Bitcoin Forum

I rented a new flat, and the other day the owner told me that there is something with the Electricity watch that whatever power the old renter consumed he always get $2-$3/month bills. So I have been thinking about mining since I have an almost free electricity.

I want to know what kind of hardware I need and how much it'll cost. I'll be glad to mine if I could make $50 (pays my Internet bill) but trying (http://bitcoinx.com/profit/index.php) it seems like HardWare costs will not pay off any quickly.

Any suggestions that I can profit from this situation?

You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

If the landlord left his house unlocked, would you take advantage of that as well? Maybe help yourself to some valuables, maybe a bite to eat?

People like you make the world a worse place to live.

With free electricity your goal should be the lowest price in $ per MH/s.

If it were me it would be entry level AMD board w/ 3 triple spaces PCIex16 slots, an AMD sempron, 2GB of cheapo ram, usb thumb drive running linux.  I would grab 3 used cards from ebay.  5870s or 5970s.  Pretty much nothing has a lower cost per MH.

Even still your are looking at 9 months payback for hardware so your need to be in it for the longhaul.  If your goal is simply to make easy fast money and not care about bitcoin those days are gone.

With the price of BTC you'd be better off growing some nice skunky buds and selling them by the ounce.

With the current US labor market you would be better off running a kidnapping ring. 

Breaking news at 11.  Illegal activity tends to have higher profit margins.

I talked with the Landlore and he told me he has no intention to inform the Electricity provider about that. It's his responsibility and not mine. The bill is issued with his name.

6790's are pretty cheap, and the $/mhash ratio is one of the better ones too...

I find that 5970s will be much better and the going prices are getting cheap.

How is that situation analogous in any way? Is talking a lot on a phone when you've paid for an "unlimited" plan the same thing as paying your bill with a stolen credit card? (It's not.)

If you use $200 worth of electricity from the electric company, and only pay them $3, you're stealing. Period.

It's impossible to justify that.

Do you know who you're stealing from? Everyone else in your area who pays for electricity (which is everyone else).

The electric company doesn't have a huge margin. They don't get their electricity free from magic Tesla boxes or something. In fact, they usually charge you their wholesale cost, plus a percentaqe for "delivery" which -- guess what? -- goes to pay for their very real, very legitimate expenses in keeping the electric grid operational.

Some electric companies might make a BIT of "profit" (maybe 10%?) -- others are co-operatives which means they don't aim to make a profit per se -- they keep any "extra money" in the company to be used for the benefit of the members. Either way, to take electricity without paying even the wholesale cost of it is stealing, just like breaking into a building and taking something that doesn't belong to you.

Your pathetic rationalization is ridiculous.

If you've paid for an "unlimited" plan, of course you have the legal and moral right to be on the phone 24/7.
Did the OP say he paid for an "unlimited" electricity plan?

I rest my case.

This world is fast becoming a ####hole because of selfish people like the OP. It's all about "me, me, me".

Funny, I was thinking the same thing about several of your statements.

The fact is he's paying for a service, whether he's overusing it is to some degree pretty subjective unless it's spelled out in their agreement or applicable law, which neither you or I know the full details of. I guess we can safely assume it's the same thing morally and legally as burglarizing the guy's house though, right?

It's more like paying for a $0.50 candybar, then 20 more of them appear in your shopping basket on the way out the door and you keep them all.  Highly questionable from a moral standpoint, and I agree with Angelus that people like this make the world a worse place to live.

But if anything the person scamming the power company is the landlord. The tenant presumably pays much more than $3 to rent the place and apparently utilities are included in that. It's not really the responsibility of the tenant to ensure that the landlord is paying the proper amount to the power company, that's between the landlord and the company.

It sounded like the tenant was the one who paid the bill, not the landlord.  Clearly, if the landlord is the one paying the bill, then he is the one held morally responsible for the fraud.

He states in a later post that the bill is issued in the landlord's name.

Ah, missed that.

