Finnish defense forces had two of their F18s in the air during the initial ash cloud arrival. They didn't stay up for more then a few minutes however, as they were wrapping up the training run. These are the pictures with commentary of one of the disassembled engines after this (commentary in finnish):
Summary on the front page states: "According to our investigation, volcanic dust did not cause significant damage to the engine of the aircraft. However we did discover what seems to be volcanic ash residue on internal engine components".
This is from the craft that just flew through the cloud at the very start, when first traces of ash arrived here. As they appear to also state that they will ground all but operative readiness flights, and only fly other flights on the piston engine craft during ash cloud persisting over the country, it appears that they believe the damage will be quite significant if they will have to fly during ash cloud conditions for extended periods of time.
Also, India isn't even involved in WIPO, ACTA's predecessor. This hasn't stopped RIAA and co from claiming that it infringes WIPO and shoving it on all kinds of black lists for that reason. ACTA is mostly about western countries. Most of the developing countries are still coming to terms with WIPO, if they signed it.
This is actually very easy. A task as OP refers to it is a performance which requires unoptimized raw calculating power from higher, conscious functions of the brain.
When you learn a task, such as for example walking, your brain will always attempt to optimize it so that your lower, unconscious thought threads handle it passively, without any conscious input. In fact, walking is used as a book case scenario of how human (and in this case any being with organic brain capable of learning in general) learns to delegate tasks to unconscious "threads" which can be handled without any conscious input at all. Breathing is ever further developed, with multiple reflex actions which do not need to be learned at all - as it is a key element for survival ever since birth, it is fully automated through a specially designed neural area where brain and spinal cord link. Same area is also responsible for setting the speed of the heartbeat, or more accurately, it is responsible for making sure that proper oxygenation levels are provided for it (i.e. lungs and heart work in tandem to deliver sufficient amounts of oxygen - it has neural sensors to detect CO2 levels of blood and adjust both of above automatically to compensate).
But I digress. Back to tasking, a higher function task is something that is either not automated yet, for example, walking process in infants, or a process which is too difficult to be automated as we have no brain area that can be sufficiently optimized to handle the task fully autonomously, such as for example completing a word puzzle. Walking is once again the best example: at birth, infant has no information on how walking happens - nor necessary physique. At early age, when infant already has sufficient bone density and musculature to enable upright walking, they still cannot for quite a while. This is because walking is in fact a VERY complex process that involves several dozens groups of muscles working in various directions and doing a very precise balancing act - complexity of learning this artificially is shown best by how difficult it is to produce a upright walking biped robot - even modern ones still walk very slowly in comparison to a human. As a result, until the task is first learned consciously, phase by phase, it is so complex in terms of multitasking, that an infant with all the necessary physique cannot do it. Instead infant first learns how to crawl, then how to stand, and only then how to walk (combine balancing of standing with motion control of crawling). In all simplicity, infant learns how to combine various simple tasks into several complex ones and finally one very complex one, and then his brain optimizes the entire process to automate it fully.
However an adult who has fully automated walking as a task can easily walk without having to think about it at all. It is a fully automated process optimized to function on unconscious level without any conscious brain function input other then "set initial direction and speed". And even those can often be automated - just grab you phone and try to engross yourself into a game or texting on it while walking. You will notice that after a few minutes you will adapt and easily maintain course and avoid stumbling and colliding with objects in spite of not focusing on walking at all and with phone screen fully covering your visual focus - your unconscious mind will handle the visual ques from your peripheral vision and adapt your walking course, as well as alert your conscious mind in case an obstacle that cannot be handled by this "autopilot" alone comes on the path.
The tasking that OP refers to is the complex tasks that require consciousness to focus on the task. It does not refer to tasks handled unconsciously and autonomously without conscious input.
China was considered 2nd world country due to similar political systems and their support for North Korea in Korea War. This despite soviet-sino war and it's self-imposed isolationism, as it still stayed largely true to its original policy of supporting hostile nations such as North Korea.
Really folks, you need to get your terminology straight. Third world was not named third world because of its poverty, as current youth seems to think - it has been named to due to cold war divide into "us", "enemy" and "neutral". As in first, second and third world. It's just that for last twenty years second world largely vanished (as they are no longer the enemy they used to be) and most countries composing third world are very poor.
