My office believes in copying everyone on every conceivable email; we tend toward collaborative work, and the price is too much email, most of which is too linear to be really productive. But, as this blog entry points out, email works best for two-way communication, not groupwork. We've some software that could be reused in this fashion. Hmm.
Opining on voting machines, the NYT points out slot machines in Nevada are carefully regulated; it's in everyone's interest to make playing slots reliable. To reiterate the NYT view, if we can do it for slot machines, why not for voting machines?
A few observant souls have pointed out that open source software development is such a successful model it should be applied to academic research. Which is funny, given academic research is, in theory, requires one to build upon and respond to other's work.