They are selling the box below cost. They are trying to win market share. They are trying to stop the mods from doing to them what software and exacto knife mods did to Digital Convergence with the Cue Cat bar code scanners. They want their hareware to only run the content sold by them and use online services provided by them for a return on investment. Mods kill the payback of selling games and online services.
I saw a three pack of disks on a rack at Best Buy. Funny, I didn't see any players. The disks are about the size of a keychain car alarm remote with a disk inside about the size of a quarter. Personaly i have no use for any blank $10 media that can be replaced by a 20 cent blank disk 5X larger.
I thought just making the environment unpleasant may discourage them. I had three new ones on the back of my hand. Everytime I washed my hands, I put a small dab of dish detergent directly on the warts and left it on. The warts were gone in about 3 weeks never to return. I did this in high school. I now have grandkids. (I don't think the soap caused grandkids. I had to mention something funny as this is a serious post in a humor catagory.)
I would simply stop checking my regular e-mail. I would have a personel website. To contact me, you would have to visit the website and fill out the online form. This would be used to stop clutter from any mass mailing. Those wishing a personal contact would have to do a personal vist to the site. My home phone would get an automated voicemail system. I would not be in easy reach of the mass marketers.
Nobody is throwing out the old gear because there is an extreme shortage of new gear. (Something with a DTV tuner) Everything not home theatre is analog only. I know. I've been looking. I have yet to find any store demonstrating DTV with a real over the air signal. All the display TV's are either Digital HDTV dish, or analog. They are never over the air DTV. How can they sell it if they don't demo it?
I was thinking this might be a good PVR for DTV ahd HDTV. Alas, there is an analog only input for broadcast signals. If only it would input the same HDTV signals it can send to a HDTV monitor.
I guess that old article was right. The studios are broadcasting DTV, but nobody is watching. Duh, nobody has a tuner and antenna!
Send him a polite note explaining that he is mistaken. Your were the victim of a virus, and the virus forged your name on the email. Communication like this is important if you do every end up in court (IANAL though!). An attempt to mitigate (or in this case, explain) the damage is required
It also does not hurt to list in the letter the version of anti-virus software you have running and the current date of the signature file in use. Hint that if they were running the same, they would have caught the virus upon arrival and it would not be spreading on their machines.
Listing your anti-virus subscription goes a long way showing you couldn't have sent it.
Oh, ask his laywer for discovery. You want the infected e-mail with the headers intact. If his laywer has a clue and understands headers, he will know where you are going with this. His laywer may inform his client of the error. Hopefully there is no route from your ISP proving you couldn't have sent it.
Ever notice that downtown shops are suffering more than the malls? To keep shoppers out of downtown, just have high priced parking and transportation. Nothing kills shopping like worrying about the meter. Doing the same thing to TV by adding on all sorts of rules and regulations (added to the cost of your set) may keep many people from making the change at all. I have no plans at this time to go digital. It's too expensive. I've already dropped cable for the same reason. (cable has since doubled in price for basic and buried in Time Life/ Sports Illistrated adverts) It looks like I will just go offline with DVD's, VHS, and analog. Over the air is a wasteland now. I used to watch the movies, but the selection is poor and overstuffed with advertising. I spend my extra time onling now instead of veging surfing TV channels.
If you made coasters out of some CD's and don't have the heart to toss them, you could always put numbers along the edge and make inexpensive CD clocks for your friends and family;-)
Those who do not see the value in HDTV, I ask if you've seen a proper demonstration of HDTV and its capabilities? I've been in lots of shops looking for a proper demonstration. Other than some looping demo channel on some subscription service, I have yet to see a demonstration. I have not seen a DTV demo of my local over the air TV in either DTV or HDTV. It's still being marketed to the elete HDTV group and not to the 6:00 DTV local evening news viewers. No need to get a $1000 TV (digital tuner not included) with a $400 set top box and a $40/month subscription to watch the evening news.
Last week I purchased a DTV set-top-box and a very small UHF antenna Where can this be found? I am looking to replace a 20 inch set with a DTV/DVD set. So far I have found noting that includes the tuner for digital. Oh, it should cost less than my computer for the entire package. I don't need to buy a UHF antenna. I still have a high band high gain UHF antenna from before they gave the top channels to 800 MHZ analog cell phones.
One of the new machines I got came with those famous IBM drives. It's died twice in warranty. Second time I didn't use the warranty, but bought another more reliable brand. I simply did not trust that model anymore. Not having the hastle of rebuilding the software install was worth ditching the drive instead of using the warranty.
