulting you on #tcpa for absolutely no reason at all. You're right to not trust me or forgive me for any of that, because I simply jumped on the badwagon to make your life miserable. You never did ANYTHING to me at all, it was completely unprovoked, and I'm sorry.

Eeems, we never did see eye-to-eye, but that's because I was being a huge a to you simply because you were an admin at Omnimaga. Our history doesn't go as far back, but seeing as I deliberately called you out on that letter, you can tell there were some angry feelings there, and they are completely unfounded. You are a capable and effective admin of the forums and you deserve that respect. Additionally, I am sorry for the posts I had made to you in the last 24 hours, they were completely combatant and hateful simply because I could. You deserve more than that, especially for someone who frequents Cemetech, a place I like to hang out at.

To SirCmpwn, Geekbozu, and Qwerty.55, you've all been really admirable in handling this situation, I'm sorry that I made you deal with this disaster. Any flaming or trolling I inflict on DJ and his site affects all of you in a negative way because it leaves you to deal with the hostility that I've created. You are directly responsible for the existence of this apology because you made me realize that the site is in good hands, and all I've been doing is hurting it. The three of you are very capable, compassionate, and caring, and I have no doubt the forum will flourish under your administration.

To qazz42, Ashbad, and debrouxl, in a way, I have even more to answer to you three for the harsh comments I've said to every one of you. I'm sorry, you were only concerned about DJ and you were trying to help, but I was insulting and I made no effort to respect you guys at all. You're all good people and DJ is lucky to have you all in his group. The lashback I've gotten from the community was justly deserved, because they came to defense of a friend they care about.

Which brings me to the rest of Omnimaga, but it dawned on me that I'm indirectly responsible for the strict moderation of the forums, ESPECIALLY the nDoom policy. This was all brought on because of ME. Because I made attacks against the forum, they tightened the security. I'm the source of drama, just as I'm the source of hostility. The forum has it's trolls, but clearly, I'm it's biggest, and you don't deserve that. I can only hope it is lifted soon. For all that, I am sorry. Sorry for the flames, sorry for the spam, sorry for the grief, sorry for nDoom. You deserve better!

Now I owe a huge apology to KermM. Dude, you've been incredibly patient with me. Cemetech was indirectly involved because I use its PM service to send this hateful message and as it's under your rules and your jurisdiction, I will accept ANY consequences of those actions. The things I said were hateful and most deserving of a ban, yet you refrained from doing so. But there's more. I'm very sorry for my criticisms of your moderation decisions long past. As with DJ, this is your site and I am not allowed to dictate how you shold run it, much less call you a coward for any of those decisions. It should not have been said at all and bro, it's a huge regret.

Now I've got one for Mobutu4. You were a relatively small part of this entire altercation but you were absolutely right! I butted in to YOUR issue, which was none of my business whatsoever. On top of it, I belittled and insulted you, and I'm sorry for that. I don't normally treat newer members like this but I was determined to get DJ for this no matter what and I took out my frustrations on you. Totally uncalled for and was even banworthy itself without the whole letter incident.

Finally, I owe an apology to the entire community as a whole. In the last three years I stray from actually working on calc projects to making a complete jackass of myself to everyone, and I somehow managed to totally succeed. I've been responsible for way too much drama around here and right now, it's going to stop. I'm sorry, everyone, for making you suffer through this garbage. No one was ever the better off because of my meddling. So I'm turning over a new leaf. I am going to redouble my efforts in these calculator hobbies and actually contribute to this community again. That's what I wanted to do all along, and I lost track of it over the years. I WANT relations between Cemetech and Omnimaga to be good again. I don't want to be responsible for the drama in this community. It's time I acted my age and stopped involving myself in the matters of others. So I'm going to end this right now, with this bared-out apology to EVERYONE I've offended, annoyed, or wronged the entire time I've been in this community. I'm accepting all these hardships as my own fault. I hope you can find it in you to forgive me.

Most sincerely,
Joe Young

I'm not going to quote that(since it's huge), but apology accepted. I've talked to DJ_O and we've cleared things out, so I guess the war is over.

Thanks, I'm glad to hear that. Welcome to Cemetech, from me.



That's just an opinion, bro. And I admit, I did feel good about saying it. But despite my personal feelings, that kind of slander and the personal attacks alone were out of line. You can agree with the point I tried to make, but even I have to admit that slamming anyone down like that is simply not the right thing to do.

I'm fully aware that you love trolling, nikky... but I'll let you judge for yourself whether posting content similar to Kofler's, when he advocates my own negativity and destructiveness on yAronet before the summer of 2004 and he regrets that I stopped being what I'll term an absolute prick, does much good for the community

JoeYoung: apology accepted, as far as I'm concerned.
What ticked me off most in your PM to DJ (I didn't read it entirely) was precisely the personal attacks and slander at the end of it.