This is actually untrue. Actual sand is not a problem for a modern jet engine - if you ever bothered to watch the A380 ads, one of the tests on the engine was when they fed a constant thick stream of fine sand into the intake of a running engine, and it was going just fine. It will certainly stress the engine, but it will keep running just fine for a very long time before sand starts to really wear out the internal mechanics to cause serious damage and shutdown.
Problem is that hot ash is actually not sand (which would not be able to stay that high in the air), but actual hot ash. As a result, as it goes through the engine, it coats the fuel feeding system and as it's rapidly cooled by compressed cold air pre-ignition, it becomes a glass-like material that blocks the fuel from getting into combustion chamber. This is what is causing the engine flameout. The reason why keeping the engine shut, putting plane into descent and keeping on trying to restart the engine is current modus operandi is because the glass-like substance that ash forms on the inside of the engine becomes very brittle when engine is being cooled by fast air stream going through it. As a result, when temperature drops below certain threshold, the normal vibration caused by drag and turbulence shatters the brittle mass, clearing the nozzles and allowing for fuel feeding to work again.
This is what happened in the 747 that lost all 4 of it's engines to flameout when flying through volcanic ash in the past. The report should be available to the general public, at least I recall reading it somewhere (though in finnish). In general, ash doesn't really scratch as much as stick to surfaces and solidify into dark glassy mass (which does in fact block the windows as well, meaning pilots would most likely have to land in instruments-only conditions in addition to handling engine flameouts).
No, but it should NEVER be criminal to indulge and satisfy in whatever fetish you have so long as it is victimless and harmless to real people. Problem with hysterical pedohunters is that they don't care how their actions actually affect children. They are simply out for blood because it's their fetish, just like spanish inquisition was. The whole lolicon issue is one brilliant example of this - why should anyone care if someone masturbates to an image of a drawn child? If that gets his/her kicks so that the person can be a normal productive member of society, all's good, or at least should be good - no child is ever harmed, and the person has taken care of his/her urges. Yet modern pedohunters would love to string every single one of these people from a nearest flagpole inspite of them posing zero real threat to the children. At the same time, it's a known fact that those who are most anti-[issue] people tend to have extreme fetishes themselves, and typically perform and support witch-hunt style actions to cover their own "shameful" fetishes. Great example of this are some of the most hardline anti-gay activists who come out of the closet later in their lives.
Finally there is a lovely issue of children as sex objects which many love to deny ignoring the cold and brutal medical facts and often their own experiences as parents. Every parent knows that children discover their sexuality long, long before teenage starts. Explaining to your child why masturbating in public is inapproproate when he/she is around age of 4-5 is fairly typical - it's just that in "this is shameful" families it's done in such a traumatizing way for the child, that child gets too afraid to explore it any further before teenage hormones kick in. This is stuff that's widely known in medical community. In fact, there are medical books who mention sexuality in babies - for example babies "humping" their bed covers because it feels good. Before the concept of "morality" kicks in, children sexuality is typically ignored, and is considered "acceptable if shameful" by most.
You have to remember, if you're close to someone who is actually working with real pedophiles who have actual victims, your view is very strongly skewed, same as a police officer's who's working in slums. You tend to see the worst in people because you're used to seeing worst in people. Not because it's actually there.
As a pre-release test version, yes, it worked on n5800. I'm not sure if it was made for n5800 per se, but I used it until nokia maps v2 updated to v3 and apparently became incompatible with that version of sports tracker, which killed the application for me.
Nokia has published ovi maps racing, which is essentially micro machines in real world. Really fun game, you essentially create tracks based on real world maps stored on your phone, and can race on them. Brings a whole new level of fun to make a track around your neighbourhood and share it with friends.
Real killer app for nokia and GPS has been their sports tracker though, which isn't a game. Sadly it became a pay application after its enourmous success as a free one.
Who the hell are YOU -- or any government -- to deprive the parents of their right to make that choice? Ridicule it all you want, but it is THEIR choice.
Protecting people from harm is the main job of the government. All the "big government bad, small government good" stuff you have flying in US is mostly about your colonial past and pretty horrific experience with colonial government, who's main goal was population control, subjugation and extracting taxes.
Here in Europe we largely lack such experiences. Most governments tend to go to war against certain ethnicities - but with few exceptions never against their main ethnicity. Governments tend to be much more stable and citizen-oriented because of this. This is especially true for Germany, where people by the nature of their culture are VERY pedantic.
