As promised....
"Unlimited" is defined as "not limited; unrestricted; unconfined"
No matter how you spin it, all plans have limits, and therefore are not unlimited!
Your dfinition is appropriate. However, your complete statement is a logical fallacy within a logical fallacy. Even though your statement is a non-sequiter and assumes the very thing you are trying to prove, I will attempt a reasoned response.
What you have not defined here is the concept of a (shared web) Hosting Plan. My working definition is: A "Hosting Plan" is a basket of Hosting Resources available for rent. These are typically listed on the host's web site as hosting plan boxes. For the "Limited Host" each resource listed is limited by a quota; that quota, or limit, is determined by the host and displayed in the hosting plan.
The "Unlimited Host" uses your primary definition of "unlimited" as being "not limited," a you described it. And recall from above, the thing that is doing the limiting in the first place is the host/provider through the use of quotas. Thus if the host/provider does not utilize a quota then we say that the "stuff" of the quota is not limited, and use the term "unlimited" in the hosting plan to mean just that.
It may be a limit to the amount of space, the amount of IOPS, content, etc. There are many ways to limit a hosting plan besides a disk space quota allocation.
While that may be true in the general sense, that is not what is occuring. Hosting plans, by definition, don't include things like %CPU or GB RAM (ok, vps plans do, but not shared web hosting plans). No unlimited host is referring to cpu, ram, inodes, etc in their hosting plans -- and neither is the limited host. You are equating the TOS with the hosting plan. Both limited and unlimited hosts use similar TOS. A 500 mb wordpress site with a bad plugin can be denied a 3 GB plan -- but that does not mean there is no such thing as a 3 GB plan
To summarize this point - The difference between a limited host and an unlimited host is: the limited host uses the TOS and hosting plan to define limits, while the unlimited host just uses the TOS, and not the HOSTING PLAN.
As to your argument that the physical hardware is irrelevant, let me ask you, can I host a single website on your shared account, and use 10TB of space?
If it's low traffic, it won't hit your IOPS/RAM/CPU limit.
If all files are available to the public, it won't violate your no file sharing policy.
If none of it is copyrighted, warez, porn, etc it wouldn't violate your fair use policy.
(although all of the limits above, are in fact limits, therefore it couldn't be unlimited if any of those are enforced)
So, would you allow this?
Under the terms you listed, yes. However, your list is incomplete. My terms also include 100% linkage and that the primary purpose of the "site" is not to use disk space or bw.
Given my experience, and probably the experience of every single host out there, there is no such thing as a 10 TB web site that meets those conditions making it suitable for a shared hosting environment.
Such questions are silly really. Its like saying you can't offer unlimited control panel licenses. Why? Because you can't deliver on a 10 trillion license order. Such is is the logic of the anti-unlimited crowd.
I'll leave you with this. Behold! Here is what unlimited disk space looks like on a Linux server (the names were changed to protect the guilty). 0 = No Limit = Unlimited:
PHP:
# repquota /home
*** Report for user quotas on device /dev/sda3
Block grace time: 7days; Inode grace time: 7days
Block limits File limits
User used soft hard grace used soft hard grace
----------------------------------------------------------------------
root -- 566488 0 0 5401 0 0
RDOS -- 1448 0 0 30 0 0
NiceD -- 1419352 0 0 1686 0 0
Art -- 26604 0 0 172 0 0
Who here is going to try and convince us that the OS is lying? Perhaps along with the outrageous scnearios like 10 TB sites suitable for shared hosting environment, someone will invent a CLI argument #there is no such thing as \unlimited"
So many hosts here puff their chests and claim "there is no such thing as unlimited" but have no qualms about offering unlimited email, unlimited databases, unlimited domains, etc. This is nothing but hypocrisy and ignorance -- or FUD marketing. Now they try to disguise it as "unmetered" lest they reveal their hypocrisy. Don't they know there is no such thing as unmetered hard drives? There is not even any such thing as a metered one! :uhh:
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