Yeah, I've never really grilled him like that before, I lost my cool and now I regret it.

You shouldn't be punished for realizing the problems are stemming from you. It takes great, iron, balls to publicly post such a long and thorough apology like this. This is something that will resonate within the Calculator Community for a while, and will be looked at for years in the history between Cemetech & Omnimaga.

Personally, I admire your courage, for more reasons than your apology. Importantly, I admire that you aren't removing yourself from the community that calculator programming has become. I hope you contribute as long as you find interest, and contribute to it's onward advances.

I try not to educate myself between the relations between Cemetech & Omnimaga but, from time to time I do catch the grief between them, though the Cemetech side of things. Hopefully, this goes a long way to alleviate whatever is between these two communities.

Here's to a Warm Re-Welcome, JoeYoung!

I don't buy it. People don't change from vile balls of venom to lovely butterflies of happiness over night--especially if they've been at it for three years. As far as I'm concerned, you don't get to just say "sorry, bro" and now everyone is happy and blah blah blah. Apologizing isn't a sign of bravery, not without any action behind it. Anyone can apologize for anything, but that doesn't actually change a thing. In my experience, people do stuff like this to try to rebuild the bridges that they're just going to burn down again later. We'll see if there actually is a change, but some of the things you've said were detestable, and it's going to take more than a "whoops, sorry guys" for me to not be skeptical of such a quick transformation.

I think that's a bit blunt and harsh, but gives a good point. However for now I see him as being really sincere.

Anyways, sorry Joe for my comment elsewhere calling you a "f***tard who should be eliminated". I'll admit my response was just as immature and harsh, and I'm sorry for that.

I'm with Shaun, here. I applaud you for _saying_ that you will contribute in the community more, but I'll be waiting cautiously for that to happen.

I completely understand that skepticism. I'm not saying I'm now a lovely butterfly of happiness, nor that I was a vile ball of venom, but I have switched sides in this issue.

I'll let my actions from this point speak for themselves.

Thanks, I just did not like the use of bi-polar as an insult, so, in no way was I on any side of the fight, I was trying to be nutral, so for the most part I kept out of the incident. I viewed omnomIRC at the wrong time :/

Thanks for the apology. To be honest this was not the second part of the PM that insulted me the most, but rather the first and the middle, especially the girlfriend and getting a life part, because I received those insults so many times in real life before, and I always felt that in real life, I did not have the freedom to do what I want.

Also please do not hold the entire blame for anything wrong that happened on Omnimaga or how I am now. In your PM, and along with what some people on Omnimaga told me in the past two days, sometimes you were right about me, especially the life part. Also other people tried to control how Omnimaga and Cemetech are ran in the past too, and other people have hurt me, although nowhere close to stuff in real life. The thing is that what has hurt me the most in the past is real life itself. For the past 6 months, my main life issue has stopped, but I acted too late, and this is where I am, today.

EDIT: Just one thing to keep in mind before sending such e-mail to somebody, however, is that normally the receiver will post it in public. After all, Patrick Davidson has an entire webpage of such e-mail he received in the past and Hays Games did, too.

Yeah, it was low.

And who is Patrick Davidson? And Hay's Games, I heard of them and saw they're site but I never really understood what they were all about.

He's pretty obscure in the community. He made this game called Phoenix. It never got really popular.

lol

And Hays was a "programming group" of trolls who produced obviously low-quality ripoff games and/or fake, nonexistent games. I think facing them was the one time the calculator community really united itself.

They even joined cemetech 5 years ago, and you sapped all the code from their Doorways NT to make the later versions of DCS7. Don't hide your infamy.

I think that, also, hays games stole some game called "Gold Tetris" (or something like that ) and accused the original programmer of Gold Tetris of stealing it from Hays Games


also http://www.oocities.org/haysgames/fanmail.html fascinating what google reveals.


EDIT: Seems Tetris Gold was actually zTetris O_o that is just silly.
What did happen to them anyways?

Hays? I'm guessing they decided to lay low, or maybe they swore off stealing others' work and started using a diff. username/website. After all, on the internet it's not hard to change your identity

Also, it seems like they could've avoided a lot of trouble by saying "based off of the game xxx" instead of claiming it as their own. Derivative works, as long as they are shown as such, are, IMO, a good thing, as they spread word about the original, imply that the original was well-coded, and give newer coders a chance to start out on a solid code base.

It became Cemetech.

I mean, er :p

We did, at one point, have that as an april fools I believe. As to Hays, they finally stopped posting, to my knowledge. Pretty much everyone attacked them as soon as they showed their face for the last time.