Result is, we can afford to cede more right to the government because we can trust the government not to abuse those right much more then you can. It's a cultural thing. And I can bet a rather large stack of money that most Europeans in general, be they French, German, Spanish, Finnish, Swedish and so on would agree that government DOES have a right to say that TOLERANCE towards other should be taught. Because in the long term, tolerance towards others is the main thing that makes our society work.
By reading the case material, you'll notice that these people are literally some of the most intolerant religious nutcases there can be. To them, government school TEACHING ABOUT OTHER RELIGIONS is unacceptable because it's not christian enough - they're THAT intolerant of others. The judge who granted asylum is either very, very politically/religiously motivated, or had to follow a truly horrifying set of laws.
I'd be looking for a fault within US justice system rather then German governance and schooling laws on this. If these people REALLY wanted to home school, all they needed was getting a basic teaching license, which would have them go courses about how to teach. Which incidentally is not an easy job. Instead they opted to flee and "seek asylum", which says volumes about them and their desire to attract attention to their "cause".
Using my own nokia xm5800 and tomtom's 4 inch mid-range navigator I had to use before it I have to note that you're ignorant of the current form factors in GPS world vs nokia phones, at least as far as Europe is concerned.
- it's smaller then any decent navigator on the market, in every aspect. Pretty much any autonavi sold nowadays has a 4 inch screen, and is usually fairly heavy (several hundred grams) and bulky. It's not something that will fit your pocket. My 5800 even fits into the small right side "pocket inside pocket" of my levi's 501s. (For the reference, one of the reasons iphone and most android offerings weren't suitable for me is because they didn't fit there and I'm simply too used to keeping my phone in that pocket).
- accuracy is actually very good on the phone. Problem is lock-on time, which is indeed longer on the 5800 then on tomtom. It's fast enough however for my sports tracker app to activate while I get my biking gear on, or while I start the car, fasten myself in and drive out of the parking slot.
- durability wise, you're probably right. This is mostly because of 5800's user-changeable battery though, which most GPS devices lack. But why do you need durability for car navigation?
- works fine without any cell phone activity. This was actually reason #1 why I bought 5800 over competitive brands - the phone doesn't actually lose most of its "smart" functionality when not on data network. Unlike google maps and such, the maps are actually stored locally on the memory card, requiring zero input from network. Internal GPS works perfectly well stand-alone (although assisted GPS may accelerate lock-on in theory - I cannot testify on this point as I have never tried it). The phone gives me the choice, do I want real time updates online, or just go offline and get no data charges.
- screen for automobile navigation only has to be "good enough". The main reason for this is because most of the navigation is actually audio, not video - you are supposed to be driving remember? Watching your GPS screen while in a busy intersection in a big city is quite suicidal. Screen is mainly important for route design and map overview while not driving, and for that, 3.2 inch widescreen on the phone is more then enough.
- price: believe it or not, 5800 is actually only slightly more expensive then standalone TomTom (current market leader) navigation hardware. Additionally with TomTom you have to pay for maps that didn't come with the device (for example I live in Scandinavia, and most cheaper models only come with maps for Nordic countries. Germany etc would cost a very large lump sump extra compared to initial cost of the device. Midrange covers Europe, but treck over eastern border to Russia would need me to buy maps again). Finally you have to pay for map updates - nokia provides them for free, and has done so since their naviteq purchase, even before today. The change today was that driving navigation became free - walking navigation and map function has been free for my phone from day one.
- final point - comparing this to google maps is comparing apples to oranges. Google maps is ONLINE MAPPING with no real voice navigation. Navteq's (nokia's) navigation is a full OFFLINE NAVIGATION suite with voice navigation. The difference is rather huge:
1. You need functional data connection for google maps to work. You do not need one for nokia/tomtom/garmin/etc. Consider that while traveling aboard, data rates go pretty insane.
2. Your internet connection must be reasonably fast for google maps to work while driving. It's not good to see a decent resolution image of intersection AFTER you've driven past it. This is actually a fairly common occurence with google maps in areas outside 3g coverage. Sure, you can preload, but that's quite a bit of hassle and extra time you need to use, and can't really be done when you're changing your goals on the move, which you end up doing quite a lot when driving around as a tourist in a rented car for example.
Slashdot Mirror
Finnish defense forces had two of their F18s in the air during the initial ash cloud arrival. They didn't stay up for more then a few minutes however, as they were wrapping up the training run.
