6 ms·

I blame them just like most of the other data hoarders are blaming them. One or two guys shit in the pool and got the whole thing canned. You can certainly qual

by Steko 9y ago

I blame them just like most of the other data hoarders are blaming them. One or two guys shit in the pool and got the whole thing canned. You can certainly qualify unlimited service for reasonable use.

forgottenpass 9y ago
You can certainly qualify unlimited service for reasonable use. No, you can't. Because reasonable is a subjective moving target. There are maybe a handful of organizations outside of Microsoft that have a non-laughable chance of estimating A) cost of online storage to microsoft B) number of users C) distribution of storage used by their userbase D) cost of bandwidth E) typical bandwidth profile of users F) how much money Microsoft is willing to spend on storage as a loss leader. And then there is the un-estimateable wildcard: G) what number will "sound too big" to sysadmins and/or PMs once they see it on their metrics dashboard. "Unlimited" is a scam to avoid vocalizing the secret maximum and hoping that users have more conservative estimates of the secret maximum than it's actual value. And there is a huge incentive for users to guess conservativly at the maximum, because as soon as one person doesn't everyone else will blame them for "shitting in the pool and getting the whole thing canned"
- Steko 9y ago
  > No, you can't. Because reasonable is a subjective moving target. I don't think that matters. > "Unlimited" is a scam Baloney, everyone knows you can't actually get a million dollars of storage for $5/month just like the people at buffets know you can't just scrape $1K of food into the trash without the buffet getting shut down. There's always reasonable use limits on "unlimited" that any customer is aware of. I have unlimited checking and it's not a scam but there are obvious limits, if I wrote a million checks for 1 cent they would either close my account or change the terms. Writing a million checks is not a reasonable use case though, that would be me shitting in the pool.
  - michaelmrose 9y ago
    Why should we accept imprecise nonsense just to provide companies with a marketing opportunity. Unlimited SOUNDS better than any given number because it says you wont have to worry about usage. If you said 5TB of usage this might have the same connotations for most users however it doesn't communicate this fact as well. However once you start playing games with language. Saying one thing in large print and the exact opposite in the fine print or depending on what different people think is reasonable it becomes harder to define what is permissible.
    - bllguo 9y ago
      This strikes me as a utilitarian vs. deontological argument. The former: if everyone just played along and used things reasonably we would still be benefiting from cheap storage. The latter: stop playing games, "unlimited" is an unacceptable lie and we will push you into admitting it.
      - throwaway2048 9y ago
        There is a strongly utilitarian argument to not allowing such false statements. It devalues the products of people that aren't bullshitting you. Say with fake-unlimited the "real limit" is 4TB before they start terminating you, but a different provider provides 5TB of capacity. Because the former is allowed to outright lie, there is no way for the latter to effectively communicate that they are in fact offering a better product, instead they too have to make a bullshit "fake unlimited" claim to compete. Now because nobody has to actually back their claims with anything, they are infact massively incentivised to cut the "real storage" limits, because it will cut their costs, and they can still keep making the same claims. Its a market for lemons[1] race to the bottom, and everyone loses, producer and consumer because scamming liars cannot be reliably assessed beforehand. So consumers lose faith in the entire market segment, and providers offering actual legitimate services become unsustainable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
        9y ago
papaf 9y ago
You can certainly qualify unlimited service for reasonable use. There was some UK court case where the ruling agrees with what you said. However, both then and now I disagree with it. The reason is it is absolutely wrong in terms of language: unlimited - without limits reasonable use - use limited to a reasonable amount The other problem is that reasonable is not a number. Everybody has a different reasonable. This is the same as saying a service has a secret limit which you won't be told about. Why not just say there is a 5GB limit? That would be clear, fair and not at all misleading.
- keithpeter 9y ago
  UK: What 'reasonable' means is decided by a court when there is a case. They do take circumstances into account (e.g. domestic user or business &c) I do think that there should be segmented contracts with numerical ranges in to avoid idiots.

by Steko 9y ago

forgottenpass 9y ago

You can certainly qualify unlimited service for reasonable use. No, you can't. Because reasonable is a subjective moving target. There are maybe a handful of organizations outside of Microsoft that have a non-laughable chance of estimating A) cost of online storage to microsoft B) number of users C) distribution of storage used by their userbase D) cost of bandwidth E) typical bandwidth profile of users F) how much money Microsoft is willing to spend on storage as a loss leader. And then there is the un-estimateable wildcard: G) what number will "sound too big" to sysadmins and/or PMs once they see it on their metrics dashboard. "Unlimited" is a scam to avoid vocalizing the secret maximum and hoping that users have more conservative estimates of the secret maximum than it's actual value. And there is a huge incentive for users to guess conservativly at the maximum, because as soon as one person doesn't everyone else will blame them for "shitting in the pool and getting the whole thing canned"

Steko 9y ago
> No, you can't. Because reasonable is a subjective moving target. I don't think that matters. > "Unlimited" is a scam Baloney, everyone knows you can't actually get a million dollars of storage for $5/month just like the people at buffets know you can't just scrape $1K of food into the trash without the buffet getting shut down. There's always reasonable use limits on "unlimited" that any customer is aware of. I have unlimited checking and it's not a scam but there are obvious limits, if I wrote a million checks for 1 cent they would either close my account or change the terms. Writing a million checks is not a reasonable use case though, that would be me shitting in the pool.
- michaelmrose 9y ago
  Why should we accept imprecise nonsense just to provide companies with a marketing opportunity. Unlimited SOUNDS better than any given number because it says you wont have to worry about usage. If you said 5TB of usage this might have the same connotations for most users however it doesn't communicate this fact as well. However once you start playing games with language. Saying one thing in large print and the exact opposite in the fine print or depending on what different people think is reasonable it becomes harder to define what is permissible.
  - bllguo 9y ago
    This strikes me as a utilitarian vs. deontological argument. The former: if everyone just played along and used things reasonably we would still be benefiting from cheap storage. The latter: stop playing games, "unlimited" is an unacceptable lie and we will push you into admitting it.
    - throwaway2048 9y ago
      There is a strongly utilitarian argument to not allowing such false statements. It devalues the products of people that aren't bullshitting you. Say with fake-unlimited the "real limit" is 4TB before they start terminating you, but a different provider provides 5TB of capacity. Because the former is allowed to outright lie, there is no way for the latter to effectively communicate that they are in fact offering a better product, instead they too have to make a bullshit "fake unlimited" claim to compete. Now because nobody has to actually back their claims with anything, they are infact massively incentivised to cut the "real storage" limits, because it will cut their costs, and they can still keep making the same claims. Its a market for lemons[1] race to the bottom, and everyone loses, producer and consumer because scamming liars cannot be reliably assessed beforehand. So consumers lose faith in the entire market segment, and providers offering actual legitimate services become unsustainable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
      - 9y ago

papaf 9y ago

You can certainly qualify unlimited service for reasonable use. There was some UK court case where the ruling agrees with what you said. However, both then and now I disagree with it. The reason is it is absolutely wrong in terms of language: unlimited - without limits reasonable use - use limited to a reasonable amount The other problem is that reasonable is not a number. Everybody has a different reasonable. This is the same as saying a service has a secret limit which you won't be told about. Why not just say there is a 5GB limit? That would be clear, fair and not at all misleading.

keithpeter 9y ago
UK: What 'reasonable' means is decided by a court when there is a case. They do take circumstances into account (e.g. domestic user or business &c) I do think that there should be segmented contracts with numerical ranges in to avoid idiots.