Well, and by the same law that has created an independent Ukraine in 1991, Crimea should have been an independent country as well, given that they have declared their sovereignty almost a year earlier but were basically forced to remain in Ukraine by the military threat.

This is not Moscow propaganda, just a little history lesson. It is interesting that you don't know it, given that you've previously mentioned being an Ukrainian yourself. Could it be that you are but a kid yet? That would fit the whole picture about you very well indeed.

Well, that might be because Ukraine has existed as a nation for only 23 years. There was simply not enough time.

Ukrainians had a history of raiding neighboring villages, pillaging, raping and burning, though. Sort of wanna-be vikings, just without ships and wearing silly ottoman inspired costumes. Polish still think that an Ukrainian national hero was a bandit and a war criminal and that is, in fact, not far off the mark.

It is not just the numbers. Ukrainian army is a mess because Ukraine sold almost everything they have inherited from USSR during the last 20 years, the army is not trained, not equipped and the soldiers are often unwilling willing to die for corrupt politicians. The only reason why Ukraine is not overrun yet is that Putin is unwilling to use Russian army in this conflict because it might pull the deeply divided Ukrainian state together - policing a hateful, conquered population would be way too difficult.

Right now it is enough to fund the separatists and occasionally help them out. Ukrainian government will help to do the rest by shelling civilians and generally behaving like a bunch of idiots.

You see, that country is, in a way, similar to Pakistan in 1971. Has been a sovereign country for just about 20 years in its recent history, has artificially drawn borders by the former colonial power, is corrupt, piss-poor, divided inside and their neighbor tries to destabilise it even further. In 1971 these circumstances have lead to a bloody war and creation of Bangladesh. I just hope it won't end up as bloody this time.

A corporation is an artificial construct existing on a whim of the current lawmaking of a country (or in this case a union of countries). Thus these states have every right to split it. If it was an unlimited liability general partnership, things would be much different.

Except that mi writes bullshit, Russians are perfectly able to hear the difference between [v] and [w]. They don't have the [w] phoneme, that is all.

You even fail at Russian.

Russian spelling is not phonetic, there are often significant differences between what is said and what is written.
Belarussian is strictly phonetic, Czech is almost phonetic (there are some exceptions due to vocal shifts: like "u" with krouzek and with carka, "i" and "y" being the same phoneme). Russian is not.

Writing that the distinction between "w" and "v" makes no sense is also wrong. The right answer is that Russian simply lacks the [w] phoneme (labio-velar approximant) and uses either "v" or "u" in transcriptions of foreign texts. Polish and Belarussian both have this phoneme, although the origin of it is the dark L sound, that is why it is written as L with as stroke in Polish and probably wouldn't make sense in front of an "i". Belarus on the other hand uses an u with a breve, that might actually work.

I don't think SpaceX does anything from a different perspective and there is nothing groundbreaking with what they do - just good engineering. What they did was to build well-researched hardware using modern manufacturing techniques and a lot of off-the-shelf parts. That is why their design is so conservative. Nothing wrong about it - that works well and helps keeping the cost down. But bleeding edge is something else.

Well, the problem here in Germany is that our government is a bunch of amateurs who don't know what they are doing and thus follow a nauseating zig-zag course.

On one hand, renewable energy in Germany is indeed increasing. On the other hand, some goals were indeed abandoned after the ridiculous sanctions of Russia started to backfire, sinking the German economy after it barely started walking out of the 2008-2009 recession.

Go grow some reading comprehension, Pavlov's dog.

I've never stated anything about "forced green energy efforts" at all. The only thing I've written about is that the invisible hand that magically creates solutions when they are needed does not exist and every research process is a long strings of small steps so sitting and waiting for a magical solution to every problem to appear out of thin air is delusional.

Of course it is needed. I, for one, like clean air, clean water, trees not damaged by acid rain and while a trip to Pripyat was fun - in an eerie way - you have to strictly stay on the roads, because outside of these the radiation is still strong enough for better not having kids after sitting on a tree stem.

Bitchslapping? Come on, Anonymous Coward, your "real world examples" weren't bitchslapping, they are meaningless in matter of this discussion. Simply because they weren't about innovations, research or anything remotely similar. They were just about some government funded manufacturing being expensive. What does it have to do with anything I've written?

Don't be a Pavlov's dog next time.

Butthurt much?

Well, fact is that governments sponsor most of basic research. It still takes very long time to fruit and I think most people who want the government to continue funding basic research are well aware of it.

I have seen - predominantly on Slashdot, obviously, but also elsewhere, a sort of naive technocrats (who are often also libertarians) believing that as soon as some technology is needed, the invisible hand of the market magically creates this technology so one only has to sit and wait for this magic solution to appear out of thin air. The more down-to-earth kind of these people even tried to explain this magic by telling that this process happens by throwing enough money at a problem.

Unfortunately - and TFA is a picture book example of this - reality doesn't work that way. Breakthroughs don't happen by magic, they happen by meticulous research and a shitload of small steps. Solutions don't suddenly appear just when they are needed, a long lead time of research is required. And sometimes this new technology never comes up at all.

"neoliberal" is an european term meaning purely economic liberals (freedom for business aka free market fundamentalists).

Nah, if it is at gunpoint, then it is not "steal", it is "rob" ;-)