These are the pictures with commentary of one of the disassembled engines after this (commentary in finnish):
http://www.ilmavoimat.fi/index.php?id=1156
Summary on the front page states: "According to our investigation, volcanic dust did not cause significant damage to the engine of the aircraft. However we did discover what seems to be volcanic ash residue on internal engine components".
This is from the craft that just flew through the cloud at the very start, when first traces of ash arrived here. As they appear to also state that they will ground all but operative readiness flights, and only fly other flights on the piston engine craft during ash cloud persisting over the country, it appears that they believe the damage will be quite significant if they will have to fly during ash cloud conditions for extended periods of time.
Also, India isn't even involved in WIPO, ACTA's predecessor. This hasn't stopped RIAA and co from claiming that it infringes WIPO and shoving it on all kinds of black lists for that reason.
ACTA is mostly about western countries. Most of the developing countries are still coming to terms with WIPO, if they signed it.
This is actually very easy. A task as OP refers to it is a performance which requires unoptimized raw calculating power from higher, conscious functions of the brain.
When you learn a task, such as for example walking, your brain will always attempt to optimize it so that your lower, unconscious thought threads handle it passively, without any conscious input. In fact, walking is used as a book case scenario of how human (and in this case any being with organic brain capable of learning in general) learns to delegate tasks to unconscious "threads" which can be handled without any conscious input at all. Breathing is ever further developed, with multiple reflex actions which do not need to be learned at all - as it is a key element for survival ever since birth, it is fully automated through a specially designed neural area where brain and spinal cord link. Same area is also responsible for setting the speed of the heartbeat, or more accurately, it is responsible for making sure that proper oxygenation levels are provided for it (i.e. lungs and heart work in tandem to deliver sufficient amounts of oxygen - it has neural sensors to detect CO2 levels of blood and adjust both of above automatically to compensate).
But I digress. Back to tasking, a higher function task is something that is either not automated yet, for example, walking process in infants, or a process which is too difficult to be automated as we have no brain area that can be sufficiently optimized to handle the task fully autonomously, such as for example completing a word puzzle. Walking is once again the best example: at birth, infant has no information on how walking happens - nor necessary physique. At early age, when infant already has sufficient bone density and musculature to enable upright walking, they still cannot for quite a while. This is because walking is in fact a VERY complex process that involves several dozens groups of muscles working in various directions and doing a very precise balancing act - complexity of learning this artificially is shown best by how difficult it is to produce a upright walking biped robot - even modern ones still walk very slowly in comparison to a human. As a result, until the task is first learned consciously, phase by phase, it is so complex in terms of multitasking, that an infant with all the necessary physique cannot do it. Instead infant first learns how to crawl, then how to stand, and only then how to walk (combine balancing of standing with motion control of crawling). In all simplicity, infant learns how to combine various simple tasks into several complex ones and finally one very complex one, and then his brain optimizes the entire process to automate it fully.
However an adult who has fully automated walking as a task can easily walk without having to think about it at all. It is a fully automated process optimized to function on unconscious level without any conscious brain function input other then "set initial direction and speed". And even those can often be automated - just grab you phone and try to engross yourself into a game or texting on it while walking. You will notice that after a few minutes you will adapt and easily maintain course and avoid stumbling and colliding with objects in spite of not focusing on walking at all and with phone screen fully covering your visual focus - your unconscious mind will handle the visual ques from your peripheral vision and adapt your walking course, as well as alert your conscious mind in case an obstacle that cannot be handled by this "autopilot" alone comes on the path.
The tasking that OP refers to is the complex tasks that require consciousness to focus on the task. It does not refer to tasks handled unconsciously and autonomously without conscious input.
China was considered 2nd world country due to similar political systems and their support for North Korea in Korea War. This despite soviet-sino war and it's self-imposed isolationism, as it still stayed largely true to its original policy of supporting hostile nations such as North Korea.
Really folks, you need to get your terminology straight. Third world was not named third world because of its poverty, as current youth seems to think - it has been named to due to cold war divide into "us", "enemy" and "neutral". As in first, second and third world.
It's just that for last twenty years second world largely vanished (as they are no longer the enemy they used to be) and most countries composing third world are very poor.