I think the record companies are too cheap to go the the expense of remastering for single copy pressings. So far the CD's are mass pressed and the number is on a seprate card just like the early Windows CD keys. (any valid key for the disks.)
Office 97 is the first one I know of that does protect an install using the CD serial number. I found this when a 52X CD tossed a disk and trashed it. Later when upgrading the hardware, I tried to uninstall office to legaly transfer it from one machine to another. The office worker upgraded and passed along the old hardware & OS. I thought it pretty stupid to require the original CD to uninstall a program. Even though there were many CD's in the office of the same software (legal original copies) none of the other copies would uninstall Office 97 because it wanted the copy of the CD with the original serial number. Now there is an illegal copy simply because it will not uninstall, because the scratched CD is in a drawer for proof of ownership of the install on the new machine. The transfer was done using another copy that is installed on another machine. So the transfer was done usning the wrong copy of media (the correct CD key however) and the uninstallable copy. We tried to uninstall it. We should ask the BSA how to uninstall the extra instalation. Maybe they can tell us how (without formatting the drive and having to reinstall everything else) and replace the damaged media for us. The anti piracy feature is preventing an uninstall of a legal copy to transfer it. Due to this experiance fighting locks with a broken key (scratched install CD) on products, we are looking at more user friendly office software. This was a consideration in not upgrading the software by the same vendor. I personally never install anything from orignal CD's to prevent losses. I install from a working copy and keep the originals locked up.
I agree on Mobile Fidelity, but I bought it for another reason, a pristine original. Both of mine are before CD's (12 inch) and have only been played twice to enjoy while putting them on tape for the car. (one of them is Dark Side of the Moon which is an awsome pressing) I put it on the best tape avaliable at the time and have worn out one copy. The other still gets played from time to time. At this rate the original will have seen a needle in the groove about 6 times by the time I retire. Much of my music gets the same treatment. It's an investment. The industry has no intrest in replacing just the worn out media for the performance instead of selling you a new lisence for the same content. Until that changes, I will continue to protect my investment. I learned early on (8 tracks and pre-recorded tapes, & LP's) that the media does not last forever. I am now in the process of transferring the remainder of my pre-recorded cassettes (lots of lost pads to replace) to CD to preserve whats left. I would love to trade in my tape collection for CD's for just the cost of the media. That does not appear to be an option however, so I have to do it myself.
From what I have been seeing from the MS Media player, the DRM would be by the choice of the content creator. If you grab a microphone and record your own voice letter to your mom, you have the choice to enable DRM or not. However, if you download a film clip protected by DRM to your PC, don't expect it to play when you copy it to your other computer over your lan. You didn't create the content. You can still choose not to use DRM on the stream. The file simply remains encrypted and unplayable. You will need to get DRM authentication to play the stream, but it is your choice not to, so don't expect to play that file forwarded to you by email.
From the above link worth note... Snip (If you don't want to abide by the policy, you don't have to accept the information.) Snip
The website is lacking data on whether the unit supports NMEA. I did a search and found the datasheet. It is NMEA! The link is here; http://www.bgmicro.com/pdf/acs1394.pdf Sorry about the PDF.
How about storing a waypoint easily? how about storing the current position as a waypoint right now without disrupting the current nav operation? Nope...
Check out the State series of National Geographic TOPO Maps. They are a little spendy, but I have not found anything better for any price. Marking places is as easy as hitting a hotkey or ckicking on the compass tool.
I did a quick search on the National Geographic site for a list of compatible units. The Tripmate is not listed. Sorry:-( The link is here to show this post was not for brand bashing. It's for compatibility to standards. http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/top o/receivers. cfm The list is of receivers that support NMEA live-tracking mode. Most GPS map software uses this.
