Sigs: people love them and hate them. Some appear to just hate them. The real purpose of a sig is to identify the user, as it is after the post, located right there where spatially and chronologically you are ready to decide if you want to make note about who commented.

Bad sigs are easy to ignore, and still serve their purpose of identifying the owner. Good sigs are a good laugh or moment of thought. Here are the best sigs I've collected, imho.

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The world is run by idiots because they're more efficient than hamsters.
[Zathrus]
-- b/c I like it's optimism! That's the way to paint the silver lining. I used to be a bit annoyed and depressed that the world was run by idiots, but you know what... they ARE more efficient than hamsters!

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Play with my webcams and lights here [206.54.177.105].
[Restil]
-- b/c you really can play with his webcams and lights!

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"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is."
[serutan]
-- because it's true. I like theory and practice, but I think when forced to choose sides in that debate... tmwot, practice has to win out. ("To My Way Of Thinking")

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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
[sharkey]
-- b/c I love the magic eight ball and misinterpretive word play, and this has both! "magic 8 ball, can you really tell me the future of computing" shake shake jostle nudge, "Outlook not so good." "I know that... but what about the future of computing!?"

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If you turn around, you might find yourself looking at something that used to be behind you. -Me
[wadetemp]
-- I find this to be a slightly surreal sig, overtly deep, innately shallow, obviously true, possibly pointless. In other words, a fine recipe for a sig. But to be serious, I praise the sig's relativism, in that it's a subtle hint about the arbitrariness of important relations, what is behind you can be what is before you with a simple turn. Similar to "whereever you go, there you are" which has reached the cliche stage but which presents a similarly straight forward reminder of ones centre of concious, that the world is relative to your inescapable personal point of view.

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"Give me immortality, or give me death!"
[RatBastard]
-- Nothing like a tautology for good geek humor.

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What I'm calling Game Theory is really my own theory of gaming from being a gamer and working in the game industry and studying how games are build from elements.

I don't really prefer mathematical statistics in general over more subjective things, like words, both are very interesting. If you force me to prefer one or the other, numerical methods have proved most abstract and therefore, to me, most interesting.

The real reason I think that numbers make sense is that karma on slashdot is a game only. Don't assume I'm saying it's a good game or a bad game, just that it is a game by nature.

To justify that claim quickly let me just say that the moderation system exists to raise and lower posts themselves, mainly to lower them I think. That does not require a karma system in itself.

Karma is a point system to act as an artificial motivation to post well and want to get highly moderated posts, based on the fact that this is what nearly every game does, generally in various areas. In real sports, statistics are calculated for the same effect. Giving points is like setting up a genetic algorythm tuning itself, some will post just to increase points.

That is, they give up forwarding an agenda. Or they mimik others. Or they conform to the group opinion (abstract mimikry). Or possibly they role play and draw cotangent arcs with their karma(t) function. Who cares, with karma, you can trash your karma for fun if you want... by definintion it means that it was moderated low and easy to ignore. Karma may imply that you are invited to troll, etc. It's like the cathartic excuse for violent computer games, only in the case of messages. You can be nuclear flame on and who really cares because the killfile system is working on a post by post basis.

As a word it seems the game has changed. It is now a qualitative opinion about me. It's kind of like a closed box, just a hint of what is undoubtably still a numeric entity, presented as the machines idea of me.

But then, the moderation system itself is what motivates posting the sorts of posts the community of moderators praises (or for the troll, what it condemns) and not the karma. So what does karma mean to the designers of this game, I wonder?

Often there comes around a subject that is heated and controversial, but also totally meaningless and pointless to discuss at length. Of course I am referring to "slashdot.org" topics. Meta-moderation boycots, moderation boycotts, Taco Bashing. etc. Well until now I felt left out, I just couldn't care about any of these pointless topics and I can tell you it was clear that as a result I couldn't really fit or be part of the slashdot community. But now my karma isn't a number, it's a --- yech --- a -word-! Can you imagine. Sweet artifical quantification (mostly calculated) replaced by squishy human qualification (mostly affected). We lost calculated (mostly) for affected (mostly). Calculation for affectation. Math for psychology. Egads... it's the end.
Update: I don't really prefer mathematical statistics in a general sense, over psychology, both are very interesting. But in this case, I do.

The idea is that you might be able to get Microsoft to audit itself using auditing software that scanned it's source repositories. No one external to Microsoft has to access the confidential information involved.

How could they be made to allow this..? possibly as a penalty in one of the antitrust cases (remember there are more... plenty of general litigation but also big Sun and AOL cases), that is, not willingly.

I'm sure that Microsoft has used GPL code, probably without knowing, late some night when something was due the next day. I want to audit them. I think we can start by (somehow) looking for binary signatures... people that have time to make advanced obfuscating efforts have time to write their own code and don't plagerize.

MS use of GPL code may be as innocent as an extra copy of Office on a University Computer Lab computer... which is to say they ought to get rung up for it just like the BSA says!

I know it can be done, I know a general approach, I've programmed for 20 years (ok, I started in junior high, but I've been paid to do it for 17, ok, I worked my way through school as a programmer, but I've been graduated over a decade...) BUT... I don't write binary diffing tools etc. etc. and I think we could get our heads together for a sensible approach using tools people might already have around for other purposes.

NOTE: proving this would likely mean (1) MS would have to open some of it's code and (2) the FSF would get damages equal to the amount MS made selling the software that included Covered Code.

EXTRA: even discovering BSD/Public Domain code used by MS would be a good public relations thing and a big pie in MS's face and would therefore be fun aka a "good thing"