This is actually untrue. Actual sand is not a problem for a modern jet engine - if you ever bothered to watch the A380 ads, one of the tests on the engine was when they fed a constant thick stream of fine sand into the intake of a running engine, and it was going just fine. It will certainly stress the engine, but it will keep running just fine for a very long time before sand starts to really wear out the internal mechanics to cause serious damage and shutdown.
Problem is that hot ash is actually not sand (which would not be able to stay that high in the air), but actual hot ash. As a result, as it goes through the engine, it coats the fuel feeding system and as it's rapidly cooled by compressed cold air pre-ignition, it becomes a glass-like material that blocks the fuel from getting into combustion chamber. This is what is causing the engine flameout. The reason why keeping the engine shut, putting plane into descent and keeping on trying to restart the engine is current modus operandi is because the glass-like substance that ash forms on the inside of the engine becomes very brittle when engine is being cooled by fast air stream going through it. As a result, when temperature drops below certain threshold, the normal vibration caused by drag and turbulence shatters the brittle mass, clearing the nozzles and allowing for fuel feeding to work again.
This is what happened in the 747 that lost all 4 of it's engines to flameout when flying through volcanic ash in the past. The report should be available to the general public, at least I recall reading it somewhere (though in finnish). In general, ash doesn't really scratch as much as stick to surfaces and solidify into dark glassy mass (which does in fact block the windows as well, meaning pilots would most likely have to land in instruments-only conditions in addition to handling engine flameouts).
No, but it should NEVER be criminal to indulge and satisfy in whatever fetish you have so long as it is victimless and harmless to real people. Problem with hysterical pedohunters is that they don't care how their actions actually affect children. They are simply out for blood because it's their fetish, just like spanish inquisition was. The whole lolicon issue is one brilliant example of this - why should anyone care if someone masturbates to an image of a drawn child? If that gets his/her kicks so that the person can be a normal productive member of society, all's good, or at least should be good - no child is ever harmed, and the person has taken care of his/her urges. Yet modern pedohunters would love to string every single one of these people from a nearest flagpole inspite of them posing zero real threat to the children. At the same time, it's a known fact that those who are most anti-[issue] people tend to have extreme fetishes themselves, and typically perform and support witch-hunt style actions to cover their own "shameful" fetishes. Great example of this are some of the most hardline anti-gay activists who come out of the closet later in their lives.
Finally there is a lovely issue of children as sex objects which many love to deny ignoring the cold and brutal medical facts and often their own experiences as parents. Every parent knows that children discover their sexuality long, long before teenage starts. Explaining to your child why masturbating in public is inapproproate when he/she is around age of 4-5 is fairly typical - it's just that in "this is shameful" families it's done in such a traumatizing way for the child, that child gets too afraid to explore it any further before teenage hormones kick in. This is stuff that's widely known in medical community. In fact, there are medical books who mention sexuality in babies - for example babies "humping" their bed covers because it feels good. Before the concept of "morality" kicks in, children sexuality is typically ignored, and is considered "acceptable if shameful" by most.
You have to remember, if you're close to someone who is actually working with real pedophiles who have actual victims, your view is very strongly skewed, same as a police officer's who's working in slums. You tend to see the worst in people because you're used to seeing worst in people. Not because it's actually there.
Whoever modded this "flamebait" needs a sarcasm meter check. P.S. Awesome post.
As a pre-release test version, yes, it worked on n5800. I'm not sure if it was made for n5800 per se, but I used it until nokia maps v2 updated to v3 and apparently became incompatible with that version of sports tracker, which killed the application for me.
Nokia has published ovi maps racing, which is essentially micro machines in real world. Really fun game, you essentially create tracks based on real world maps stored on your phone, and can race on them. Brings a whole new level of fun to make a track around your neighbourhood and share it with friends. Real killer app for nokia and GPS has been their sports tracker though, which isn't a game. Sadly it became a pay application after its enourmous success as a free one.
Who the hell are YOU -- or any government -- to deprive the parents of their right to make that choice? Ridicule it all you want, but it is THEIR choice.
Protecting people from harm is the main job of the government. All the "big government bad, small government good" stuff you have flying in US is mostly about your colonial past and pretty horrific experience with colonial government, who's main goal was population control, subjugation and extracting taxes.
Here in Europe we largely lack such experiences. Most governments tend to go to war against certain ethnicities - but with few exceptions never against their main ethnicity. Governments tend to be much more stable and citizen-oriented because of this. This is especially true for Germany, where people by the nature of their culture are VERY pedantic.
