Many of you know the early history of soldierx.com, so I'm only going to elaborate on why I was destined to leave. I took over soldierx.com in 1999 after I was released from prison. I took over the site to use it to inform people who knew me and knew of my arrest. Blake wasn't using the domain anymore, so he allowed me to use it for my purposes. Shortly after I began using it, traffic started to pick up, and many inquired about the former group. I decided to restart the group - that was the birth of the soldierx.com which you have come to know.

My purposes were never for soldierx.com to get as popular as it became. I'm more of an introvert, and I never wanted to get a name, or be well known. As many of you noticed, I have never been very good at running soldierx.com. I never got the updates done in time, and I really didn't put much effort into the site. But it was never about the site - it was about my message. I preached freedom of information and an open learning community. These are the things which I have always desired most - and this dream will never die.

The main thing that helped me to realize that it was time for me to go was all of the criticism. I realized that I had put soldierx.com into a community that it was never meant to be a part of. My past actions which resulted in my arrest were wrong. The site I had erected were promoting those actions, and encouraging others to do the same. This was not what I was about, and not what soldierx.com was about. There needed to be a change.

I never really liked the "hacker" community. I never fit into it - I was always too much of a geek. I've always fit in with the programmers and open-source operating system communities. That's where I belong, and that's where I'm going back to. All I see in the "hacker" community is negative. Everybody in the community is making fun of everybody else - nobody is learning anything. I even heard that a rather pathetic girl I unfortunately met, comp82, was saying that I had not read a certain book. What has a community come to when somebody will make up lies as stupid as that to promote self image by damaging the reputation of others.

I'm not sure what will become of soldierx.com, but I know that it will be nothing to do with this community. As the people keep pushing themselves down the downward spiral, I only hope that these words will wake some people up to what they are doing - so that maybe some of them can change. Maybe somebody will read this and realize that they should go read more and insult less. If this document helps one person - then I will be content with writing it.

Maybe the "hacker" community used to be a united community with no bias at all - but I think that it was never perfect. If it ever existed as a utopia, that was only because it was small in number and diversity. Now that there is so much diversity online, a peaceful community trying to learn the things that many of them are trying to learn will never exist. I've seen more discrimination in this community than I've ever seen anywhere else.

I remember the Mentor's last words. Many people are inspired by the unity expressed in his words. Maybe the community should realize that they're no longer all alike, that nobody needs to stop them because they're stopping themselves. Accomplishment doesn't seem to exist in their community. Just remember that...

This is the end of my rant, and the end of my last words. For all of you that read it that aren't in the community I'm talking about, I'm not talking about real hackers, I'm talking about the communities that have sprouted up at every stupid site similar to what soldierx.com had become. Fare well, and goodnight.