It's a case of a few bad apples ruining the barrel for everybody . . . we've been bumping into a lot of nasty people who just use the siggie area to post not-so-well-meaning links. Consequently it was decided to disallow signatures for new posters until they've been here for 30 days or have 30 posts.
You are getting very close so you can expect to get ticker access again really soon.
Sorry . . .