Gary's Bloggage » english http://www.vicchi.org Geo-blogging, geo-talking and geo-tweeting, these are the occasional ramblings of a self professed "geek with a life" Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:39:42 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Reaching The Limits Of Unlimited http://www.vicchi.org/2010/05/06/reaching-the-limits-of-unlimited/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=reaching-the-limits-of-unlimited http://www.vicchi.org/2010/05/06/reaching-the-limits-of-unlimited/#comments Thu, 06 May 2010 08:34:53 +0000 Gary http://www.vicchi.org/?p=1043 Continue reading →]]> Consider for a moment the word unlimited; it’s an adjective and, if you’ll pardon the condescension, it means the following:

  1. not limited; unrestricted; unconfined
  2. boundless; infinite; vast
  3. without any qualification or exception; unconditional

Except in the world of mobile data or mobile broadband, where unlimited means, in a vaguely disturbing twisted, inverted, doublespeak sort of way, the exact opposite.

Vodafone, my current UK mobile provider, helpful tells me that I have unlimited data, subject to their fair use policy which promptly redefines unlimited as very much limited indeed and your limit is 5GB per month. That’s a lot of data. Even being the compulsive photo uploader, web browser, Foursquare and Gowalla check in, Twitter and Facebook poster and checker that I am, I’m hard pressed to go above 500MB per month let alone 5GB.

So I was both vastly amused and somewhat shocked when this text arrived on my iPhone on the way home from work last night.

Impossibility #1 : Reaching the limits of unlimited.

A quick call to Vodafone luckily cleared this up as being a glitch in their billing systems and I would not, as stated be charged, nor had I gotten anywhere near the 5GB limit of unlimited.

I found the whole process rather amusing in hindsight but shouldn’t the mobile companies either come clean about what unlimited really means or just don’t sell unlimited data as a concept at all and just sell a, 5GB in my case, data limit?

Written and posted from the Yahoo! London office (51.5141985, -0.1292006)
]]> http://www.vicchi.org/2010/05/06/reaching-the-limits-of-unlimited/feed/ 0 Winter, Followed by Spring and Back to Winter Again http://www.vicchi.org/2010/03/01/winter-followed-by-spring-and-back-to-winter-again/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=winter-followed-by-spring-and-back-to-winter-again http://www.vicchi.org/2010/03/01/winter-followed-by-spring-and-back-to-winter-again/#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:59:02 +0000 Gary http://www.vicchi.org/?p=618 Continue reading →]]> I’ve never been a massive fan of Crowded House but 1991′s Four Seasons in One Day could have been written with this weekend’s weather in mind. We started with Winter (cold, wet, miserably damp), followed by Spring (heavy showers, glorious sunshine and the odd rainbow or two), followed by Summer (clear blue skies).

Centre Point against an (almost) Spring sky

Then this morning, we returned back to Winter again, complete with breath misting in front of your face, frozen puddles on the station platform and people ignoring the frozen puddles and ending up resplendently sprawled on the platform.

Winter returns to the morning commute.

Blogging about the weather … how very English.

Written and posted from the Yahoo! London office (51.5141985, -0.1292006)

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