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Pirate Electrician Supplied Power To 1,500 Homes
fridaynightsmoke writes "A former electrical engineer for utility EDF has been prosecuted for illegally supplying power to some 1,500 homes in north London. Derek Brown, 45, was arrested in 2008 after being seen tampering with the electric grid in a manhole. He specialized in connecting separate supplies to houses that were split into apartments. One landlord involved, Haresh Parmar, was jailed for 9 months for stealing £30,000 worth of electricity for 22 of his apartments. Brown's assets will be seized and he has been sentenced to 8 months suspended, and 150 hours community service."
What a shocking development
Electricity wants to be free!
Je ne parle pas francais.
Can someone explain how the mains circuit is supplied.
TFA was so light on details its very difficult to understand what he did. I'm not sure how you can actually illegally tap into the power grid without someone noticing. Here an inspector literally reads the meter or in some cases a digital meter supplies information automatically. In fact, my gas is apparently wireless and merely requires someone to drive by to meter the usage. It would seem like something that would be very difficult to subvert in a suburban environment.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
So I guess the charges he was brought up on were negative, am I right?
Sounds like he already did the community service.
Since I think the distinction between thieves and pirates can be a useful one in the debate on software piracy, I'd say we're dealing with a thief here - not a pirate.
He didn't steal the power, he just borrowed it. For every electron that went into his wires, he sent one right back to the electric company. So he just copied them. Or something.
And yet it enabled him to supply more power than the average renewable power government project. I say we need more nuts and rocks !
Roads/Schools/Libraries are classified as public goods, which the free market does not allocate very efficiently. That's why we use taxes to pay for them and provide them for everyone. I think the parent understands that they aren't "free" in the sense that you mean.
Go take an introductory macroeconomics class and then get back to us when you're slightly more educated. We really don't have the time or patience to deal with you until then.
I'd like to point out that this sort of thing is very common in third world countries. When it happens, it drives up prices for actual paying customers by making it exponentially more difficult for utilities to provide service and maintain infrastructure due to the uncompensated stress put on their systems. As the increased taxes and regulations of the modern socialist nanny state crushes entrepreneurship and throws ever larger numbers of people out of work and onto welfare, expect to see more of this as a harbinger of things to come.
Remember, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
I think it's partially BS. An induction loop that provides useful power (enough to run a house) at a distance of 100 yards to the AC transmission line must be coupling to a big-scale high voltage line -- I'd presume something above 100kV. AFAIK, in those lines, change in losses due to changes in something as trivial as air humidity beats whatever consumption a house would have, by orders of magnitude. I doubt they would be able to measure whatever this man did. Now it's true that he did increase the load on their line, but the instantaneous power transmitted by such lines is such that one house's worth of load is below the capability of typical industrial measurement systems. So it's true that he was stealing power, but I doubt they came to him due to "extra load in their circuit". Besides, such lines are costly to maintain, so I presume it's rare that you would run such a line without normal loads attached to it. I'd think that leakage measurements with disconnected loads are rare: idling a big transmission line wastes lots of money.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Yeah I hate how high taxes and over regulation created those third world countries... oh wait they are almost universally libertarian fantasies in which even local policing is "outsourced" to "entrepreneurs".
This sort of Libertarian fantasy wank gets modded insightful?
P.S. The freedom crushing is being done at the behest of under-regulated corporate behemoths that can buy laws. Which is the end result of Libertarian fantasy wank.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
They showed the coils of bailing wire didn't work with specific PG&E transmission lines to 'power a house'.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Trickle-down: When an already wealthy entity receives money, it becomes more and more conservative with it. It invests it outside the core business (diversification) or it squirrels it away (hoarding), sometimes in the form of non-cash (art, land, etc.) What it doesn't do is turn around and shower that money on the workers, or the consumers, of the products it is currently selling. This trickle down idea is a myth, a myth started and maintained by those whose only goal is to collect as much of everyone else's money as possible.
Credit: The function of credit is to expand the gap between the wealthy and the poor, by transferring money from the poor to the wealthy. Here's how it works. At some interest rate, $100 is made available to the poor by the wealthy. The poor pays back $110. That $100 then is actually worth $90 to the poor, but $110 to the wealthy. At the end of the transaction, the wealthy have more money. The poor, however, have less, although they have $100 worth of goods, with a probable resale value of far less, should they try and exchange them for cash. It is worth noting that in general, they goods they purchase they also buy from the wealthy. The result of the credit process is a continuous transfer of money from the poor to the rich - never the other way, unless the debt repayment is defaulted, and even then, statistically speaking, this doesn't slow the process down much.
This is why the libertarian idea of corporate freedom is bunk. Corporations are not people; if we compare them honestly to persons, they're a lot more like psychopaths. No society that lets them run free can remain healthy; the US is one recent example; when unregulated, jobs are sent overseas, healthcare is not provided, products are not made to last, warranty and service are only given under profound duress, copy protection, software differentiation, IP hoarding and other anti-consumer practices become not just common, but the standard for behavior.
The libertarian outlook has major value in that area where it recognizes the liberties and freedoms of people, and says that government should have no authority there. When those freedoms are extended to corporations, the libertarian ideal turns immediately into a nightmare, one not all that unlike the one we're currently experiencing. Corporations are not people. They completely lack empathy, sympathy, compassion, courtesy, loyalty, and honor. They are, quite literally, psychopaths. Given the strengths of a legal person, they will act along the same lines of the worst criminals society has ever known. All the while smiling to your face.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So, if you pay 30% taxes, then you had to earn $142.85 to pay the plumber $100, for which you got less than $70 worth of services. In the end, $142 of your dollars bought something less than $70 worth of services.
But by your logic, I only had to do $100 of work to earn the $142.85 (you say the plumber does $70 of work for the $100). So there's no double dipping.