TripMate, resulting in erronious data from it from time to time. Causeing Street Atlas to go down
Try the Streetfinder software by Rand McNally. It works for me and is cheap. Even better is the National Geographic state series TOPO maps. I too have had the GPS die on a route, but the PC remained up when the GPS dropped out. Sometimes I think the interferance is from the laptop, not something broadcast. I seldom have that problem when not using the laptop. My GPS lives in the dash bracket and is connected to the laptop for geocaching and long trips. Oh and do yourself a favor and drop the tripmate pod. In reviews, it had the poorest performance. It's output is scrambled so you can't use it with other software, yada, yada, yada. Get something with true NMEA output to support industry standards and ditch the priprotary stuff. (I'm not trying to flame tripmate, just stating reasons I decided not to use it. I use one of the popular handhelds)
I checked the pygps site. It seems to be a program that moves your location curser over a bitmap photo and little else. (I didn't find a description regarding map or curser movement) Compared to the National Geographic program (originaly Wildflower Productions) the pygps program is very simplistic. The National Geographic TOPO program takes hundreds of maps at 5 zoom levels (diffrent scale maps including the 7.5 minute series) and seamlessly stitches them together (moving map display, not a moving curser on a stationary map). It also has full waypoint management including editing, downloading and uploading to GPS or File. The maps also include elevation which the pygps program does not do. I can do a freehand or GPS downloaded route or track and see the elevation profile and distance of the route on the map. I can drive the entire state and the display will move the map anywhere in the state at any zoom level autoloading the next map as needed. I can download all my GPS waypoints and routes and display them on the map (Great for geocaching). I can search for most any feature such as ridge, stream, lake, mountain peak, etc and the map will show me where it is. (and make a waypoint for my GPS if desired) That feature was great for tracking the advancing Biscuit fire in Oregon. The mention of a ridge or stream could let me know right where the fire was. The pygps map has a long way to go to become a replacement for the Windows version of the National Geographic TOPO 7.5 minute series of state maps. Hopefully National Geographic will port this to Linux soon, but in the meantime, I'm stuck with Windows to use it. Since I plugged the program, the state series maps can be found here; http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/topo/cdroms.cfm #state Not all states are released yet. Your milage may vary.
I'll probably get bashed for this, but here goes. When shopping for a computer, find the killer gotta have program and purchase whatever hardware is needed to run it. For Web servers, that is Apache. For in vehicle nav and Ham Radio, (especialy moving ADF work) the aps are mostly Windows.:-( Now on to the informative stuff... There are two kinds of maps. Vector and Raster. Vector maps are smaller. The text and roads are just data, so road names can remain the same size at various zoom levels. Raster Maps are photos of maps. These are great for off road treks as they are detailed. The road names can be hard to read on vector maps. I use both kinds of maps. (I'm also a dedicated geocacher). I use the National Geographic TOPO maps with the GPS most of the time (great detail helps find best route to difficult location) TOPO maps are about 6 CD's per state for about $100 per state. They have full GPS waypoint management ability. Building a route is as simple as dropping waypoints on the map, connecting the dots and uploading it to your GPS. The other software I like for highway cruising is Streetfinder. It does not have upload/download abilities, but it does do a great job showing where you are. You can record your adventure and play it back later. Use it to fight that radar ticker. It plays back just like a saved race game including the time, speed and location. It makes a great package to check on your teen's driving. Find out where and when they went after or during the prom! The Vector software was much cheaper at $17 for the entire US on 3 CD's and included 1 CD of trip planning software. I have found no Linux replacements for either package. Since one of my older laptops came with Windows 95, it has become the mobile map unit. Hackability of the OS is of no concern, it has no net connectivity, so the security holes are not important for this application. No Office, No VBS, No TCP/IP, No hackers. I forgot the name of the package, but there is a nice APRS feature being built into one of the map packages that supports RDF showing not only your location but the direction of your DF target. Great for getting a running fix on a fox if you also have auto DF with RS232 output. A Google search should show the DF version of APRS. It only works with a static map so far. Moving maps are not yet supported.
If you shop for a photographer, you will only get photographer's offers on their terms. (Just like shopping for music or software). Go the other way and define your labor job. Ask for bids for the job. Refrences and samples of the work is required. If this sounds like your regular programming job, you are right. (I've seen too many Pro's try to get away with only the flash on the camera. It's OK if you like that kind of work. Their samples will show the improper use of flash.) If you want the copyright, specify it. I had that option for my photographer 10 years ago. I contracted for 3 hours minimum. Got 200+ shots including the reception and departure. The package did require a certian amount of prints by them. They did a fantastic job. If you have a June wedding, good luck. If you catch a slow season, like October, you may get more qualified bids.
It's possible they are set up for the local 100 volt power. US power is between 115 and 125 volts which is about 20% too hot for the design. If they use a wall wart, you may need to replace it with a US version with the same output voltage and current rating. Otherwise you may need to get a transformer to provide 100 volt power. I still have mine I got when I spent a couple years in Japan. It is reversable. It powered American 120 volt stuff while I was there and it now powers the Japanese 100 volt stuff I brought back.
