EntropySink
Technical & Scientific => Programming => Topic started by: ober on December 15, 2008, 11:25:42 AM
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http://degeberg.com/2008/12/dreamhost-to-infinity-and-beyond/
This is a blog of one of the other admins at PHPFreaks (www.phpfreaks.com). Figured some of you would get a laugh out of it.
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I didn't get all the way through it but the guy sounds like a douche bag. Unlimited doesn't mean infinite. It means that they aren't going to limit you beyond what is technically feasible.
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Wait, is that guy for real?
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Read any unlimited agreement and it will say pretty much exactly what mike just said.
Even my cell phone. For example I have att. My text, calls, etc are all completely unlimited. But if you read the contract you will see they define something like 99999999 kb a month of data to be excessive and not deemed as acceptable use. So if I hit that limit guess what, I'm cut off for the month.
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He is for real... he thinks he is making a valid argument when I think he's just being an ass.
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Oh thank god. For a minute there I thought you were on his side.
What might be a better term to use is unrestricted or unmetered but unlimited is pretty common
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I'm sort of with the guy. Definitions actually are important and we often times (in IT especially) muck up words to mean multiple things making discussion difficult sometimes.
Unlimited in the definition sense is not what these people mean. They are selling as much as you need following the rules. Even though most people are willing to forgo the definition and understand the meaning for the nice short word that fits in the table cell, technically this guy is right. Just because they're too lazy to find (or make up) and appropriate word, doesn't mean they're right in using it.
On the other hand, clearly this guy doesn't have anything better to do.
I'm sort of a word critic though. I'm always arguing with people on what we should call certain data fields and such because I believe naming things appropriately is important. Often times it's not really that easy since you're trying to fit too much into a single word or short phrase, but it is worth the effort because it helps you really understand/define what your doing.
I think they should switch the phrase to something like "lots".
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technically this guy is right
Only if he could supply an infinite amount of data to fill up the infinite amount of disk space. Until then the company only has to provide enough space for his data as he needs it.
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Personally I loved their response:
Let’s make a deal. If you can find a way to use infinite disk space (within the constraints of our ToS, of course, which is hardly
unreasonable. We’re a web host and we expect you to use the space for web hosting…not movie backups, not puppy mills, and not radish farms. Pretty standard, even if you want to argue crazy semantics), we’ll shoot down an alien craft or something and find a way to provide you with infinite storage.
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:rofl2:
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technically this guy is right
Only if he could supply an infinite amount of data to fill up the infinite amount of disk space. Until then the company only has to provide enough space for his data as he needs it.
Actually, no. He was right in that all he has to do is fill it up beyond their capacity (proving they lie), which would be pretty easy to do (not within the terms of service, but that's part of his argument too). There's also probably some way in the TOS that he could create very large image files and upload them to the server too, or make lots of backup copies on the disk of large files or something that would be "allowed" in the TOS.
I'm really quite surprised that they've taken the time to argue with him as far as they did. Now if he was really serious, he'd put together a class action lawsuit, in classic American fashion.
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And I read (well, skimmed really) the blog post from the owner or whatever, and he's horrible at analogies. He has some very bad logic in the post on why it's OK to "oversell."
I've always thought it was supposed to be "undersell, over deliver."
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technically this guy is right
Only if he could supply an infinite amount of data to fill up the infinite amount of disk space. Until then the company only has to provide enough space for his data as he needs it.
Actually, no. He was right in that all he has to do is fill it up beyond their capacity (proving they lie), which would be pretty easy to do (not within the terms of service, but that's part of his argument too). There's also probably some way in the TOS that he could create very large image files and upload them to the server too, or make lots of backup copies on the disk of large files or something that would be "allowed" in the TOS.
I'm really quite surprised that they've taken the time to argue with him as far as they did. Now if he was really serious, he'd put together a class action lawsuit, in classic American fashion.
If they can keep providing space faster than he could fill it up, then how are they lying?
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And I read (well, skimmed really) the blog post from the owner or whatever, and he's horrible at analogies. He has some very bad logic in the post on why it's OK to "oversell."
I've always thought it was supposed to be "undersell, over deliver."
To be fair, the kid is only 17 or 18, and he's Danish. Pretty smart programmer though.
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I guess he is right in that they are exploiting a flaw in the human condition. No I don't download that much, I probably could live with a 5GB / month broadband connection but something in me hates the idea that the one month I do download a lot of stuff (say, new Ubuntu distribution + all the SDK's and stuff that I need) I will go over the limit and get hit by the crazy charge which is probably 100 x (monthly payment / GB allowance)!
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enough space for his data != unlimited, in any language. Unlimited means without limits.
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Where's the limit that the company is placing outside the TOS?
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Financial. There is no way (within the realm of reality) that they could provide enough space to someone intentionally trying to abuse it. They stake their claim that since not everyone is going to utilize their allocation in full it's therefore unlimited which it's not, just more than sufficient. It's all in the semantics of the word. They don't actually mean "unlimited", which is the point this guy is trying to make.
And as fast as they could throw more storage onto their network, a properly designed script or program could fill the space forcing them to perpetually add more storage which at some point they will not do, which would prove his point that they lied. If they were willing to keep throwing storage up as fast as they could with no regard for financial loss, then I'd be OK with the claim, but I doubt that's the case.
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Except that a script program or person filling the space that quickly would violate the TOS.
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Nope. The TOS states that you can't run specific kinds of sites. It does not dictate what kind of scripts you can run.
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Are you sure? Cause I didn't read the TOS but I have never seen any hosting agreement that didn't mention server intensive or questionable scripts. Even my TOS covered that and I was just a reseller.
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http://www.dreamhost.com/unlimited.html
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So he's rationalized it away, still doesn't mean he's right in using the word.
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Doesn't matter though. As long as you define what exactly you mean then people can not say you are trying to defraud them.
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Basically. The word unlimited is used way to often in all industries we can all agree to that.
But in this case the guy arguing is an asshat. And let's of contracts redefine words to suit their specific need. The kid should stop being a homo.
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As long as you define what exactly you mean then people can not say you are trying to defraud them.
There is no asterisk or disclaimer on the main part of the site where the claim is made. Therefore it is clearly trying to play on the psychology of people, which is easily mislead. It's mildly shady business, even if it's commonly done.
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On the front page there is a link called "Unlimited Policy" and I saw it without even trying to look for it. And really for those who would use it the service really is unlimited. It is only douche bags like the author that are trying to prove something that'd run into any sort of problem.