Result is, we can afford to cede more right to the government because we can trust the government not to abuse those right much more then you can. It's a cultural thing. And I can bet a rather large stack of money that most Europeans in general, be they French, German, Spanish, Finnish, Swedish and so on would agree that government DOES have a right to say that TOLERANCE towards other should be taught. Because in the long term, tolerance towards others is the main thing that makes our society work.
By reading the case material, you'll notice that these people are literally some of the most intolerant religious nutcases there can be. To them, government school TEACHING ABOUT OTHER RELIGIONS is unacceptable because it's not christian enough - they're THAT intolerant of others. The judge who granted asylum is either very, very politically/religiously motivated, or had to follow a truly horrifying set of laws.
I'd be looking for a fault within US justice system rather then German governance and schooling laws on this. If these people REALLY wanted to home school, all they needed was getting a basic teaching license, which would have them go courses about how to teach. Which incidentally is not an easy job. Instead they opted to flee and "seek asylum", which says volumes about them and their desire to attract attention to their "cause".
Using my own nokia xm5800 and tomtom's 4 inch mid-range navigator I had to use before it I have to note that you're ignorant of the current form factors in GPS world vs nokia phones, at least as far as Europe is concerned.
- it's smaller then any decent navigator on the market, in every aspect. Pretty much any autonavi sold nowadays has a 4 inch screen, and is usually fairly heavy (several hundred grams) and bulky. It's not something that will fit your pocket. My 5800 even fits into the small right side "pocket inside pocket" of my levi's 501s. (For the reference, one of the reasons iphone and most android offerings weren't suitable for me is because they didn't fit there and I'm simply too used to keeping my phone in that pocket).
- accuracy is actually very good on the phone. Problem is lock-on time, which is indeed longer on the 5800 then on tomtom. It's fast enough however for my sports tracker app to activate while I get my biking gear on, or while I start the car, fasten myself in and drive out of the parking slot.
- durability wise, you're probably right. This is mostly because of 5800's user-changeable battery though, which most GPS devices lack. But why do you need durability for car navigation?
- works fine without any cell phone activity. This was actually reason #1 why I bought 5800 over competitive brands - the phone doesn't actually lose most of its "smart" functionality when not on data network. Unlike google maps and such, the maps are actually stored locally on the memory card, requiring zero input from network. Internal GPS works perfectly well stand-alone (although assisted GPS may accelerate lock-on in theory - I cannot testify on this point as I have never tried it). The phone gives me the choice, do I want real time updates online, or just go offline and get no data charges.
- screen for automobile navigation only has to be "good enough". The main reason for this is because most of the navigation is actually audio, not video - you are supposed to be driving remember? Watching your GPS screen while in a busy intersection in a big city is quite suicidal. Screen is mainly important for route design and map overview while not driving, and for that, 3.2 inch widescreen on the phone is more then enough.
- price: believe it or not, 5800 is actually only slightly more expensive then standalone TomTom (current market leader) navigation hardware. Additionally with TomTom you have to pay for maps that didn't come with the device (for example I live in Scandinavia, and most cheaper models only come with maps for Nordic countries. Germany etc would cost a very large lump sump extra compared to initial cost of the device. Midrange covers Europe, but treck over eastern border to Russia would need me to buy maps again). Finally you have to pay for map updates - nokia provides them for free, and has done so since their naviteq purchase, even before today. The change today was that driving navigation became free - walking navigation and map function has been free for my phone from day one.
- final point - comparing this to google maps is comparing apples to oranges. Google maps is ONLINE MAPPING with no real voice navigation. Navteq's (nokia's) navigation is a full OFFLINE NAVIGATION suite with voice navigation. The difference is rather huge:
1. You need functional data connection for google maps to work. You do not need one for nokia/tomtom/garmin/etc. Consider that while traveling aboard, data rates go pretty insane.
2. Your internet connection must be reasonably fast for google maps to work while driving. It's not good to see a decent resolution image of intersection AFTER you've driven past it. This is actually a fairly common occurence with google maps in areas outside 3g coverage. Sure, you can preload, but that's quite a bit of hassle and extra time you need to use, and can't really be done when you're changing your goals on the move, which you end up doing quite a lot when driving around as a tourist in a rented car for example.
3. Audio navigatio