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They are selling the box below cost. They are trying to win market share. They are trying to stop the mods from doing to them what software and exacto knife mods did to Digital Convergence with the Cue Cat bar code scanners. They want their hareware to only run the content sold by them and use online services provided by them for a return on investment. Mods kill the payback of selling games and online services.
I saw a three pack of disks on a rack at Best Buy. Funny, I didn't see any players. The disks are about the size of a keychain car alarm remote with a disk inside about the size of a quarter. Personaly i have no use for any blank $10 media that can be replaced by a 20 cent blank disk 5X larger.
I thought just making the environment unpleasant may discourage them. I had three new ones on the back of my hand. Everytime I washed my hands, I put a small dab of dish detergent directly on the warts and left it on. The warts were gone in about 3 weeks never to return. I did this in high school. I now have grandkids. (I don't think the soap caused grandkids. I had to mention something funny as this is a serious post in a humor catagory.)
I would simply stop checking my regular e-mail. I would have a personel website. To contact me, you would have to visit the website and fill out the online form. This would be used to stop clutter from any mass mailing. Those wishing a personal contact would have to do a personal vist to the site. My home phone would get an automated voicemail system. I would not be in easy reach of the mass marketers.
Nobody is throwing out the old gear because there is an extreme shortage of new gear. (Something with a DTV tuner) Everything not home theatre is analog only. I know. I've been looking. I have yet to find any store demonstrating DTV with a real over the air signal. All the display TV's are either Digital HDTV dish, or analog. They are never over the air DTV. How can they sell it if they don't demo it?
I was thinking this might be a good PVR for DTV ahd HDTV. Alas, there is an analog only input for broadcast signals. If only it would input the same HDTV signals it can send to a HDTV monitor.
I guess that old article was right. The studios are broadcasting DTV, but nobody is watching. Duh, nobody has a tuner and antenna!
Will it do digital TV? HDTV over the air? Analog is scheduled to go off the air. What good is a tuner if there is nothing to receive?
Send him a polite note explaining that he is mistaken. Your were the victim of a virus, and the virus forged your name on the email. Communication like this is important if you do every end up in court (IANAL though!). An attempt to mitigate (or in this case, explain) the damage is required
It also does not hurt to list in the letter the version of anti-virus software you have running and the current date of the signature file in use. Hint that if they were running the same, they would have caught the virus upon arrival and it would not be spreading on their machines.
Listing your anti-virus subscription goes a long way showing you couldn't have sent it.
Oh, ask his laywer for discovery. You want the infected e-mail with the headers intact. If his laywer has a clue and understands headers, he will know where you are going with this. His laywer may inform his client of the error. Hopefully there is no route from your ISP proving you couldn't have sent it.
Ever notice that downtown shops are suffering more than the malls? To keep shoppers out of downtown, just have high priced parking and transportation. Nothing kills shopping like worrying about the meter. Doing the same thing to TV by adding on all sorts of rules and regulations (added to the cost of your set) may keep many people from making the change at all. I have no plans at this time to go digital. It's too expensive. I've already dropped cable for the same reason. (cable has since doubled in price for basic and buried in Time Life/ Sports Illistrated adverts) It looks like I will just go offline with DVD's, VHS, and analog. Over the air is a wasteland now. I used to watch the movies, but the selection is poor and overstuffed with advertising. I spend my extra time onling now instead of veging surfing TV channels.
If you made coasters out of some CD's and don't have the heart to toss them, you could always put numbers along the edge and make inexpensive CD clocks for your friends and family ;-)
Those who do not see the value in HDTV, I ask if you've seen a proper demonstration of HDTV and its capabilities?
I've been in lots of shops looking for a proper demonstration. Other than some looping demo channel on some subscription service, I have yet to see a demonstration. I have not seen a DTV demo of my local over the air TV in either DTV or HDTV. It's still being marketed to the elete HDTV group and not to the 6:00 DTV local evening news viewers. No need to get a $1000 TV (digital tuner not included) with a $400 set top box and a $40/month subscription to watch the evening news.
Last week I purchased a DTV set-top-box and a very small UHF antenna
Where can this be found? I am looking to replace a 20 inch set with a DTV/DVD set. So far I have found noting that includes the tuner for digital. Oh, it should cost less than my computer for the entire package. I don't need to buy a UHF antenna. I still have a high band high gain UHF antenna from before they gave the top channels to 800 MHZ analog cell phones.
One of the new machines I got came with those famous IBM drives. It's died twice in warranty. Second time I didn't use the warranty, but bought another more reliable brand. I simply did not trust that model anymore. Not having the hastle of rebuilding the software install was worth ditching the drive instead of using the warranty.
