A scientific theory usually have a set of predictions beyond the initial claims that are testable, event if not visible phenomena or directly measured properties. What I described in the example of the Big Bang Theory is precisely testing a scientific theory, as the expected background radiation IS one of the predictions.

If your standard for any scientific theory is based on repeating an experiment or directly visualizing some effect, most of the science of the last 2 hundred centuries is indeed untested, as most of its results are not directly visible, but tested by mesasureable effects. Event relatively simple properties of materials, such as eletronic currents visible, and as such measured through indirect effects, for example, old ammeters using magnetic fields to measure the value of said electronic current, instead of counting the amount of electrons passing per second on a conductor.

In the case of the big bang theory, you have some properties of the universe that are predicted by the theory, such as the presence of the background radiation and the uniformity of mass distribution, among others, that are predicted to exist in a universe where a "big bang" occurs. It is a lot like observations from particle accelerators such as the LHC. There are no means to directly measure a many subatomic particles, but you can measure the particles resulting from the expected decays with some confidence, therefore testing aspects of the theory.

Here in Brazil, most new cars can run on anything from 15% ethanol (the default on mix around here is 85% gasoline, 15% ethanol) to 100% ethanol, usually through sensors in the fuel injection system, and in as much as I know, no changes related to corrosion being necessary.

On Meego (specifically the N9 ) the whole enviroment uses X11, not as an option, but as the primary display server.

Last time I read about this ball drone the estimated battery life was around 15 minutes, making it useful for a very limited range. Also, this ball "drone" is still remote-controlled, putting it definitely outside of the drone category, although similar devices have been adapted to autonomous fly even by hobbyists.

Unless someone can get a power source with better weight/stored energy ratio than the batteries usualy found at these devices, those drones will still be toys. Maybe a buoyant/quadcopter hybrid could overcome this, using far less energy to stay flying and depending on volume, a useful payload capacity.

Also, slax has a "run from memory" mode where the whole distro is loaded to ram, and as such after booting it runs hellish fast. So a computer with 1Gb of ram can still run the whole OS from ram very fast. I already used this mode to boot slax on a whole computer lab/classroom from a single usb drive.

I don't know much about the latest version (7.0), but on previous versions Slax could be reduced to use only the "core" module, which used to be around 50Mb containing only command line tools. It is very handy as a base to build a personalized live cd using slackware packages or a remote boot image.

Using a 3G usb cheap modem you already can do it, using for example gammu.

I guess you are confusing Nokia with Palm/HP, as WebOS ran on html+js and Meego/Maemo used gtk and latter Qt with 100% native apps

Exactly. Google can't "ban" anyone from using android source code, but they can deny access to their proprietary apps and also from being part of the Nexus product line, which obviously depends on early access to the sources and SDK. Also, it is somewhat clear that access to core android developers during a device development is a valuable asset to any manufacturer, as it is the closest to a community android gets due to the open source/closed development environment strategy used by Google.

Truth is, as most of the code on android is apache licenced or GPL (as the kernel) there is no need to ask google's permission to make anything with it. The only parts of the operating system that are under a non-permissive licence that can be considered a showstoper would be the "brand" apps, as gmail, youtube and the google play store.

I guess it is the photosynth project. Apparently it became one silverlight demo only.

The EU is not a "continent sized country", it IS a fucking continent.

Take a look at cairo composite manager. In my experience, it is faster than xcompmgr and runs on any window manager.