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Comment by billybuckwheat | Hacker News Reader

If a company is offering unlimited anything, then people will use that unlimited whatever. It's not them being abusive. Those people are using what they paid for. Nothing more, nothing less.

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I disagree. Engineers will typically stick to the mathematical meaning of unlimited but I think there is *always* an unspoken social contract behind the word: be nice.

For example, if I sign up for "unlimited cloud storage", I take it to mean, backing up all my personal stuff, no matter how large it grows. If I have the world's largest collection of digitized rocks in 8K Raw and it takes up 2 million terabytes...well I think I'm being disingenous by using the unlimited storage.

Or for example, if a friend says "use my car any time you want"...will you really just steal his car and ship it to another country?

I mean...nothing in this world is unlimited for real. And I think it makes sense to say unlimited to mean: you can use as much as you like, but be nice.

> I mean...nothing in this world is unlimited for real.

Maybe don't call it unlimited storage then :D

Meh, I like the word. It means a typical person doesn't have to worry about going over the limit. For hacker-types, it often means "how can I use this up for myself..."

Just calling it the "15 TB plan" also means a typical person doesn't have to worry about going over the limit but lets the non-typical user know you don't consider 30 TB fair use before they bother signing up for your service and uploading all their data.

There isn't such a contract because it's not specified, there are a huge number of "socially nice" use cases well below 2 million terabytes, so the proper way out is not to lie that it's unlimited (and give more guidance on what "fair use" is)

I agree. There are certain cultures which I expect to abuse “unlimited” anything.

Do you feel the same way about all-you-can-eat buffets?

You cannot fill plates and then take them home. You cannot pass food out the window to your friends waiting outside. You can’t program a robot to collect food until you’ve harvested as much food as 500 median customers would eat.

"You cannot fill plates and then take them home."

If you're a fast runner you can...

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