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.

It is entirely possible to deploy internal IM services, with free software like openfire, which uses the same protocol as google talk and facebook, without the need to expose internal data and keeping a central log of every conversation. For the twitter necessities there is Status.Net, which powers open-source twitter clone identi.ca, that can be installed internally and seems to be API compatible with twitter clients.
I am not advocating substitution of email messages, but sometimes IM can be very useful on a corporation, taking the right steps to keep security and accountability. It is really very useful to help desk staff, for example.

Because Apple acquired rights over the source code and hired it's main (and possibly, at the time, only) developer, continuing to develop it, but it was already widely used on Linux and BSD (and OSX) for around 10 years before it's acquisition.

Hell, Apple DEVELOPED cups for OSX and linux and bsd picked it up because it made sense and solved a real problem).

No, cups was developed independently starting on 1997, and on 2007, after many years being the default printing system on OSX and many linux distributions it was acquired by Apple.

Einstein didn't studied alchemy, Isaac Newton did in the 17th century, when matter structure was far from know. During Einstein lifetime the basis for modern chemistry (excluding quantum chemistry) were already known, and rudimentary atomic theories were largely accepted among the scientists of the time.