I think the record companies are too cheap to go the the expense of remastering for single copy pressings. So far the CD's are mass pressed and the number is on a seprate card just like the early Windows CD keys. (any valid key for the disks.)
Office 97 is the first one I know of that does protect an install using the CD serial number. I found this when a 52X CD tossed a disk and trashed it. Later when upgrading the hardware, I tried to uninstall office to legaly transfer it from one machine to another. The office worker upgraded and passed along the old hardware & OS. I thought it pretty stupid to require the original CD to uninstall a program. Even though there were many CD's in the office of the same software (legal original copies) none of the other copies would uninstall Office 97 because it wanted the copy of the CD with the original serial number. Now there is an illegal copy simply because it will not uninstall, because the scratched CD is in a drawer for proof of ownership of the install on the new machine. The transfer was done using another copy that is installed on another machine. So the transfer was done usning the wrong copy of media (the correct CD key however) and the uninstallable copy. We tried to uninstall it. We should ask the BSA how to uninstall the extra instalation. Maybe they can tell us how (without formatting the drive and having to reinstall everything else) and replace the damaged media for us. The anti piracy feature is preventing an uninstall of a legal copy to transfer it.
Due to this experiance fighting locks with a broken key (scratched install CD) on products, we are looking at more user friendly office software. This was a consideration in not upgrading the software by the same vendor.
I personally never install anything from orignal CD's to prevent losses. I install from a working copy and keep the originals locked up.
I agree on Mobile Fidelity, but I bought it for another reason, a pristine original. Both of mine are before CD's (12 inch) and have only been played twice to enjoy while putting them on tape for the car. (one of them is Dark Side of the Moon which is an awsome pressing) I put it on the best tape avaliable at the time and have worn out one copy. The other still gets played from time to time. At this rate the original will have seen a needle in the groove about 6 times by the time I retire. Much of my music gets the same treatment. It's an investment. The industry has no intrest in replacing just the worn out media for the performance instead of selling you a new lisence for the same content. Until that changes, I will continue to protect my investment. I learned early on (8 tracks and pre-recorded tapes, & LP's) that the media does not last forever. I am now in the process of transferring the remainder of my pre-recorded cassettes (lots of lost pads to replace) to CD to preserve whats left. I would love to trade in my tape collection for CD's for just the cost of the media. That does not appear to be an option however, so I have to do it myself.
From what I have been seeing from the MS Media player, the DRM would be by the choice of the content creator. If you grab a microphone and record your own voice letter to your mom, you have the choice to enable DRM or not. However, if you download a film clip protected by DRM to your PC, don't expect it to play when you copy it to your other computer over your lan. You didn't create the content. You can still choose not to use DRM on the stream. The file simply remains encrypted and unplayable. You will need to get DRM authentication to play the stream, but it is your choice not to, so don't expect to play that file forwarded to you by email.
From the above link worth note...
Snip
(If you don't want to abide by the policy, you don't have to accept the information.)
Snip
The website is lacking data on whether the unit supports NMEA. I did a search and found the datasheet. It is NMEA! The link is here; http://www.bgmicro.com/pdf/acs1394.pdf
Sorry about the PDF.
How about storing a waypoint easily? how about storing the current position as a waypoint right now without disrupting the current nav operation? Nope...
Check out the State series of National Geographic TOPO Maps. They are a little spendy, but I have not found anything better for any price. Marking places is as easy as hitting a hotkey or ckicking on the compass tool.
I did a quick search on the National Geographic site for a list of compatible units. The Tripmate is not listed. Sorry :-(p o/receivers. cfm
The link is here to show this post was not for brand bashing. It's for compatibility to standards.
http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/to
The list is of receivers that support NMEA live-tracking mode. Most GPS map software uses this.
