On Wed, 22 Dec 2004, Mark Brader wrote:

Tom Anderson:

So when are we going to see this new sig then, John? I for one am
getting quite excited.

John Rowland:

I wouldn't get too excited, it will be a toning down.

You mean you're going back to the Kia Pride version?

This won't do. But I can see that John's existing man-sized signature
must have unusually high maintenance costs. Maybe we could guarantee
the investment needed to cover them by setting up a, oh I don't know,
let's call it a "public-private partnership"?

Good idea. You can be the Strategic Signature Agency, responsible for
defining the overall direction of the signature, and i'll be OFSIG,
ensuring fair operation of the signature provision market. We'll also need
a Signature Inspectorate, to make sure it meets netiquette standards, and
a body, which i suggest be called Sigdash or Usenet Signature, to handle
the attatchment of the signature to each message. We'll also need a
parliamentary subcommittee to keep everyone on the straight and narrow.

Oh, and does anyone actually want to write the signature? Perhaps the best
thing would be if a few people wrote possible signatures, then licensed
them to people who would actually bid for the signature franchise. That
way, we can have two layers of competition, which should really make
things efficient!

Signatures on John's email, as opposed to his news posts, would of course
be handled by a separate set of bodies, although i suggest they are still
subject to OFSIG and SI regulation.

tom

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