Definitely a gray area then, morally, IMO.

I should point out that electric companies generally go after back-amounts owed, once they discover a problem. This makes sense, because, as I said, it's not like it's all free money to them. More like money they've already shelled out which they'd like to have back.

My own mother was being under-billed for about a year (apparently, the guy who was supposed to read the meter gave up very easily), then they hit her with a $500 bill in back-charges for the past year.

The same might happen to you or your landlord.

Tenant use electricity.  Landlord buys electricity from the electric company at a negligibly-low rate that is obviously an error on someone's part.  Tenant is not only fully aware of this, but intends to exploit it to its fullest.

Either the tenant is knowing buying a stolen service from the landlord (a crime), or the landlord messed something up somewhere and has that apartment's electric running through the wrong meter or something.

I can agree with this.  Black and white again.  :P

"Even a voluntary contract to surrender the product of labor to an employer was theft, according to Proudhon, since the controller of natural resources had no moral right to charge others for the use of that which he did not labor to create and therefore did not own."

Lol, jeaolus much.

Screw the hyrdo companies is what I say...

Best of luck to the OP.

I want free electricity too!

I say if the electric companies in some companies can charge exorbitant amounts for power when it costs them considerably less and make billions of profit every year, keep on jacking the prices up every 6 months just so they can squeeze more out of the consumer to fatten their own pockets (and counter claims saying the prices and increases are justified are certainly not true everywhere) then I say by all means go for it!

I can't wait for the time when I can move to a country where paying 0.06c PKWH or less/free makes mining with GPU's more profitable at the moment (though i'm still coming far ahead as thats what I pay offpeak rates for half the day, and the rest of the time the .16c rate tends to have less of an impact on my profit margin) I feel sorry for those that are forced to pay the usual rates for electricity here in australia and dont get discounts or anything (think 0.23c and higher, which is more considering the Aud$ is currently worth more the usd)

I bet those defending the power companies saying that person is "stealing" and comparing to helping oneself to the landlords valuables wouldn't be as quick to justify unreasonable bank fees if it hits them where it hurts, ie their wallets each time a bank debit transaction gets declined due to a screwup (over here thats typically $20-30 for something that is automatically fixed and costs the bank nothing, but gains them considerable profits at the expense of thousands of poor customers)

The last place I lived in was funded and maintained for by the government, electricity was provided free of charge as part of the rent (wish I had gotten into BTC mining back then) and though I ran several computers 24/7, nobody had a issue with my excess power usage.

Some men just want to watch the world burn. ;D

Fuck 'em.  Save your morals for church.  I'd like to hear more about rigs built with cost/profit in mind that doesn't include electric as much.  I live in a place with low electric charges, and have access to other means of power as well if need be.  I'd like to hear of any options that other people came up with that I might not have.

In UK news 2 pensioners received a letter from electricity company that the pensioners owe them around $50 000. When questioned why ? how ? electricity company said the electricity meter at the house was faulty and showed less then the actual amount being used, and they estimated this went on for 25 years.
The couple has no choice but to pay up.

Are you joking?  Stop being jealous wussy because you don't have free power.

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OP -- 5850s bro, cheap mobo, cpu, 1gb ram, 40gb hdd, get 5850s or 7970s.  5970s if you must but NOTHING else or you will regret it! Trust me!

always get gold rated PSU and a good 750w can power four 5850s just fine, or two 5970.  Don't push it, just get more rigs if you want more cards.  It's not a big deal.

A lot of people around here think they know what they are talking about.  Be careful who you listen to!

Lol funny how OP's question turned in a debate on morality. Save the ethics debate for another time. This is the same thing as price mistakes and everyone jumping on it, but when it's fixed, then the people that tried to buy the item throws a hissy fit.

This guy speaks good sense. Load up on the 5850's and cheap mobo/cpu/ram (sempron low power ones are good) I'd replace the 40GB HD idea with usb thumbsticks running Bamt

Yes on the BAMT.