Q-10: Some investing strategies making use of the UpicT pictures could rely on the instant delivery of results. Can this be guaranteed?

A-10: The answer, unfortunately, is no. The vagaries of technology alone would not lend themselves to any such contractual guarantee under any delivery platform -- a proviso that will equally apply even to the more dynamic delivery platform which is under construction. The risk in such time-sensitive strategies remains entirely with the investor. The UpicT products are without warranty, implied or otherwise, for any purpose. Nonetheless, we hope they will be found to be informative, and certainly believe they are. For business transactions conducted through the present site, the undertaking is to dispatch the ordered products or proffer a refund. The intention of the business facility on this site is to be low cost. Production and service will be as efficient as is allowed by the current resources and the emailing systems used. We have no reason to suspect that orders will be delivered to clients in anything other than a satisfactorily timely manner, but just the same make no commitment here with regard to any specific time frame. There is a de-facto internet standard for just this type of delivery over the internet, reflecting the protocols themselves and the notion of low- cost, which we subscribe to for the services directly available from this site. We would indeed be keen to hear of any exceptions experienced so they can be solved, as this business is obviously directed to such repeat custom as can only be forthcoming with incremental customer satisfaction. What we do guarantee towards that end is the utmost integrity at all times. In the meantime (until our new site is floated), if you find you like the product, and would also like a more substantial delivery arrangement in place more or less straight away, then please email us for discussion of other delivery plans that can be customised to suit. We need your specific request in this regard as we will not tolerate any unsolicited junk mailings out whatever.

Q-11: I would like to try the excel-chart format. My rural connection is 56k, and I dont have Microsoft Office. What chance of success have I?

A-11: Files in the GIF format are typically under 20k in size. The XLS format usually ends up between 40k and 60k, and so will take longer to transfer. Neither of these are big sizes by today's standards, and even on the slowest 56k services, should rarely take more than a few minutes for actual transfers to complete once commenced. You must however allow your email software sufficient time to complete transfers or risk receiving only a partial and corrupt file. You may or may not know that some other application software packages and viewers besides Microsoft Office can sometimes render excel files successfully. If you send an email alongside your order, detailing the Operating System (Windows, Macintosh, Linux .. etc) with the exact version, we will try to point you towards a software that may work for you. However, the XLS format option does not apply to the sample pictures which are supplied free of charge -- for obvious reasons these are always supplied in the smaller GIF format.

Q-12: The "Halting Problem"? ... just academic surely ... (get off the grass!) ....

A-12: Quite. But you may have experienced this problem more often than you think. For instance, the infamous blue screen on a computer running Windows. You assume the system has collapsed, and yet the power light is still on, so it is clearly spinning on. What is it doing? Or what about when there is no blue screen, the usual desktop shows, but there is no response from the keyboard or mouse. How long will it be before you decide that it is not after all still computing the answer to some horrendous instructions you gave (perhaps inadvertantly) ? Finally you pull the power, not because you know for sure it is jammed in a circular algorithm, but because you dont care, or the wait is too long, or ....... But one thing you eventually become convinced of is that the computer is unlikely to decide for itself when to give up ... i.e. you believe in the halting problem. Unlike either the case for yourself or for use of UpicT, the strictly theorectically mechanised problem lacks the benefit of any 'visuality' to assist in making a decision about when to give up. It is indeed highly likely that 'visuality' is essential to reaching such decisions in general. But if you want it more formally, type 'Church-Turing Hypothesis' or 'Undecideability' into Google, and have some aspirin handy.