TripMate, resulting in erronious data from it from time to time. Causeing Street Atlas to go down
Try the Streetfinder software by Rand McNally. It works for me and is cheap. Even better is the National Geographic state series TOPO maps. I too have had the GPS die on a route, but the PC remained up when the GPS dropped out. Sometimes I think the interferance is from the laptop, not something broadcast. I seldom have that problem when not using the laptop. My GPS lives in the dash bracket and is connected to the laptop for geocaching and long trips. Oh and do yourself a favor and drop the tripmate pod. In reviews, it had the poorest performance. It's output is scrambled so you can't use it with other software, yada, yada, yada. Get something with true NMEA output to support industry standards and ditch the priprotary stuff. (I'm not trying to flame tripmate, just stating reasons I decided not to use it. I use one of the popular handhelds)
I checked the pygps site. It seems to be a program that moves your location curser over a bitmap photo and little else. (I didn't find a description regarding map or curser movement) Compared to the National Geographic program (originaly Wildflower Productions) the pygps program is very simplistic. The National Geographic TOPO program takes hundreds of maps at 5 zoom levels (diffrent scale maps including the 7.5 minute series) and seamlessly stitches them together (moving map display, not a moving curser on a stationary map). It also has full waypoint management including editing, downloading and uploading to GPS or File. The maps also include elevation which the pygps program does not do. I can do a freehand or GPS downloaded route or track and see the elevation profile and distance of the route on the map. I can drive the entire state and the display will move the map anywhere in the state at any zoom level autoloading the next map as needed. I can download all my GPS waypoints and routes and display them on the map (Great for geocaching). I can search for most any feature such as ridge, stream, lake, mountain peak, etc and the map will show me where it is. (and make a waypoint for my GPS if desired) That feature was great for tracking the advancing Biscuit fire in Oregon. The mention of a ridge or stream could let me know right where the fire was.m #state Not all states are released yet. Your milage may vary.
The pygps map has a long way to go to become a replacement for the Windows version of the National Geographic TOPO 7.5 minute series of state maps. Hopefully National Geographic will port this to Linux soon, but in the meantime, I'm stuck with Windows to use it.
Since I plugged the program, the state series maps can be found here; http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/topo/cdroms.cf
I'll probably get bashed for this, but here goes. When shopping for a computer, find the killer gotta have program and purchase whatever hardware is needed to run it. For Web servers, that is Apache. For in vehicle nav and Ham Radio, (especialy moving ADF work) the aps are mostly Windows. :-(
Now on to the informative stuff... There are two kinds of maps. Vector and Raster. Vector maps are smaller. The text and roads are just data, so road names can remain the same size at various zoom levels. Raster Maps are photos of maps. These are great for off road treks as they are detailed. The road names can be hard to read on vector maps. I use both kinds of maps. (I'm also a dedicated geocacher). I use the National Geographic TOPO maps with the GPS most of the time (great detail helps find best route to difficult location) TOPO maps are about 6 CD's per state for about $100 per state. They have full GPS waypoint management ability. Building a route is as simple as dropping waypoints on the map, connecting the dots and uploading it to your GPS. The other software I like for highway cruising is Streetfinder. It does not have upload/download abilities, but it does do a great job showing where you are. You can record your adventure and play it back later. Use it to fight that radar ticker. It plays back just like a saved race game including the time, speed and location. It makes a great package to check on your teen's driving. Find out where and when they went after or during the prom! The Vector software was much cheaper at $17 for the entire US on 3 CD's and included 1 CD of trip planning software. I have found no Linux replacements for either package. Since one of my older laptops came with Windows 95, it has become the mobile map unit. Hackability of the OS is of no concern, it has no net connectivity, so the security holes are not important for this application. No Office, No VBS, No TCP/IP, No hackers.
I forgot the name of the package, but there is a nice APRS feature being built into one of the map packages that supports RDF showing not only your location but the direction of your DF target. Great for getting a running fix on a fox if you also have auto DF with RS232 output. A Google search should show the DF version of APRS. It only works with a static map so far. Moving maps are not yet supported.
If you shop for a photographer, you will only get photographer's offers on their terms. (Just like shopping for music or software). Go the other way and define your labor job. Ask for bids for the job. Refrences and samples of the work is required. If this sounds like your regular programming job, you are right. (I've seen too many Pro's try to get away with only the flash on the camera. It's OK if you like that kind of work. Their samples will show the improper use of flash.) If you want the copyright, specify it. I had that option for my photographer 10 years ago. I contracted for 3 hours minimum. Got 200+ shots including the reception and departure. The package did require a certian amount of prints by them. They did a fantastic job. If you have a June wedding, good luck. If you catch a slow season, like October, you may get more qualified bids.
It's possible they are set up for the local 100 volt power. US power is between 115 and 125 volts which is about 20% too hot for the design. If they use a wall wart, you may need to replace it with a US version with the same output voltage and current rating. Otherwise you may need to get a transformer to provide 100 volt power. I still have mine I got when I spent a couple years in Japan. It is reversable. It powered American 120 volt stuff while I was there and it now powers the Japanese 100 volt stuff I brought back.